'Ukraine is not a brothel!' This was the first cry of rage uttered by Femen during Euro 2012.Bare-breasted and crowned with flowers, perched on their high heels, Femen transform their bodies into instruments of political expression through slogans and drawings flaunted on their skin. Humour, drama, courage and shock tactics are their weapons.Since 2008, this 'gang of four' – Inna, Sasha, Oksana and Anna – has been developing a spectacular, radical, new feminism. First in Uk...

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...

One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the YearFrom the author of Either/Or and The Idiot, Elif Batuman’s The Possessed presents the true but unlikely stories of lives devoted—Absurdly! Melancholically! Beautifully!—to the Russian Classics.No one who read Batuman's first article (in the journal n+1) will ever forget it. "Babel in California" told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Sta...

**WINNER OF THE 2026 PULITZER PRIZE FOR OPINION WRITINGWINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTIONWINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD**The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy.Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces t...

From the winner of the National Book Award and the National Books Critics’ Circle Award—and one of the most original thinkers of our time—“Andrew Solomon’s magisterial Far and Away collects a quarter-century of soul-shaking essays” (Vanity Fair). Travel narrative and global cultures come alive in this extraordinary collection.Far and Away chronicles Andrew Solomon’s writings about places undergoing seismic shifts—political upheaval, cultu...

A work of memoir, history, and a call to action, the CBC Massey Lectures by internationally renowned UN prosecutor and scholar Payam Akhavan is a powerful and essential work on the major human rights struggles of our times.Renowned UN prosecutor and human rights scholar Payam Akhavan has encountered the grim realities of contemporary genocide throughout his life and career. He argues that deceptive utopias, political cynicism, and public apathy have given rise to m...

Chris Hedges on the most taboo topics in America, with David Talbot.The War on Terror is a profitable crusade against convenient enemies. Muslim rage” is an understandable response to US state terror. Rising oligarchy in America has made democracy a sham and turned the electoral process into an increasingly absurd circus. Police violence against minorities is part of a systematic effort to crush social discontent. Proliferating violence against women’s health clin...

**“Sweeping and replete with alluring detail . . . [a] haunting yet ultimately optimistic examination of the human condition as found in Romania.”—Alison Smale, The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the New York Times bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan, named one of the world’s Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, comes a riveting journey through one of Europe’s frontier countries—and a potent examination of the forces that will determine Eur...

Russia is dying from within. Oligarchs and oil barons may still dominate international news coverage, but their prosperity masks a deep-rooted demographic tragedy. Faced with staggering population decline-and near-certain economic collapse-driven by toxic levels of alcohol abuse, Russia is also battling a deeper sickness: a spiritual one, born out of the country’s long totalitarian experiment.In The Last Man in Russia, award-winning journalist Oliver Bullough uses the tale...

Finalist for the 2015 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism Longlisted for the Lionel Gelber Award for the Best Non-Fiction book in the world on Foreign Affairs An Economist Book of the Year, 2014 A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice "One of the best analyses of the impact of Tiananmen throughout China in the years since 1989." --The New York Times Book Review On June 4, 1989, People's Liberation Army soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians in Beijing,...

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, former Soviet republic Ukraine has struggled against its giant neighbor to the north”-Russia- to maintain its sovereignty. In early 2014 tensions turned to conflict as Vladimir Putin, determined to keep Ukraine from forging stronger ties with the West, seized Crimea and fomented conflict in eastern Ukraine. In the latest Brookings essay, Chrystia Freeland, a former Ukrainian-based reporter with strong family ties to the country, offers a pers...

After Hitler brought Ante Pavelic to power in the First Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state created on April 10th, 1941, Pavelic created 34 “summary” courts throughout Croatia that June. He empowered every Croatian to arrest and kill Serbians without being charged with a crime. Any Croat could sit on these “courts,” including former convicts who issued arrest warrants and passed out death sentences. Mobile court units roamed the countryside in which Serbs were arrested, tried, con...