In this newest installment of the Battlefields & Blessings series, Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq & Afghanistan is a 365 day collection of inspiring stories of courage perseverance and faith based on first-hand accounts of more than seventy individuals who have served in the war. Through multiple, never-before-told stories, readers will uncover the personal challenges of the battlefield. In Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq & Afghanistan you will discover the experiences and perspectives of deployed soldiers, chaplains, military wives and parents, organizers of humanitarian efforts, and veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

It has won the prestigious 2010 Gold Medal Award from the MWSA (Military’s Writers Society of America) and the 2010 Silver Medal Award from the Branson Stars and Flags Book Award.

Through multiple, never-before-told stories, readers will uncover the personal challenges of the battlefield. In Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq & Afghanistan you’ll find the experiences and perspectives of deployed soldiers, chaplains, military wives and parents, organizers of humanitarian efforts, veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, loved ones of fallen soldiers, and more. You'll meet:

• The crew member on a Marine transport vessel combating a dust storm during the invasion.

• A major overcoming bureaucratic challenges to stand up the Iraq Air Force.

• A three-star general motivating his team to build a stronger Iraq through reconstruction projects.

• The mother of a Navy SEAL who herself demonstrated tremendous courage under fire after her son’s death.

• And a congressman heralding the founding principles of our nation, ones he passed along to his son who served in Iraq.

Readers will come away appreciating those who have lived loudly for liberty.

In this newest installment of the Battlefields & Blessings series, Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq & Afghanistan is a 365 day collection of inspiring stories of courage perseverance and faith based on first-hand accounts of more than seventy individuals who have served in the war. Through multiple, never-before-told stories, readers will uncover the personal challenges of the battlefield. In Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq & Afghanistan you will discover the experiences and perspectives of deployed soldiers, chaplains, military wives and parents, organizers of humanitarian efforts, and veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

It has won the prestigious 2010 Gold Medal Award from the MWSA (Military’s Writers Society of America) and the 2010 Silver Medal Award from the Branson Stars and Flags Book Award.

Through multiple, never-before-told stories, readers will uncover the personal challenges of the battlefield. In Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq & Afghanistan you’ll find the experiences and perspectives of deployed soldiers, chaplains, military wives and parents, organizers of humanitarian efforts, veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, loved ones of fallen soldiers, and more. You'll meet:

• The crew member on a Marine transport vessel combating a dust storm during the invasion.

• A major overcoming bureaucratic challenges to stand up the Iraq Air Force.

• A three-star general motivating his team to build a stronger Iraq through reconstruction projects.

• The mother of a Navy SEAL who herself demonstrated tremendous courage under fire after her son’s death.

• And a congressman heralding the founding principles of our nation, ones he passed along to his son who served in Iraq.

Readers will come away appreciating those who have lived loudly for liberty.

Книга посвящена Сиду Барретту, отцу-основателю легендарной группы Pink Floyd

Библия панка: культовая книга о культовой группе, во многом определившей музыкальный профиль последней четверти века.

Эта книга — близкая к тому, как если бы сами Пистолеты рассказали свою историю — впервые вышла в свет в разгар панк-взрыва. Авторы имели уникальный и постоянный доступ к группе, к семьям участников и их друзьям, к Малькольму Макларену и всем людям его оффиса Глиттербест. Книга собрала бредовые рецензии, была переведена на несколько языков и стала частью легенды Секс Пистолз.

This series of books is about a world on fire.

The carefully chosen volumes in the Bantam War Book Series cover the full dramatic sweep of World War II. Many are eyewitness accounts by the men who fought in a global conflict as the world’s future hung in the balance. Fighter pilots, tank commanders and infantry captains, among many others, recount exploits of individual courage They present vivid portraits of brave men, true stories of gallantry, moving sagas of survival and stark tragedies of untimely death.

In 1933 Nazi Germany marched to become an empire that was to last a thousand years. In only twelve years that empire was destroyed, and ever since, the country has been bisected by her conquerors. Italy relinquished her colonial lands, as did Japan. These were the losers. The winners also lost the empires they had so painfully seized over the centuries. And one, Russia, lost over twenty million dead.

Those wartime 1940s were a simple, even a hopeful time. Hats came in only two colors, white and black, and after an initial battering the Allied nations started on a long and laborious march toward victory. It was a time when sane men believed the world would evolve into a decent place, but, as with all futures, there was no one then who could really forecast the world that we know now.

