Books
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Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History
Family and nation formed a reliable bedrock of security for precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi. She was a Young Pioneer, helping to lead her country toward the future of perfect freedom promised by the leaders of her country, the People's Socialist Republic of Albania. Then, almost overnight, the Berlin Wall fell and the pillars of her society toppled. The local statue of Stalin, whom she had believed to be a kindly leader who loved children, was beheaded by student protestors.Uncomfortable truths about her family's background emerged. Lea learned that when her parents and neighbors had spoken in whispers of friends going to "university" or relatives "dropping out," they meant something much more sinister. As she learned the truth about her family's past, her best friend fled the country. Together with neighboring post-Communist states, Albania began a messy transition to join the "free markets" of the Western world: a dystopia of pyramid schemes, organized crime, and sex trafficking. Her father, despite his radical left-wing convictions, was forced to fire workers; her mother became a conservative politician on the model of Margaret Thatcher. Lea's typical teen concerns about relationships and the future were shot through with the existential: the nation was engulfed in civil war.Ypi's outstanding literary gifts enable her to weave together this colorful, tumultuous coming-of-age story in a time of social upheaval with thoughtful, fresh, and invigorating perspective on the relation between the personal and the political, and on deep questions about freedom: What does freedom consist of, and for whom? What conditions foster it? Who among us is truly free?
$32.95 $27.95
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Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany
AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - From the ashes of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, "an expansive and generous history" of East Germany (New Republic) In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics. In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country, revealing the rich political, social, and cultural landscape that existed amid oppression and hardship. Drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews and documents, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, beyond the Wall.
$21.99
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Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the Cia, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book
The Zhivago Affair is the dramatic, never-before-told story--drawing on newly declassified files--of how a forbidden book became a secret CIA weapon in the ideological battle between East and West. In May 1956, an Italian publishing scout went to a village outside Moscow to visit Russia's greatest living poet, Boris Pasternak. He left carrying the manuscript of Pasternak's only novel, suppressed by Soviet authorities. From there the life of this extraordinary book entered the realm of the spy novel. The CIA published a Russian-language edition of Doctor Zhivago and smuggled it into the Soviet Union. Copies were devoured in Moscow and Leningrad, sold on the black market, and passed from friend to friend. Pasternak's funeral in 1960 was attended by thousands who defied their government to bid him farewell, and his example launched the great tradition of the Soviet writer-dissident. First to obtain CIA files providing proof of the agency's involvement, Peter Finn and Petra Couvée take us back to a remarkable Cold War era when literature had the power to stir the world. (With 8 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)
$16.95
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Subversive: Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Sayers
Known for her bestselling detective novels, Dorothy L. Sayers lived a fascinating, groundbreaking life as a novelist, feminist, Oxford scholar, and important influence on the spiritual life of C.S. Lewis. This pioneering woman not only forged a literary career for herself but also spoke about faith and culture in revolutionary ways as she addressed the evergreen question of to what extent faith should hold on to tradition and to what extent it should evolve with a changing culture. Thanks to her unmatched wisdom, prophetic tone, and insistent strength, Dorothy Sayers is a voice that we cannot afford to ignore. Providing a blueprint for bridge-building in contemporary, polarizing contexts, Subversive shows how Sayers used edgy, often hilarious metaphors to ignite new ways to think about Christianity, shocking people into seeing the truth of ancient doctrine in a new light. Urging readers to reassess interpretations of the Bible that impede the cause of Christ, Sayers helps twenty-first-century Christians navigate a society increasingly suspicious of evangelical vocabularies and find new ways to talk and think about faith and culture. Ultimately, she will inspire believers, on both the right and the left, to evaluate how and why their language perpetuates divisive certitude rather than the hopeful humility of faith, and will show us all a better way forward.
