Moncada is one of the first words young Cuban biologist Felipe Triana learned as he was growing up. He was taught to say the word, and he was told that it was not just for him, but for every Cuban. Felipe, like many of the other young Cubans, has known nothing but the fifty-year-old revolution which still controls their lives but offers them less and less. An unconventional diplomatic story, Moncada follows the lives of Felipe and six other ordinary Cubans in the week leading up to the maj...

Making Diplomacy Work: Intelligent Innovation for the Modern World is a critical and comprehensive survey of how diplomacy works. While most discussions of diplomatic reform stop short of proposing concrete ideas to make diplomacy work better, this text suggests doable initiatives that could make diplomacy more versatile, more attuned to modern realities, and more capable of confronting the shared problems that no state can solve on its own. It takes a fresh look at the pr...

In this handbook, a group of 40 scholars and practitioners from some 30 countries takes a critical look at the contemporary practice of diplomacy. Many assume diplomacy evolves naturally, and that state- and non-state actors are powerless to make significant changes. But Diplomacy’s methods, its key institutions and conventions were agreed more than six decades ago. None take account of the opportunities and vulnerabilities presented by the Internet. Diplomacy is now a neglected global iss...

#11 in the New York Times '100 Best Books of the 21st Century'Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J.R.R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukú - the curse that has haunted his family for generations. With dazzling energy and insight Díaz immerses us in t...

This "extraordinary" novel of one man's border crossing reveals "a human history of sorrow and suffering, all of it beginning with the thirst to be free" (NPR).Héctor is trapped. The water truck, sealed to hide its human cargo, has broken down. The coyotes have taken all the passengers' money for a mechanic and have not returned.Héctor finds a name in his friend César's phone: AnniMac. A name with an American number. He must reach her, both for rescue and t...

THE POPULAR SERIES NARCOS CAPTURES ONLY HALF THE TRUTH. HERE, AT LAST, IS THE FULL STORY.THE INTERNATIONAL BEST SELLER!Until now, we believed that everything had been said about the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the most infamous drug kingpin of all time, but these versions have always been told from the outside, never from the intimacy of his own home.More than two decades after the full-fledged manhunt finally caught up with the king of co...

Ciudad Juarez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad.In Murder City, Charles Bowden-one of the few journalists who spent extended periods of time in Juarez-has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegrates. Interweaving stories of its inhabitants-a beauty queen ...

Named one of the best true crime books of all time by TimeIn the last six years, more than eighty thousand people have been killed in the Mexican drug war, and drug trafficking there is a multibillion-dollar business. In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refuses to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. A paramilitary gr...

The U.S. Treasury Department called Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman "the world's most powerful drug trafficker."Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has appeared on Forbes list of the world's richest people, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion.While, El Chapo has a $7 million dollar bounty on his head after a prison escape in 2001, he's received a number of accolades. His story is compelling to say the least.Within a short and concentrated read you'll learn abo...

Granted unprecedented access to travel throughout the country, this lively travelogue presents us with rare insight into one of the world's only Communist countries."Havana knew me by my shoes," begins Tom Miller's lively and entertaining account of his sojourn for more than eight months traveling through Cuba, mixing with its literati and black marketers, its cane cutters and cigar rollers. Its best-known personalities and ordinary citizens talk to him about the U...

Set amidst the political turbulence and social unrest of contemporary Mexico City, An Easy Thing introduces English-speaking readers to Taibo's human and world-weary protagonist, independent detective Hector Belascoaran Shayne. In this debut outing, our hero, who, incidentally, possesses an insatiable appetite for Coca Cola and cigarettes, tackles three cases simultaneously: a killing in a corrupt factory; the deadly threats against a former porn starlet's teenage daughter; and, strangely,...

Jack Searle is an American widower, bringing up his two stepdaughters Lidia and Marina alone in the border town of Laredo after losing his wife to cancer.Jack often takes the girls to visit their Mexican family over the border in Nuevo Laredo. Marina, the elder sister, persuades him to let her go there without him one night, to attend a concert with her cousin Patricia. Jack wants to say no - Nuevo Laredo is a very dangerous city, controlled by drug cartels and devastated by violen...