There are many ways to think about war. It has always been hard to understand the motivations and braveries of Axis soldiers fighting to enslave and dominate their neighbors. Yet it is impossible to know the hammer without the anvil, and to comprehend ourselves we must know the people we once fought against.

Through these books we can discover what it was like to take part in the war that was a final experience for nearly fifty million human beings. In so doing we may discover the strength to make a world as good as the one contained in those dreams and aspirations once believed by heroic men. We must understand our past as an honor to those dead who can no longer choose. They exchanged their lives in a hope for this future that we now inhabit. Though the fight took place many years ago, each of us remains as a living part of it.

This low-priced Bantam Book has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was printed from new plates. It contains the complete text of the original hard-cover edition.

NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

Публичные политики издают сочинения о себе, любимых, двух видов: автобиографические, написанные в жанре жития святых, и производственные, написанные в жанре доноса на конкурентов и противников, в которых рассказывается о скрытых механизмах борьбы за власть. «SEX в большой политике» – ни первое, ни второе. Достоинство книги Ирины Хакамады не в этом. А в том, что ее интересно читать. И тем, кто не равнодушен к политике, и тем, кому до нее нет никакого дела. Есть такие женщины – со сказочным везением. Они и из декабрьского леса, вместо того, чтобы послушно замерзнуть и быть съеденными, нахально возвращаются с подснежниками, с женихом, с сундуком с приданым и почетным эскортом из семи богатырей. Куда бы они ни свернули, судьба им тут же стелет под ноги ковровую дорожку. Они не карабкаются по карьерной лестнице, расплачиваясь за подъем фригидностью, одышкой и мизантропией. К их услугам – скоростные хрустальные лифты: сразу – вжик! – и уже наверху. Вчера она – бизнесмен, сегодня – депутат, завтра – министр, и всегда – счастливая мать и жена. Глядя на их изображение на экране или в журнале и сравнивая его со своим собственным отражением в зеркале, хочется подкараулить одну из них в темном переулке и ласково, но убедительно спросить: как ей это все удается? Ирину Хакамаду никто не подкарауливал. Она добровольно села и написала эту книгу, в которой поделилась всем, чем могла поделиться.

Since he was a small boy, Mosab Hassan Yousef has had an inside view of the deadly terrorist group Hamas. The oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding member of Hamas and its most popular leader, young Mosab assisted his father for years in his political activities while being groomed to assume his legacy, politics, status… and power. But everything changed when Mosab turned away from terror and violence, and embraced instead the teachings of another famous Middle East leader.

In Son of Hamas, Mosab Yousef—now called “Joseph”—reveals new information about the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization and unveils the truth about his own role, his agonizing separation from family and homeland, the dangerous decision to make his newfound faith public, and his belief that the Christian mandate to “love your enemies” is the only way to peace in the Middle East.

Review

“Son of Hamas, written by Mosab Hassan Yousef and journalist Ron Brackin, is… a must-read book and one can only hope it becomes the basis of a major Hollywood motion picture.”

—Joel Rosenberg

Amazon

“…a fascinating book. I couldn’t put it down.”

Sean Hannity — Fox News’ Hannity

“…a book more incendiary than any roadside IED…”

—GQ Magazine

"…intriguingly detailed…”

—Newsweek

“…one of the most extraordinary spy stories in history…”

David Asman, America’s Nightly Scoreboard, Fox Business Network

“…a Le Carréesque thriller wrapped in a spiritual coming-of-age story…”

(Matthew Kaminski)

“…reads with the page-turning ease of a great thriller.”

(Claudia Rosett)

The outrageous exploits of one of this century’s greatest scientific minds and a legendary American original. In this phenomenal national bestseller, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman recounts in his inimitable voice his adventures trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums and much else of an eyebrow-raising and hilarious nature. A New York Times bestseller; more than 500,000 copies sold.

Чтобы написать эту книгу, Лене Лениной - автору пятнадцати книг на русском и французском языках, из которых три бестселлера, пришлось познакомиться со звездами мировой величины и не только познакомится, но и попасть к ним домой. Ведь всем хочется знать, каковы звезды в жизни, с кем они спят, где и как живут, что едят и какого цвета у них туалетная бумага. Итак, герои этой книги: Пьер Ришар, Жерар Депардье, Клод Лелуш, Соня Рикель, Кристофер Ламберт, Патрисия Каас, Роберто Кавалли, Дима Билан, Гарик Мартиросян, «Гости из будущего», Игорь Николаев и другие.