$24.99
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Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition
An NPR Book of the Year A Seattle Times Book of the Year William E. Colby Award Winner "A beautifully written, deeply intelligent book about [a] crucial moment." -- Fareed Zakaria, CNN Nobody expected the liberation of India and birth of Pakistan to be so violent--it was supposed to be an answer to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus who had been ruled by the British for more than a century. But as the summer of 1947 approached, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs were heavily armed and on edge after a year of riots and gang fighting, and the British rushed to leave. Hell broke loose. Trains carried Muslims west and Hindus east to their slaughter. Some of the most brutal and widespread ethnic cleansing in modern history erupted on both sides of the new border, searing a divide between India and Pakistan that remains a root cause of many of today's most menacing security threats, from jihadi terrorism to nuclear proliferation. Based on major new sources, Nisid Hajari's revelatory Midnight's Furies lays out the searing truth about one of the world's most momentous and least understood tragedies. "Fast-moving and highly readable . . . The story of what happens when a composite society comes apart." -- New York Times Book Review "Makes the complex and tragic story of the great divide into a page-turner." -- Guardian "Engaging and incisive . . . Hajari writes with grace, precision, and an unerring eye for detail. Midnight's Furies is the best of recent offerings." -- Wall Street Journal
$21.99
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Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution
The dramatic real life stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China's 1949 Communist revolution--a heartrending precursor to the struggles faced by emigrants today. "A true page-turner . . . [Helen] Zia has proven once again that history is something that happens to real people."--New York Times bestselling author Lisa See NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - FINALIST FOR THE PEN/JACQUELINE BOGRAD WELD AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY Shanghai has historically been China's jewel, its richest, most modern and westernized city. The bustling metropolis was home to sophisticated intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class when Mao's proletarian revolution emerged victorious from the long civil war. Terrified of the horrors the Communists would wreak upon their lives, citizens of Shanghai who could afford to fled in every direction. Seventy years later, members of the last generation to fully recall this massive exodus have revealed their stories to Chinese American journalist Helen Zia, who interviewed hundreds of exiles about their journey through one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. From these moving accounts, Zia weaves together the stories of four young Shanghai residents who wrestled with the decision to abandon everything for an uncertain life as refugees in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States. Benny, who as a teenager became the unwilling heir to his father's dark wartime legacy, must decide either to escape to Hong Kong or navigate the intricacies of a newly Communist China. The resolute Annuo, forced to flee her home with her father, a defeated Nationalist official, becomes an unwelcome exile in Taiwan. The financially strapped Ho fights deportation from the U.S. in order to continue his studies while his family struggles at home. And Bing, given away by her poor parents, faces the prospect of a new life among strangers in America. The lives of these men and women are marvelously portrayed, revealing the dignity and triumph of personal survival. Herself the daughter of immigrants from China, Zia is uniquely equipped to explain how crises like the Shanghai transition affect children and their families, students and their futures, and, ultimately, the way we see ourselves and those around us. Last Boat Out of Shanghai brings a poignant personal angle to the experiences of refugees then and, by extension, today. "Zia's portraits are compassionate and heartbreaking, and they are, ultimately, the universal story of many families who leave their homeland as refugees and find less-than-welcoming circumstances on the other side."--Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club
$20.00
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Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman
A new, fascinating account of the life of Agatha Christie from celebrated literary and cultural historian Lucy Worsley. "Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was." Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was "just" an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn't? Her life is fascinating for its mysteries and its passions and, as Lucy Worsley says, "She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern." She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness. So why--despite all the evidence to the contrary--did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure? She was born in 1890 into a world that had its own rules about what women could and couldn't do. Lucy Worsley's biography is not just of a massively, internationally successful writer. It's also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman. With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley's biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realize what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was--truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.
$29.95
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There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the Ira, and Two Minutes That Changed History
**A Goodreads Choice Awards Nomination for Best History & Biography** **An NPR Book We Love** A race-against-the-clock narrative that finally illuminates a history-changing event: the IRA's attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher and the epic manhunt that followed. A bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army exploded at 2:54 a.m. on October 12, 1984. It was the last day of the Conservative Party Conference at the Grand Hotel in the coastal town of Brighton, England. Rooms were obliterated, dozens of people wounded, five killed. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in her suite when the explosion occurred; had she been just a few feet in another direction, flying tiles and masonry would have sliced her to ribbons. As it was, she survived--and history changed. There Will Be Fire is the gripping story of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Thatcher, in the most spectacular attack ever linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles. Journalist Rory Carroll reveals the long road to Brighton, the hide-and-seek between the IRA and British security services, the planting of the bomb itself, and the painstaking search for clues and suspects afterward. In There Will Be Fire, Carroll draws on his own interviews and original reporting, reveals new information, and weaves together previously unconnected threads. There Will Be Fire is journalistic nonfiction that reads like a thriller, propelled by a countdown to detonation.
$30.00
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Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot That Avenged the Armenian Genocide
A masterful account of the assassins who hunted down the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. In 1921, a tightly knit band of killers set out to avenge the deaths of almost one million victims of the Armenian Genocide. They were a humble bunch: an accountant, a life insurance salesman, a newspaper editor, an engineering student, and a diplomat. Together they formed one of the most effective assassination squads in history. They named their operation Nemesis, after the Greek goddess of retribution. The assassins were survivors, men defined by the massive tragedy that had devastated their people. With operatives on three continents, the Nemesis team killed six major Turkish leaders in Berlin, Constantinople, Tiflis, and Rome, only to disband and suddenly disappear. The story of this secret operation has never been fully told, until now. Eric Bogosian goes beyond simply telling the story of this cadre of Armenian assassins by setting the killings in the context of Ottoman and Armenian history, as well as showing in vivid color the era's history, rife with political fighting and massacres. Casting fresh light on one of the great crimes of the twentieth century and one of history's most remarkable acts of vengeance, Bogosian draws upon years of research and newly uncovered evidence. Operation Nemesis is the result -- both a riveting read and a profound examination of evil, revenge, and the costs of violence.
