Ibn Saud grew to manhood living the harsh traditional life of the desert nomad, a life that had changed little since the days of Abraham. Equipped with immense physical courage, he fought and won, often with weapons and tactics not unlike those employed by the ancient Assyrians, a series of astonishing military victories over a succession of enemies much more powerful than himself. Over the same period, he transformed himself from a minor sheikh into a revered king and elder statesman, cou...

An Improbable Friendship is the dual biography of Israeli Ruth Dayan, now ninety-eight, who was Moshe Dayan’s wife for thirty-seven years, and Palestinian journalist Raymonda Tawil, Yasser Arafat’s mother-in-law, now seventy-four. It reveals for the first time the two women’s surprising and secret forty-year friendship and delivers the story of their extraordinary and turbulent lives growing up in a war-torn country.Based on personal interviews, diaries, and journals drawn...

A personal look at modern American hawking—the appeal, the drama, the obsession—and the pragmatic romantics who practice it by the author of Eagle Dreams.“First the hawk, then the horse, then the hounds, then, and only then, the humble falconer.” —AnonymousThus begins the tale by Stephen Bodio, a lover of birds and nature, of the incredible connection between man and birds of prey. Falconry can be traced back over four thousand years and, ...

Shashi Tharoor delivers an incisive biography of the great secularist who-alongside his spiritual father, Mahatma Gandhi-led the movement for India’s independence from British rule and ushered his newly independent country into the modern world. The man who would one day help topple British rule and become India’s first prime minister started out as a surprisingly unremarkable student. Born into a wealthy, politically influential Indian family in the waning years of the Raj, Jawaharlal Neh...

In 2009, college sophomore and track star Monika Kørra was grabbed by three men on her way home from a party and brutally raped. Within hours of being released, Monika resolved that she would not be a victim – she was going to be a survivor.Monika had traveled from her home in Norway to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, determined to acclimate to life in the States and excited for the opportunity of a full scholarship to do what she loved. As an athlete and ...

They called Meyer Lansky the Godfather of the Godfathers, the Chairman of the Board of the National Crime Syndicate, the Mafia’s banker. They credited him with a personal fortune of $300 million, with having said “We’re bigger than U.S. Steel.” He was portrayed on the screen in The Godfather, Part II as Hyman Roth, dividing up Cuba with his fellow gangsters, and more recently in Boardwalk Empire as himself, played by Anatol Yusef.

1861: as America erupts into civil war, Emma Edmonds is roused to such intense patriotism that she joins the Union army...as a man.Raised on a farm by a father who would have preferred a son, Emma can ride, shoot, and hunt as well as any man. She defies convention to become a soldier, an army nurse, even a spy. Dangers surround her, from enemy fire in battle to the risk of discovery by her friends, which would end in court-martial and disgrace. Always she seeks to reconcil...

In this necessary memoir, a Florida attorney recounts nearly dying from a mystery illness borne in a high-rise office building.After years of prosecuting hard-core criminals, rising legal star Alan Bell took a private sector job in South Florida’s newest skyscraper. Suddenly, he suffered such bizarre medical symptoms, doctors suspected he’d been poisoned by the Mafia. Bell’s rapidly declining health forced him to flee his glamorous Miami life to a sterile “bubble” ...

Founder and sole employee of Mere Accounting, Jeffrey Mere is a solitary man. He has spent his entire life close to home, in the picturesque Scottish town of Pitlochry. After sixty-four years of playing it safe, with retirement looming, Jeffrey resolves to climb Ben Macdhui, Britain's second highest peak. His decision sets off a chain of events that changes his life forever.    He returns from the mountain to find that nothing is as he left it and events begin to spiral o...

In AD 793 Norse warriors struck the English isle of Lindisfarne and laid waste to it. Wave after wave of Norse ‘sea-wolves’ followed in search of plunder, land, or a glorious death in battle. Much of the British Isles fell before their swords, and the continental capitals of Paris and Aachen were sacked in turn. Turning east, they swept down the uncharted rivers of central Europe, captured Kiev and clashed with mighty Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.But there is...

A Curious Man is the marvelously compelling biography of Robert “Believe It or Not” Ripley, the enigmatic cartoonist turned globetrotting millionaire who won international fame by celebrating the world's strangest oddities, and whose outrageous showmanship taught us to believe in the unbelievable.As portrayed by acclaimed biographer Neal Thompson, Ripley’s life is the stuff of a classic American fairy tale. Buck-toothed and cursed by shyness, Ripley turned his sense of bei...

This revolutionary study by the renowned classical philologist reveals the interplay of Greek and Indian thought at the roots of Western culture.Thomas C. McEvilley’s magisterial work demonstrates that Eastern and Western civilizations have not always had separate, autonomous metaphysical schemes, but have mutually influenced each other over a long period of time. Examining ancient trade routes, imperialist movements, and migration currents, he shows how some of to...