“Wonderfully frank.”

(Entertainment Weekly)

“Entertaining and educational… a crash course for aspiring rock gods.”

(Spin magazine)

From one of the greatest rock guitarists of our era comes a memoir that redefines sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll

He was born in England but reared in L.A., surrounded by the leading artists of the day amidst the vibrant hotbed of music and culture that was the early seventies. Slash spent his adolescence on the streets of Hollywood, discovering drugs, drinking, rock music, and girls, all while achieving notable status as a BMX rider. But everything changed in his world the day he first held the beat-up one-string guitar his grandmother had discarded in a closet.

The instrument became his voice and it triggered a lifelong passion that made everything else irrelevant. As soon as he could string chords and a solo together, Slash wanted to be in a band and sought out friends with similar interests. His closest friend, Steven Adler, proved to be a conspirator for the long haul. As hairmetal bands exploded onto the L.A. scene and topped the charts, Slash sought his niche and a band that suited his raw and gritty sensibility.

He found salvation in the form of four young men of equal mind: Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler, and Duff McKagan. Together they became Guns N’ Roses, one of the greatest rock ’n’ roll bands of all time. Dirty, volatile, and as authentic as the streets that weaned them, they fought their way to the top with groundbreaking albums such as the iconic Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion I and II.

Here, for the first time ever, Slash tells the tale that has yet to be told from the inside: how the band came together, how they wrote the music that defined an era, how they survived insane, never-ending tours, how they survived themselves, and, ultimately, how it all fell apart. This is a window onto the world of the notoriously private guitarist and a seat on the roller-coaster ride that was one of history’s greatest rock ’n’ roll machines, always on the edge of self-destruction, even at the pinnacle of its success. This is a candid recollection and reflection of Slash’s friendships past and present, from easygoing Izzy to ever-steady Duff to wild-child Steven and complicated Axl.

It is also an intensely personal account of struggle and triumph: as Guns N’ Roses journeyed to the top, Slash battled his demons, escaping the overwhelming reality with women, heroin, coke, crack, vodka, and whatever else came along.

He survived it all: lawsuits, rehab, riots, notoriety, debauchery, and destruction, and ultimately found his creative evolution. From Slash’s Snakepit to his current band, the massively successful Velvet Revolver, Slash found an even keel by sticking to his guns.

Slash is everything the man, the myth, the legend, inspires: it’s funny, honest, inspiring, jaw-dropping… and, in a word, excessive.

This widely acclaimed biography provides a vivid and riveting account of Stalin and his courtiers—killers, fanatics, women, and children—during the terrifying decades of his supreme power. In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research and narrative plan, Simon Sebag Montefiore gives us the everyday details of a monstrous life.

We see Stalin playing his deadly game of power and paranoia at debauched dinners at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin. We witness first-hand how the dictator and his magnates carried out the Great Terror and the war against the Nazis, and how their families lived in this secret world of fear, betrayal, murder, and sexual degeneracy. Montefiore gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalin’s dictatorship, and a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal.

* * *

Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains one of the creators of our world. The scale of his crimes has made him, along with Hitler, the very personification of evil. Yet while we know much about Hitler, Stalin and his regime remain mysterious. Now, in this enthralling history of Stalin’s imperial court, the fear and betrayal, privilege and debauchery, family life and murderous brutality are brought blazingly to life.

Who was the boy from Georgia who rose to rule the Empire of the Tsars? Who were his Himmler, Göring, Goebbels? How did these grandees rule? How did the “top ten” families live? Exploring every aspect of this supreme politician, from his doomed marriage and mistresses, and his obsession with film, music and literature, to his identification with the Tsars, Simon Sebag Montefiore unveils a less enigmatic, more intimate Stalin, no less brutal but more human, and always astonishing.

Stalin organised the deadly but informal game of power amongst his courtiers at dinners, dances, and singsongs at Black Sea villas and Kremlin apartments: a secret, but strangely cosy world with a dynamic, colourful cast of killers, fanatics, degenerates and adventurers. From the murderous bisexual dwarf Yezhov to the depraved but gifted Beria, each had their role: during the second world war, Stalin played the statesman with Churchill and Roosevelt aided by Molotov while, with Marshal Zhukov, he became the triumphant warlord. They lived on ice, killing others to stay alive, sleeping with pistols under their pillows; their wives murdered on Stalin’s whim, their children living by a code of lies. Yet they kept their quasi-religious faith in the Bolshevism that justified so much death.

