Notes from the Dream House is a "best of" selection of reviews by the celebrated Observer film critic, Philip French. Spanning half the history of cinema, his reviews cover a great variety of films, from westerns and gangsters to art movies and musicals—the hits and the misses, the good, the bad and the ugly. French takes on films as disparate as The Gospel According to St Matthew and Ted, The Remains of the Day and Caligula. His reviews are pe...

At different times in its history Tibet has been renowned for pacifism and martial prowess, enlightenment and cruelty.The Dalai Lama may be the only religious leader who can inspire the devotion of agnostics. Patrick French has been fascinated by Tibet since he was a teenager. He has read its history, agitated for its freedom, and risked arrest to travel through its remote interior. His love and knowledge inform every page of this learned, literate, and impassioned...

In Make Believe, Diana Athill, acclaimed author of Instead of a Letter and Stet, remembers her turbulent friendship with Hakim Jamal, a young black convert to the teachings of Malcolm X, whom she met in London in the late 1960s.Despite a desperately troubled youth, he became an eloquent spokesman for the black underclass, was Jean Seberg's lover and published a book about Malcolm X, before descending into a mania that had him believing he was God. A witne...

A monumental biography of the subcontinent from the award-winning author of The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul.Second only to China in the magnitude of its economic miracle and second to none in its potential to shape the new century, India is fast undergoing one of the most momentous transformations the world has ever seen. In this dazzlingly panoramic book, Patrick French chronicles that epic change, telling human stories to explain a larger nation...

The Gulag—a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners—was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost. Applebaum intimately ...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNERA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKAN NPR BEST BOOKSelected by New York Times' critic Dwight Garner as a Favorite BookA Washington Post Best Political BookA New Republic Best BookA riveting examination of a nation in crisis, from one of the ...

In the last days of old Peking, where anything goes, can a murderer escape justice?Peking in 1937 is a heady mix of privilege and scandal, opulence and opium dens, rumors and superstition. The Japanese are encircling the city, and the discovery of Pamela Werner's body sends a shiver through already nervous Peking. Is it the work of a madman? One of the ruthless Japanese soldiers now surrounding the city? Or perhaps the dreaded fox spirits? With the suspect list gro...

Stunningly dark, hugely intelligent and thoroughly addictive,Ghostman announces the arrival of an exciting and highly distinctive novelist.When a casino robbery in Atlantic City goes horribly awry, the man who orchestrated it is obliged to call in a favor from someone who’s occasionally called Jack. While it’s doubtful that anyone knows his actual name or anything at all about his true identity, or even if he’s still alive, he’s in his mid-thirties and lives completely off...

“Why do women dream of having the life of Angelina Jolie? Because the actress is the embodiment of having it all.”—Harper’s BazaarDespite all the headlines, what do we know about the real Angelina Jolie? Award-winning biographer Andrew Morton, whose books forever changed the world’s perception of Princess Diana and Tom Cruise, finally brings us the inside story of the smiling, glamorous woman whom Forbes named the most powerful celebrity in the world. The daughter...

**A wickedly funny novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Squeeze Me in which the greedy, the corrupt, and the degraders of what’s left of pristine Florida—now, of the Bahamas as well—get their comeuppance.“[A] comedic marvel … [Hiaasen] hasn’t written a novel this funny since Skinny Dip.”—The New York Times**Andrew Yancy—late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff’s office—has a human arm in his...

With unequaled insight and brio, David Brooks, the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bobos in Paradise, has long explored and explained the way we live. Now, with the intellectual curiosity and emotional wisdom that make his columns among the most read in the nation, Brooks turns to the building blocks of human flourishing in a multilayered, profoundly illuminating work grounded in everyday life.This is the story of how success ha...

For the past twenty-five years, no one has been better at revealing secrets than Oprah Winfrey. On what is arguably the most influ¬ential show in television history, she has gotten her guests—often the biggest celebrities in the world—to bare their love lives, explore their painful pasts, admit their transgressions, reveal their pleasures, and explore their demons. In turn, Oprah has repeatedly allowed her audience to share in her own life story, opening up about the sexual abuse in her pa...