**“Amazing stories . . . Intimate portraits of how [these five ruthless leaders] were at home and at the table.” —Lulu Garcia-Navarro, NPR’s Weekend Edition SundayAnthony Bourdain meets Kapuściński in this chilling look from within the kitchen at the appetites of five of the twentieth century's most infamous dictators, by the acclaimed author of Dancing Bears and What’s Cooking in the Kremlin**Now a documentary film! World premiere: 2026 T...

***As heard on NPR’s All Things Considered*“Utterly original.” —The New York Times Book Review“Mixing bold journalism with bolder allegories, Mr. Szabłowski teaches us with witty persistence that we must desire freedom rather than simply expect it.” —Timothy Snyder, New York Times bestselling author of On Tyranny and The Road to UnfreedomAn incisive, humorous, and heartbreaking account of people in formerly Communist coun...

**A New York Times Editors’ Choice“Entertaining . . . A heady mix of propaganda and paranoia . . . [Szabłowski writes] sensitively . . . not just about food but also its terrible absence.” —The New York Times Book Review“Riveting—a delicious odyssey full of history, humor, and jaw-dropping stories. If you want to understand the making of modern Russia, read this book.” —Daniel Stone, bestselling author of The Food ExplorerA high-spirited, ...

**“Riveting—a delicious odyssey full of history, humor, and jaw-dropping stories. If you want to understand the making of modern Russia, read this book.” —Daniel Stone, bestselling author of The Food ExplorerA high-spirited, eye-opening, appetite-whetting culinary travel adventure by an award-winning Polish journalist that tells the story of the last hundred years of Russian power through food**In the gonzo spirit of Anthony Bourdain and Hunter S. Thompson, Witold ...

**“Amazing stories . . . Intimate portraits of how [these five ruthless leaders] were at home and at the table.” —Lulu Garcia-Navarro, NPR’s Weekend Edition SundayAnthony Bourdain meets Kapuściński in this chilling look from within the kitchen at the appetites of five of the twentieth century's most infamous dictators, by the acclaimed author of Dancing Bears and What’s Cooking in the Kremlin**Now a documentary film! World premiere: 2026 T...

For hundreds of years, Bulgarian Gypsies trained bears to dance, welcoming them into their families and taking them on the road to perform. In the early 2000s, with the fall of Communism, they were forced to release the bears into a wildlife refuge. But even today, whenever the bears see a human, they still get up on their hind legs to dance.In the tradition of Ryszard Kapuściński, award-winning Polish journalist, Witold Szabłowski uncovers remarkable stories of people throughout...

At the age of five, Zoltan Zinn-Collis was torn from his home in Slovakia and cast into the deepest horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. In Bergen-Belsen concentration camp he survived the inhuman brutality of the SS guards, the ravages of near starvation, disease, and squalor. All but one of his family died there, his mother losing her life on the very day the British finally marched into the camp. Discovered by a Red Cross nurse who described him as ‘an enchanting scrap of humanity’, Zo...

**The astonishing, never-before-told story of the greatest rescue mission of World War II—when the OSS set out to recover more than 500 airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia.“An amazing, riveting tale of unsung heroes who went above and beyond.”—James Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers**During a bombing campaign over Romanian oil fields, hundreds of American airmen were shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. Local ...

This is the history of a Lie—of a cruel and terrible Lie invented for the purpose of defaming the entire Jewish people. Given out as fiction, by a German anti-Semitic writer, involved in the Waldeck forgery case, who concealed his identity under the pen-name of an Englishman, it was gradually changed and elaborated, and finally groomed as fact. Agents of the Russian secret police department and of the unscrupulous “Black Hundreds” then utilized this fiction as the framework for the “protoc...

An intrepid investigation into the pro-democracy movements that have reshaped the Eastern bloc since 2000, reopening the Kremlin’s wounds from the Cold War.When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed two years later, liberal democracy was supposed to fill the void left by Soviet communism. Poland and Czechoslovakia made the best of reforms, but the citizens of the “Evil Empire” itself saw little of the promised freedom, and more of the same old...

**"This may be the book that changes your life."—Siobhan Fallon, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone“The saint of Staten Island” (People magazine) shares the inspirational story of how she’s changing the world, one child at a time.**Over a decade ago, Elissa Montanti was reeling from the loss of several loved ones when she decided to work past her grief by collecting school supplies for Bosnian children. Then a U.N. ambassador showed her a photo of Ke...

This fascinating book explores the history of tobacco and tobacco culture in Bulgaria from the mid-19th century, when the country became partially and then fully independent from the Ottoman Empire, to the postcommunist present. Neuburger... argues convincingly that smoking and the production of tobacco products played an importantâ•if not the keyâ•part in Bulgaria's political, economic; and cultural modernization during this period.... Summing Up: Highly recommended. >â• Choice