Based on a wealth of new materials from Stalin’s archives, freshly opened in 2000, interviews with witnesses and massive research from Moscow to the Black Sea, this is a sensitive but damning portrait of the Genghis Khan of our epoch.

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing offlimits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

Nothing prepares a man for war and Private Charles Waite, of the Queen’s Royal Regiment, was ill-prepared when his convoy took a wrong turning near Abbeville and met 400 German soldiers and half a dozen tanks. “The day I was captured, I had a rifle but no ammunition.” He lost his freedom that day in may 1940 and didn’t regain it until April 1945 when he was rescued by Americans near Berlin, having walked 1,600 kms from East Prussia.

Silent for seventy years, Charles writes about his five lost years: the terrible things he saw and suffered; his forced work in a stone quarry and on farms; his period in solitary confinement for sabotage; and his long journey home in one of the worst winters on record, across the frozen river Elbe, to Berlin and liberation. His story is also about friendship, of physical and mental resilience and of compassion for everyone who suffered.

Part of that story includes the terrible Long March, or Black March, when 80,000 British POWs were forced to trek through a vicious winter westwards across Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany as the Soviets approached. Thousands died. There are simply no memoirs of that terrible trek—except this one.

With bullets flying, wounded soldiers scream out in pain as the Chinook comes in to land in one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan. At the machine’s controls is one man and if he doesn’t stay calm then everyone could die.

That man is Flt Lt Alex ‘Frenchie’ Duncan and he’s been involved in some of the most daring and dangerous missions undertaken by the Chinook force in Afghanistan. In this book he recounts his experiences of life under fire in the dust, heat and bullets of an active war zone.

At 99ft long, the Chinook is a big and valuable target to the Taliban, who will stop at nothing to bring one down. And yet Frenchie and his crew risk everything because they know that the troops on the front line are relying on them. Sweating the Metal is the true story of the raw determination and courage of men on the front line – and it’s time for their story to be told.

“Who am I? An alcoholic and a tramp. But I am no white raven. Our alcoholics outnumber the populations of France and Spain combined. And that’s only the men. If you count women you have to add on all Scandinavia and throw in Monaco for good measure.”

For forty years Ivan Petrov careered, stumbled, staggered and rampaged all over the vast Soviet empire. Homeless (an illegal condition in the communist utopia), in and out of prison camps, almost always drunk, and with a gift for hilariously sending up the tragic absurdities of Soviet life, Ivan was a real-life Svejk. This is his unforgettable story, as told to Caroline Walton just before his death.

The text is complemented by twelve original illustrations by Natalia Vetrova.

This heartfelt and revealing account of Paul Theroux's thirty-year friendship with the legendary V. S. Naipaul is an intimate record of a literary mentorship that traces the growth of both writers' careers and explores the unique effect each had on the other. Built around exotic landscapes, anecdotes that are revealing, humorous, and melancholy, and three decades of mutual history, this is a personal account of how one develops as a writer and how a friendship waxes and wanes between two men who have set themselves on the perilous journey of a writing life.

Ein Gehirnschlag beendete Ende letzten Jahres das alltägliche, das «normale» Leben des vierundvierzigjährigen Jean-Dominique Bauby, der bis dahin Chefredakteur der Zeitschrift «Elle» war und von da an nur noch vier Monate zu leben hatte. Bauby nutzte seine Zeit, um alles, was ihn bewegte, zu Papier zu bringen. Doch er selber sollte dazu gar nicht mehr in der Lage sein, war er doch vollständig gelähmt und dazu verdammt, nur noch mit dem linken Auge zu blinzeln.

Mittels eines Spezialalphabets, das sich an der Häufigkeit der Vokale und Konsonanten im Französischen orientierte, diktierte er der Lektorin Claude Mendibil fortan alles, was ihn bewegte – mittels Lidschlag: Aus seiner abgeschirmten Taucherglocke heraus funkte bzw. blinzelte er auf diese Weise empfindsame letzte Nachrichten an eine Welt, die für ihn schon unerreichbar weit weg war.

For the World War II submariner, every day was a life-or-death trial: going to sea for months at a time; existing in dank, claustrophobic conditions; enduring long stretches of monotonous silence punctuated by adrenaline-spiked episodes of paralyzing fear and victorious elation. It was a duty few men could handle — and even fewer would survive.

