A devastatingly original look at the world's worst dictators, through the eyes of their personal chefs, by award-winning Polish author Witold Szablowski.What is it like to cook for the most dangerous men in the world?In this darkly funny and fascinating book, Witold Szablowski travels across four continents in search of the personal chefs of five dictators. From the savannahs of Kenya to the faded glamour of Havana, and the bombed-out streets of Baghdad, Sz...

'A spicy and original romp through Russian history' ROBERT SERVICE'Poignant, comical, and in the best sense disturbing' PAUL FREEDMAN, AUTHOR OF TEN RESTAURANTS THAT CHANGED AMERICA'This wickedly delicious tale uncovers the secret, gustatory history of the Kremlin and will leave you begging for seconds' DOUGLAS SMITH, AUTHOR OF RASPUTIN: FAITH, POWER, AND THE TWILIGHT OF THE ROMANOVS

**“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...

**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, ...

***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 history of Russia in the twentieth century unlike any other - from the Russian revolution to the oligarchs of the '90s, via the Holodomor, the siege of Leningrad and Chernobyl.What's Cooking in the Kremlin is a tale of feast and famine told from the kitchen, the narrative of one of the most complex, troubling and fascinating nations on earth.We will travel through Putin's Russia with acclaimed author Witold Szablowski as he learns the story of the chef who was shot alongsi...

**“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...

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 ...

1930s Warsaw was a thoroughly cosmopolitan, even swinging city. Larger than Chicago, it was host to a rich Jewish cultural life. It seemed inconceivable that all this was about to be swept away, but then came the dark events of September 1939. As the Nazi invasion of Poland began, a ragtag army calling itself the Jewish Resistance Force fell into shape around the handsome, quick-witted Isaac Zuckerman.Impossibly daring, the JRF held out until the end of the war, by which time fewer...

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...