$22.99
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Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom
In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"--New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"--Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country.No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair.He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovations--including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper--often centuries before the rest of the world. His thrilling and dangerous journeys, vividly recreated by Winchester, took him across war-torn China to far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for the Chinese people.After the war, Needham was determined to tell the world what he had discovered, and began writing his majestic Science and Civilisation in China, describing the country's long and astonishing history of invention and technology. By the time he died, he had produced, essentially single-handedly, seventeen immense volumes, marking him as the greatest one-man encyclopedist ever.Both epic and intimate, The Man Who Loved China tells the sweeping story of China through Needham's remarkable life. Here is an unforgettable tale of what makes men, nations, and, indeed, mankind itself great--related by one of the world's inimitable storytellers.
$19.99
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Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech
An explosive exposé of Samsung that "reads like a dynastic thriller, rolling through three generations of family intrigue, embezzlement, bribery, corruption, prostitution, and other bad behavior" (The Wall Street Journal). LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD Based on years of reporting on Samsung for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and Time, from his base in South Korea, and his countless sources inside and outside the company, Geoffrey Cain offers a penetrating look behind the curtains of the biggest company nobody in America knows. Seen for decades in tech circles as a fast follower rather than an innovation leader, Samsung today has grown to become a market leader in the United States and around the globe. They have captured one quarter of the smartphone market and have been pushing the envelope on every front. Forty years ago, Samsung was a rickety Korean agricultural conglomerate that produced sugar, paper, and fertilizer, located in a backward country with a third-world economy. With the rise of the PC revolution, though, Chairman Lee Byung-chul began a bold experiment: to make Samsung a major supplier of computer chips. The multimillion- dollar plan was incredibly risky. But Lee, wowed by a young Steve Jobs, who sat down with the chairman to offer his advice, became obsessed with creating a tech empire. And in Samsung Rising, we follow Samsung behind the scenes as the company fights its way to the top of tech. It is one of Apple's chief suppliers of technology critical to the iPhone, and its own Galaxy phone outsells the iPhone. Today, Samsung employs over 300,000 people (compared to Apple's 80,000 and Google's 48,000). The company's revenues have grown more than forty times from that of 1987 and make up more than 20 percent of South Korea's exports. Yet their disastrous recall of the Galaxy Note 7, with numerous reports of phones spontaneously bursting into flames, reveals the dangers of the company's headlong attempt to overtake Apple at any cost. A sweeping insider account, Samsung Rising shows how a determined and fearless Asian competitor has become a force to be reckoned with.
$29.00
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Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties
"Eloquent, thorough, and profound, David de Jong's brilliant debut illuminates a dark chapter of the past while also shining a stark and uncanny light onto our present, and, perhaps, our near future--showing how an insidious mix of capitalism and fascism can destroy democracy and countless lives. An absolute must-read." -- Norman Ohler, New York Times bestselling author of Blitzed: Drugs in the Third ReichA groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions off the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II--and how America allowed them to get away with it.In 1946, Günther Quandt--patriarch of Germany's most iconic industrial empire, a dynasty that today controls BMW--was arrested for suspected Nazi collaboration. Quandt claimed that he had been forced to join the party by his archrival, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and the courts acquitted him. But Quandt lied. And his heirs, and those of other Nazi billionaires, have only grown wealthier in the generations since, while their reckoning with this dark past remains incomplete at best. Many of billionaires continue to control swaths of the world economy, owning iconic brands whose products blanket the globe. The brutal legacy of the dynasties that dominated Daimler-Benz, cofounded Allianz, and still control Porsche, Volkswagen, and BMW has remained hidden in plain sight--until now.In this landmark work of investigative journalism, David de Jong reveals the true story of how Germany's wealthiest business dynasties amassed untold money and power by abetting the atrocities of the Third Reich. Using a wealth of previously untapped sources, de Jong shows how these tycoons seized Jewish businesses, procured slave laborers, and ramped up weapons production to equip Hitler's army as Europe burned around them. Most shocking of all, de Jong exposes how America's political expediency enabled these billionaires to get away with their crimes, covering up a bloodstain that defiles the German and global economy to this day."Meticulously researched ...compels us to confront the current-day legacy of these Nazi ties." --Wall Street Journal
$21.99
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