This is the true story of those brave men who served and too often died under the ocean surface, written by a man who was there. Edward L. Beach masterfully weaves his gripping experiences aboard the USS Trigger with those of other boats fighting the war in the Pacific. Part action-packed combat chronicle, part testament to the courageous sacrifices made by those who never came back, this is a compelling eyewitness account of the war as few have seen it.

A wry, moving collection of letters from the late J. F. Powers, “a comic writer of genius” (Mary Gordon)

Best known for his 1963 National Book Award — winning novel, Morte D’Urban, and as a master of the short story, J. F. Powers drew praise from Evelyn Waugh, Flannery O’Connor, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth, among others. Though Powers’s fiction dwelt chiefly on the lives of Catholic priests, he long planned to write a novel of family life, a feat he never accomplished. He did, however, write thousands of letters, which, selected here by his daughter, Katherine A. Powers, become an intimate version of that novel, dynamic with plot and character. They show a dedicated artist, passionate lover, reluctant family man, pained aesthete, sports fan, and appreciative friend. At times wrenching and sad, at others ironic and exuberantly funny, Suitable Accommodations is the story of a man at odds with the world and, despite his faith, with his church. Beginning in prison, where Powers spent more than a year as a conscientious objector, the letters move on to his courtship, marriage, comically unsuccessful attempt to live in the woods, life in the Midwest and in Ireland, an unorthodox view of the Catholic Church, and an increasingly bizarre search for “suitable accommodations,” which included three full-scale emigrations to Ireland. Here, too, are encounters with such diverse people as Thomas Merton, Eugene McCarthy, Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke, Sean O’Faolain, Frank O’Connor, Dorothy Day, and Alfred Kinsey.

"Sky Spy" describes the evolution of a new Air Force pilot who has a dream to reach for the stars and become a U-2 pilot. The book describes his zany squadron mates in the C-130 and their travels around the world; then his experiences teaching students to fly high performance jets. He reached his goal and details what it was like to fly the world's most exotic aircraft.

From the revered New York Times bestselling author comes a touching, insightful, and humorous memoir of an unlikely racewalker and world traveler.

How did top Red Army commanders see the assault on Berlin in 1945 – what was their experience of the last, terrible battle of the Second World War in Europe? Personal accounts by the most famous generals involved – Zhukov, Koniev and Chuikov – have been published in English, but the recollections of their principal subordinates haven’t been available in the west before, and it is their role in the final Soviet offensive that is the focus of Tony Le Tissier’s fascinating book. These were the officers who were responsible for the execution of the Red Army’s plan for the assault, in immediate touch with the troops on the front line of the advance. They saw most clearly where the operation succeeded and where it failed. Their recollections, publication of which was long banned in the Soviet Union, throw a new light on the course of battle and on the inner workings of the Red Army command in the final phase of the conflict.

The city of St. Petersburg became the center of liberal opposition to the dominating power of the state, whether czarist or communist. Acclaimed Russian historian and emigre Volkov writes the definitive “cultural biography” of that famed city, sharply detailing the well-known figures of the arts whose works are now part of the permanent fabric of Western high culture.

Photos.

describing how the great city of St. Petersburg was built, how the mythos of this wonder was created, and how classical Russian literature from Pushkin to Dostoyevsky boldly and brilliantly interpreted the image of the city and, in the end, profoundly changed it.

which describes how the mirror that reflected St. Petersburg for almost one hundred fifty years was passed from the hands of the writers to musicians and then artists, and in which the reader learns how a Queen of Spades, if felicitously played, could influence the charms of an imperial capital.

in which we learn how merry it was living in Petersburg in 1908, how that merriment was soon interrupted, and how the city first lost its name and then its status as capital of Russia and, almost dead of hunger and cold, tried to remain faithful to itself. This is the Petersburg of Anna Akhmatova.

in which a young hero—renamed, like the marvelous city in which he was born and grew up—undergoes quite a few exciting adventures and mind-boggling experiences in that amazing city, so that when he quits his native shores hastily, he becomes at long last a celebrated choreographer and, along with his fellow émigrés Stravinsky and Nabokov, carries the glory of his birthplace to distant America. This is the Petrograd of George Balanchine.

in which our long-suffering city is renamed after a tyrant, undergoes dreadful ordeals in the Great Terror and the most horrible siege in recent history, and turns from a “crazy ship” into a “ship of the dead,” to be mourned in elegies and sung in requiems. This is the Leningrad of Dmitri Shostakovich.

in which the city becomes the hero of the Poem Without a Hero and, surviving against all odds and nurturing its own mythos in the underground, wins the right to get its original name back. The Bronze Horseman continues its eternal gallop into history—but where to? This is the Petersburg of Joseph Brodsky and his friends in creativity—the independent and tenacious poets, writers, artists, and musicians on whom the spiritual fate of this astonishing city depends.

