"I really enjoyed the book's gung-ho style." - Simon Broughton— Songlines, London-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Gleefully blunt." - Daniel Spicer— The Wire, London-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"This book is going to be mined for raw material by Balkan culturolo...

A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of twenty-first-century Russia, where even dictatorship is a reality show.**“A gripping and unsettling account.” —**Washington PostProfessional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet masters, Hells Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors: welcome to twenty-first-century Russia. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, ch...

Prize-winning author Michael J. Totten returns with a masterpiece of travel writing and history in this journey through thirteen nations—all but two formerly communist—just beyond the edge of the West where few casual travelers venture. His work as an independent foreign correspondent takes him deep into the field beyond the sensational headlines, from his hilariously miserable road trip through the Middle East with his best friend to Iraq, and around Eastern Europe to the Wild West of Alb...

Travels with NPR host David Greene along the Trans-Siberian Railroad capture an overlooked, idiosyncratic Russia in the age of Putin.Far away from the trendy cafés, designer boutiques, and political protests and crackdowns in Moscow, the real Russia exists.Midnight in Siberia chronicles David Greene’s journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway, a 6,000-mile cross-country trip from Moscow to the Pacific port of Vladivostok. In quadruple-bunked cabins and...

'EPIC' Financial Times'PERCEPTIVE' The Sunday Times'BLISSFUL' Daily Telegraph'FASCINATING' Independent on Sunday'TERRIFIC' Henry Winter'EXCELLENT*' Simon Kuper*The fascinating story of football in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, from the award-winning author of Inve...

In 2007 Luke Harding arrived in Moscow to take up a new job as a correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian. Within months, mysterious agents from Russia's Federal Security Service --the successor to the KGB--had broken into his apartment. He found himself tailed by men in leather jackets, bugged, and even summoned to the KGB's notorious prison, Lefortovo. The break-in was the beginning of an extraordinary psychological war against the journalist and his family. Windows...

Finalist for the NBCC Award in Criticism, this collection is riotous, especially the piece about smashing a minibar.

The raucous and surprisingly poignant story of a young, Russia-obsessed American writer and comedian who embarked on a solo tour of the former Soviet Republics, never imagining that it would involve kidnappers, garbage bags of money, and encounters with the weird and wonderful from Mongolia to Tajikistan.Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Siberia are not the typical tourist destinations of a twenty-something, nor the places one usually goes to eat, pray, and/or love. But the mix of imperial ...

From one of Europe’s premier essayists and cultural critics, a new collection about our troubling political times

An entertaining look at the changing face of the Eurovision Song Contest and the political and cultural influences behind its kitsch and glitzy façade. Do you think the world of the Eurovision Song Contest, with its crazy props, even crazier dancers, and crazier still songs has nothing to do with serious European politics? Think again. The contest has been a mirror for cultural, social, and political developments in Europe ever since its inauguration, when an audience in dinner jackets and...

Dubravka Ugresic's follow-up to the NBCC Award Finalist Karaoke Culture and features some of her sharpest and funniest pieces yet.

**One of Bustle's 17 of the Best Nonfiction Books Coming in January 2017 and Men's Journal's 7 Best Books of January**"Brilliant, real and readable." —former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright**A USA Today "New and Noteworthy" Book**Lisa Dickey traveled across the whole of Russia three times—in 1995, 2005 and 2015—making friends in eleven different cities, then coming back again and again t...