Hard work, lots of reading, factory jobs took me from a poor, uneducated family , through BS and MA, then into intelligence work, then 29 years of postings at Embassies in Africa, Europe and Australia. Short stories illuminate poor family background, great curiosity and wide reading, work in intelligence and at posts abroad. Bit of history frames some stories including social, military, political, racial conflicts/conditions in countries abroad. Some notes on terrorism, Communism, spying.

It is 1999 and Russia is on the edge of total implosion. Social and moral order has collapsed and what small semblance of control there is, is being imposed by mafia-like criminal gangs. While public opinion in the West is largely indifferent, the political analysts are less sanguine - Russian meltdown will make the disintegration of the Balkans look like the collapse of a cup-cake. Out of the chaos, however, a single charismatic voice is starting to be heard - that of Igor Komarov, a visi...

The breathtaking memoir by a member of Nicky’s family,” a group of 669 Czechoslovakian children who escaped the Holocaust through Sir Nicholas Winton’s Kindertransport project, My Train to Freedom relates the trials and achievements of award-winning humanitarian and former Episcopal priest, Ivan Backer.As Backer recounts in his memoir, in May of 1939 as a ten-year-old Jewish boy, he fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia for the United Kingdom aboard one of the Kindertransport...

Peter Godwin, an award-winning writer, is on assignment in Zululand when he is summoned by his mother to Zimbabwe, his birthplace. His father is seriously ill; she fears he is dying. Godwin finds his country, once a post-colonial success story, descending into a vortex of violence and racial hatred.His father recovers, but over the next few years Godwin travels regularly between his family life in Manhattan and the increasing chaos of Zimbabwe, with its rampant inflation and land s...

  "Peter Worthington's journey through history has been Homeric. He writes the way journalists were meant to write, with immediacy, clarity and courage." ~ William F. Buckley Jr. Outspoken and colourful, legendary Canadian journalist Peter Worthington stirred controversy for nearly 60 years until his death in May, 2013. In this absorbing account of his career as a journalist, newspaper editor, and political activist, Worthington chal...

In the world's most dangerous trouble spots, a small band of men risk their lives to fly in desperately needed aid. But they are not heroes. Their giant ex-Soviet cargo planes are also riddled with secret compartments, which they fill with drugs, guns, money or people. They deliver anywhere, and they rtake their cut. But they pay a heavy price, many losing their lives to gun-toting pirates, terrorists, hostile state forces, jealous competitors and alcohol.In Outlaws Inc. M...

A "hair-raisingly hilarious" journey through danger zones from Belfast to Gaza, by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author ( Vanity Fair)."Tired of making bad jokes" and believing that "the world outside seemed a much worse joke than anything I could conjure," journalist and political satirist P. J. O'Rourke decided to traverse the globe on a fun-finding mission, investigating the way of life in the most desperate places on the planet, including ...

In MY HEROES the 'world's greatest living explorer' (Guinness Book of Records), writes about the people who have inspired him - from explorers to policemen, families to freedom fighters.Wherever in the world Ranulph gives one of his lectures or motivational speeches, someone always asks: 'Who inspired you to do all the crazy things you've done?' For the first time he explores this idea by revealing his own personal heroes and what lessons their actions may...

Conor O’Clery has been a witness to some of the major world events of the last thirty years, including the Troubles in Northern Ireland; the ending of the Cold War as viewed from Moscow; the reluctant opening up of China to the West; the Clinton years in the White House; and the 9/11 attacks. As foreign correspondent for The Irish Times, he was the first western journalist to open an office in Moscow at the height of Gorbachev’s glasnost, and he subsequently acted as correspondent from Was...

A dramatic account of the Cold War's turning point, the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Iceland, by a key player in that weekend's world-changing events.In October 1986, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met for a forty-eight-hour summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. Planned as a short gathering to outline future talks, the meeting quickly turned to major international issues, including the Strategic Defensive Initiative ("Star Wars") and the possibility of eliminating a...

From the award-winning chief White House correspondent for U.S. News & World Report comes the definitive history of Air Force One.From FDR's prop-driven Pan Am to the glimmering blue and white jumbo 747 on which George W. Bush travels, the president's plane has captured the public's awe and imagination, and is recognized around the world as a symbol of American power. In this unique book, Kenneth Walsh looks at the decisions that our last 12 presidents mad...

An essential collection of career-spanning writings by the political satirist and #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Parliament of Whores.From his early pieces for the National Lampoon, through his classic reporting as Rolling Stone's International Affairs editor in the 1980s and 1990s, and his brilliant, inimitable political journalism and analysis, P. J. O'Rourke has been entertaining and provoking readers with high octane...