"Terror is the given of the place." The place is El Salvador in 1982, at the ghastly height of its civil war. The writer is Joan Didion, who delivers an anatomy of that country's particular brand of terror — its mechanisms, rationales, and intimate relation to United States foreign policy.As ash travels from battlefields to body dumps, interviews a puppet president, and considers the distinctly Salvadoran grammar of the verb "to disappear," Didion gives us a book that is germane to any country in which bloodshed has become a standard tool of politics.

Universally acclaimed when it was first published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has become a modern classic. More than any other book of its time, this collection captures the mood of 1960s America, especially the center of its counterculture, California. These essays, keynoted by an extraordinary report on San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, all reflect that, in one way or another, things are falling apart, "the center cannot hold." An incisive look at contemporary American life, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been admired for several decades as a stylistic masterpiece.

#SEKTA – это не просто сообщество со своими правилами, это настоящая самая дружная семья в мире. Где вас поддержат, где вам помогут ровно настолько, насколько вы хотите. Смотивируют ровно на столько, насколько вы готовы быть мотивированными.

Как родилась идея создания «Секты», с чего все начиналось, как развивалось?.. Кто были самыми первыми «сектантами», кто проверял первые дневники питания?

История создания проекта, все трудности, с которыми пришлось столкнуться.

Правила и основные положения «Школы идеального тела», которые позволят вам обрести свое идеальное тело, а также семью, которая вас поддержит на пути к его обретению.

The fifth installment in the epic six-volume My Struggle cycle is here, highly anticipated by Karl Ove Knausgaard's dedicated fan club-and the first in the cycle to be published separately in Canada.

The young Karl Ove moves to Bergen to attend the Writing Academy. It turns out to be a huge disappointment: he wants so much, knows so little, and achieves nothing. His contemporaries have their manuscripts accepted and make their debuts while he begins to feel the best he can do is to write about literature. With no apparent reason to feel hopeful, he continues his exploration of and love for books and reading. Gradually his writing changes; his relationship with the world around him changes too. This becomes a novel about new, strong friendships and a serious relationship that transforms him until the novel reaches the existential pivotal point: his father dies, Karl Ove makes his debut as a writer and everything disintegrates. He flees to Sweden, to avoid family and friends.

В феномене «противозаконного» сайта Sci-Hub, дающего всем желающим свободный доступ к научным знаниям, словно в фокусе линзы оказались сконцентрированы и тяжкие беды мировой науки, и до смешного простые способы их лечения.

Мы увидели это необычное название «Sin Рatria» — «Без Родины» на борту одной аргентинской яхты и, переглянувшись, сказали: «Это мы без Родины». Гина — без ГДР, я — без СССР. И родилась идея написать книгу под таким названием о нашем плавании по свету на маленькой яхте, об увиденных красках-красотах природы, о встречах с хорошими людьми.

I never met anyone whose interest in racing matched my own. Both on and off the course, so to speak, I’ve enjoyed the company of many a racing acquaintance…I’ve read books, or parts of books, by persons who might have come close to being true racing friends of mine if ever we had met. For most of my long life, however, my enjoyment of racing has been a solitary thing: something I could never wholly explain to anyone else.

As a boy, Gerald Murnane became obsessed with horse racing. He had never ridden a horse, nor seen a race. Yet he was fascinated by photos of horse races in the Sporting Globe, and by the incantation of horses’ names in radio broadcasts of races. Murnane discovered in these races more than he could find in religion or philosophy: they were the gateway to a world of imagination.

Gerald Murnane is like no other writer, and Something for the Pain is like no other Murnane book. In this unique and spellbinding memoir, he tells the story of his life through the lens of horse racing. It is candid, droll and moving — a treat for lovers of literature and of the turf.

