“[An] unforgettable memoir” (Boston Globe) that provides a window into the wildly divergent nations that once comprised the Soviet Union, from a former NPR reporterNot with a bang, but with a quiet, ten-minute address on Christmas Day, 1991: this is how the Soviet Union met its end. But in the wake of that one deceptively calm moment, conflict and violence soon followed. Some of the emergent new countries began to shed totalitarianism while other sought to...

Robert Littell is the undisputed master of American spy fiction, hailed for his profound grasp of the world of international espionage. His previous novel, The Company, an international bestseller, was praised as "one of the best spy novels ever written" (Chicago Tribune). For his new novel, Legends, Littell focuses on the life of one great agent caught in a "wilderness of mirrors" where both remembering and forgetting his past are deadly options. Martin Odum is a CIA field agent turned pr...

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author, an unflinching and close-up look at war: its intoxicating allure, its gruesome realities, and the grandeur it exposes about humanity.**“A brilliant, thoughtful, timely, and unsettling book.” —**New York TimesFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for NonfictionGeneral George S. Patton famously said, "Compared to war all other form...

Prize-winning author Michael J. Totten returns with a masterpiece of travel writing and history in this journey through thirteen nations—all but two formerly communist—just beyond the edge of the West where few casual travelers venture. His work as an independent foreign correspondent takes him deep into the field beyond the sensational headlines, from his hilariously miserable road trip through the Middle East with his best friend to Iraq, and around Eastern Europe to the Wild West of Alb...

A True Portrait of One of the World's Most Chaotic and Beautiful Regions That Explains Why Violence Has Always Occurred There--And Why It May Continue For Years To ComeThe vast and mountainous area that makes up the Balkans is rife with discord, both cultural and topographical. And, as Simon Winchester superbly demonstrates in this intimate portrait of the region, much of the political strife of the past century can be traced to its inherent contrasts. With the aid...

Logavina Street was a microcosm of Sarajevo, a six-block-long history lesson. For four centuries, it existed as a quiet residential area in a charming city long known for its ethnic and religious tolerance. On this street of 240 families, Muslims and Christians, Serbs and Croats lived easily together, unified by their common identity as Sarajevans. Then the war tore it all apart.As she did in her groundbreaking work about North Korea, Nothing to Envy, award-winning journal...

Russia is dying from within. Oligarchs and oil barons may still dominate international news coverage, but their prosperity masks a deep-rooted demographic tragedy. Faced with staggering population decline-and near-certain economic collapse-driven by toxic levels of alcohol abuse, Russia is also battling a deeper sickness: a spiritual one, born out of the country’s long totalitarian experiment.In The Last Man in Russia, award-winning journalist Oliver Bullough uses the tale...

Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeOne of the Best Books of the Year: The New York TimesFrom the editor of The New Yorker: a riveting account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which has become the standard book on the subject. Lenin’s Tomb combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism. Remnick takes us through the tumultuous 75-year period of Communist rule le...

What happens when a father asks his son to lie for the greater good?Growing up, Scott C. Johnson always suspected that his father was different. Only as a teenager did he discover the truth: his father was a spy, one of the CIA’s most trusted officers. At first the secret was thrilling. But over time Scott began to have doubts. How could a man so rigorously trained to deceive and manipulate simply turn off those skills at home? His father had been living a double life for so long t...

The highs and lows of being a reporter in some of the strangest, most dysfunctional places on Earth.Award-winning foreign correspondent Eric Campbell has been stoned by fundamentalists, captured by US Special Forces, arrested in Serbia and threatened with expulsion from China. He's negotiated dating rituals in Moscow, shared a house with a charismatic mercenary in Kabul and taken up smoking at gunpoint in Kosovo. In 2003 in Iraq he was injured in a suicide bombing which killed his c...

“Fascinating….A highly readable history of the conflict.” —New York Times Book ReviewIn The Great Gamble, a groundbreaking account of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, former NPR Moscow correspondent Gregory Feifer vividly depicts the war that contributed greatly to the demise of the USSR, and that offers striking lessons for the 21st century, as well. Told from the perspective of the Russians who fought it, The Great Gamble offers valuable insight into...

“A riveting look at today’s Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin.”—The Kingston ObserverIn Putin’s Labyrinth, acclaimed journalist Steve LeVine, who lived inand reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade, provides a gripping account of modern Russia. In a penetrating narrative that recounts the lives and deaths of six Russians, LeVine portrays the growth of a “culture of death”—from targeted assassinations of the state’s...