"Absolutely terrifying." -- Benjamin Kerstein, author of The ForsakenFrom prize-winning author and award-winning journalist Michael J. Totten comes TAKEN:A writer is ripped from his home and hauled bound and gagged to a remote house in the wilderness.Four ruthless captors with overseas ties and a plan here at home—the frighteningly rational leader of a homegrown Al Qaeda terrorist cell; a torturer who learned his trade in the dungeons of Egypt; and two henchmen, one...

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...

Prize-winning author Michael J. Totten’s gripping first-person narratives from the war zones, police states, and revolutionary capitals of the Middle East and North Africa paint a vivid picture of peoples and nations at war with themselves, each other, and—sometimes—with the rest of the world.His journeys take him from Libya under the gruesome rule of Muammar Qaddafi to Egypt before, during and after the Arab Spring; from the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights in Syria on the eve of ...

In the Wake of the Surge is a gripping first-person narrative that tells the story of the Kurds, the Arabs, and the Americans in Iraq during one of the most violent and wrenching periods in that country's history. Award-winning foreign correspondent Michael J. Totten visited Iraq seven times between 2005 and 2009, first as a "unilateral" freelance journalist without a gun in the Kurdish autonomous region, and then as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in Baghdad, Sadr...

The Road to Fatima Gate is a first-person narrative account of revolution, terrorism, and war during history’s violent return to Lebanon after fifteen years of quiet. Michael J. Totten’s version of events in one of the most volatile countries in the world’s most volatile region is one part war correspondence, one part memoir, and one part road movie.He sets up camp in a tent city built in downtown Beirut by anti-Syrian dissidents, is bullied and menaced by Hezbollah’s supp...

Prize-winning author and award-winning foreign correspondent Michael J. Totten returns with a riveting tour of some of the worst places on earth in the early 21st century.From crumbling Havana, Cuba—still stubbornly communist decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall—to a comparatively upscale Hanoi, Vietnam, still struggling to free itself from Chinese-style authoritarian rule.From a nightmarish Libya under the deranged Moammar Qaddafi, to an exhausted, polarized and incre...

This vivid New York Times bestseller about 1950s America from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist is "an engrossing sail across a pivotal decade" ( Time ).Joe McCarthy. Marilyn Monroe. The H-bomb. Ozzie and Harriet. Elvis. Civil rights. It's undeniable: The fifties were a defining decade for America, complete with sweeping cultural change and political upheaval. This decade is...

The mysterious disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in New Guinea in 1961 has kept the world and his powerful, influential family guessing for years. Now, Carl Hoffman uncovers startling new evidence that finally tells the full, astonishing story.Despite exhaustive searches, no trace of Rockefeller was ever found. Soon after his disappearance, rumors surfaced that he'd been killed and ceremonially eaten by the local Asmat—a native tribe of warriors whose complex cu...

“A mesmerizing, blood-chilling book . . . The contrast between innocent childhood experience, and the awful understanding of that experience that came with time, is enough to make you weep"– Los Angeles TimesGöring. Hess. Mengele. Dönitz. Names that conjure up dark memories of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. They were the architects of the Third Reich. And they were fathers. Gerald Posner convinced eleven sons and daughters of Hitler’s inner circle to break...

Can an epic adventure succeed without a hero? Andra Watkins needs a wingman to help her become the first living person to walk the historic 444-mile Natchez Trace as the pioneers did. Fifteen miles of rugged highway each day for thirty-four days.After striking-out with everyone in her life, she settles upon her disinterested eighty-year-old father. And his gas. The sleep apnea machine and self-scratching. Sharing a bathroom with a man whose gut obliterates his aim. Her father is ev...

“[A] gossipy, but surprisingly deep, look at the women who help and sometimes overshadow their powerful husbands.” — USA TodayFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the groundbreaking backstairs look at the White House, The Residence, comes an intimate, news-making group biography of the true modern power brokers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: the First Ladies, from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama.One of the most underestimated—and...

The Nobel Prize–winner shares "a masterful journey through humankind's scientific coming-of-age" from the Greeks to modern times (Brian Greene).In this rich, irreverent, and compelling history, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg takes us across centuries of human striving to unravel the mysteries of the world. This sweeping saga ranges from ancient Miletus to medieval Baghdad and Oxford, from Plato's Academy and the Museum of Alexandria to the cathedral s...