Without aiming to be a survival guide, romance or autobiography, Sunbathing in Siberia manages to be all of them and none. Told completely from the Trans-Siberian and a series of Russian jets, this is the story of a young British poet, who, after becoming engaged to his translator over 3500 miles east, embarks on a journey into the very heart of Siberia to marry his fiancée. However, in place of the desolate wasteland he expected to find, Michael discovers the side of Siberia little known outside of Russia. After 30 years of British rain, Michael has finally to learn the art of sunbathing, in the last place on Earth anyone would think to take a pair of flip-flops.

With little knowledge of post-Soviet Russia, or its language; and without any survival skills, Michael has to adapt to the Siberian way of life. As Russia struggles to find its new identity, Michael too is forced to recreate himself, while finding the tools needed to live with parading nuclear missiles, wild bears, and a host of extreme dangers.

Review

‘Mao’s seemingly ceaseless ability for honest and frank prose is one of this book’s real strengths – Sunbathing in Siberia situates itself between two cultures at a time in which it is most necessary to do so, interrogating and exploring national identities. Insightful and hilarious, the memoir prompts the reader to re-evaluate their approach to the East.’

– New Welsh Review

About the Author

Michael Oliver-Semenov served as the first poet in residence for Blown, the magazine of cultural intelligence, and has since been published in a plethora of magazines and journals worldwide, including the Morning Star, Orbis, Mandala Review, and Ink Sweat and Tears. He is a freelance English teacher and occasionally contributes to the Siberian Times.

On April 12 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to leave the Earth’s atmosphere and venture into space. An icon of the 20th century, he also became a danger to himself and a threat to the Soviet state. At the age of 34, he was killed in a plane crash. Based on KGB files, restricted documents from Russian space authorities, and interviews with his friends and colleagues, this biography of the Russian cosmonaut reveals a man in turmoil: torn apart by powerful political pressures, fighting a losing battle against alcoholism and rebelling against the cruelties of a corrupt totalitarian regime. 2011 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Gagarin’s flight.

This new edition of Starman includes a new afterword that celebrates the importance of that momentous expedition and reflects on Gagarin’s legacy.

Школа Идеального Тела #SEKTA – это не просто уникальная методика по изменению пищевых привычек и программа тренировок, по которым ежедневно занимаются более 200 000 человек. Это растущее сообщество, подкованное научной практикой, которое выросло из блога в Живом Журнале до многочисленных филиалов по России и дистанционных практик за рубежом. #SEKTA объединила самых разных людей, истории которых трогают: падения и взлеты, сомнения и уверенность – каждый из них прошел путь настоящего воина, изменивший множество жизней. Дисциплина и нравственность всегда идут рука об руку. Ты начинаешь с себя, и мир вокруг тебя меняется. Но это не простой путь, не каждому хватает сил идти по нему. Одному это делать сложно. Сложно каждый день находить в себе мотивацию продолжать, сложно разобраться во всем огромном объеме информации. Именно поэтому, несмотря на расстояние, все эти люди стали большой семьей и поддержкой друг для друга. Каждый, кто обрел этот опыт, никогда о нем не забудет. Возможно, именно с этой книги начнутся перемены и в тебе.

В формате pdf A4 сохранен издательский дизайн.

This memoir from the bestselling author of Postcards from the Edge and Wishful Drinking gives readers an intimate, gossip-filled look at what it’s like to be the daughter of Hollywood royalty.

Told with the same intimate style, brutal honesty, and uproarious wisdom that locked Wishful Drinking on the New York Times bestseller list for months, Shockaholic is the juicy account of Carrie Fisher’s life. Covering a broad range of topics—from never-before-heard tales of Hollywood gossip to outrageous moments of celebrity desperation; from alcoholism to illegal drug use; from the familial relationships of Hollywood royalty to scandalous run-ins with noteworthy politicians; from shock therapy to talk therapy—Carrie Fisher gives an intimate portrait of herself, and she’s one of the most indelible and powerful forces in culture at large today. Just as she has said of playing Princess Leia—“It isn’t all sweetness and light sabers”—Fisher takes readers on a no-holds-barred narrative adventure, both laugh-out-loud funny and poignant.

On the evening of 30 March 1982, Commander David Hall, chief engineer of the nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror, received a telephone call giving him the order to ‘store for war’. At first he didn’t believe it. In the early hours of 2 April, Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Islands.

