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.

**DON’T MISS THE PIGEON TUNNEL DOCUMENTARY—NOW PLAYING IN SELECT THEATERS AND STREAMING ON AppleTV+The New York Times bestselling memoir from John le Carré, the legendary author of A Legacy of Spies.“Recounted with the storytelling élan of a master raconteur—by turns dramatic and funny, charming, tart and melancholy.”** –Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesFrom his years serving in British Intelligence during the ...

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...

After his father's heart attack in 1984, Peter Godwin began a series of pilgrimages back to Zimbabwe, the land of his birth, from Manhattan, where he now lives. On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downwards into the jaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing, his parents refuse to leave, steadfast in t...

  "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...

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 ...

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...

Remote, forbidding, and volatile, the Caspian Sea long tantalized the world with its vast oil reserves. But outsiders, blocked by the closed Soviet system, couldn’t get to it. Then the Soviet Union collapsed, and a wholesale rush into the region erupted. Along with oilmen, representatives of the world’s leading nations flocked to the Caspian for a share of the thirty billion barrels of proven oil reserves at stake, and a tense geopolitical struggle began. The main players were Moscow and W...

Writings from the old-school Republican and New York Times–bestselling author of How the Hell Did This Happen?: "Hilarious" (Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking).In this collection of pieces, the outrageous political satirist renowned for such classics as Parliament of Whores takes on a wide range of cultural and political issues, and explains the platform of the Republican Party Reptile: "I think our agenda is c...