On 4 April, HMS Conqueror sailed out of the Faslane naval base to begin her 8,000 mile journey to the South Atlantic. She was sailing towards war and towards one of the most iconic battles of the Falklands conflict, an encounter that would result in the torpedoing of the first warship since the end of the Second World War.

When the order was given to sink the Belgrano, the British nuclear submarine began a cat and mouse game with the Argentine warship. Conqueror stalked the Belgrano for two days, sometimes sailing as close as fifty yards to the warship’s stern, before the torpedoes were fired.

For the first time, we hear from sailors on both vessels as they tell their own stories of the events of that day. We witness the behind-the-scenes arguments and power-broking that would culminate in the launch of three torpedoes from the Conqueror, and a vivid picture of the terror, confusion and courage that marked an attack that left 340 of the Belgrano’s crew dead. Sink the Belgrano, written with all the pace and tension of a thriller, is the definitive retelling of those dramatic events.

This is the book nobody wants you to read.

An unparalleled deception took place in the 1980s, while U.S.S.R. President Mikhail Gorbachev was negotiating for the Chemical Weapons Convention. This treaty was supposed to destroy chemical weapons of the world and ban new ones. The Moscow institute that developed chemical weapons at that same time was secretly developing newer and greatly more toxic ones known anecdotally as Novichok and new binaries. Dr. Vil Mirzayanov, a scientist there, was responsible for developing methods of detecting extremely minute traces in the environment surrounding the institute. He decided this dangerous hypocrisy was not tolerable, and he became the first whistleblower to reveal the Russian chemical weapons program to the world. His book, State Secrets, takes a startling detailed look at the inside workings of the Russian chemical weapons program, and it tells how the Russians set up a new program in Syria. Mirzayanov’s book provides a shocking, up-close examination of Russia’s military and political complex and its extraordinary efforts to hide dangerous weapons from the world. State Secrets should serve as a chilling cautionary tale for the world over.

“The persecution of Dr. Mirzayanov stands in direct contradiction of the Clinton Administration’s commitment to strengthen democratization efforts in the former Soviet Union, and halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I am confident that you share my deep concern over the treatment of this courageous scientist, and I call on you to personally appeal for his release.”

– From the Letter of John Conyers, Jr., Chairman of the Congressional Legislation and National Security Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, to Warren Christopher, the U.S. Secretary of State, October 19, 1993.

“I personally feel a strong common bond with this courageous man, recognizing that his motives are the same as those that led me to release the Pentagon Papers.

The Mirzayanov case is an immediate legal litmus test of emerging Russian democracy. He is an individual in the true tradition of Andrei Sakharov, a man persecuted under the former regime for telling the truth, but now, rightfully, universally honored.”

– By Dan Ellsberg, author of “Secrets – A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers”

“I was proud to add my voice to that of the many scientific and human rights organizations that have worked to free Dr. Mirzayanov.

– Senator Patrick Moynihan, U.S. Senate (Congressional Record. Proceedings and Debates of the 103d Congress, First Session. Vol.140, No. 28. Washington, Tuesday, March 15, 1994.)

“…in recognition of his courage and his singular demonstration of the moral responsibility of individual scientists in uphold the integrity of scientific knowledge in an emerging democratic society”. The 1994 Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientific Award of The New York Academy of Sciences.

– Signed by Chairman Cyril M. Harris and President Joshua Lederberg.

“Cavallo Foundation Inc. takes great pleasure in presenting a Certificate of Special Recognition for Moral Courage in Business and Government to Vil Mirzayanov.”

– From the Text of the Award in June 1993.

“For his integrity as a scientist, strength of character, and exceptional personal courage that served to promote the health, safety, and welfare of the Russian people and of all humankind.”

– From the Text of the 1995 AAAS Freedom and Responsibility Award.

This is a remarkable and unique story of Jim Brigginshaw. Having been captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in 1942, Jim was first sent to work in Burma, to build what has become known as the Death Railway. Unlike many of his comrades, Jim survived this ordeal, only to be transferred to Nagasaki, Japan, where he was sent to work in the mines of Sendryu.

Jim describes how the conditions in the ‘Hell pits of Sendryu’ were even worse than those experienced in Burma, but were ultimately the reason why he survived the war. On the 9th August 1945, the Americans, dropped the second nuclear bomb on Nagaski. Jim was fortunately underground at the time, but through this book re-lives the harrowing aftermath of the attack when the ground shook violently.

Создатель и бессменный гитарист легендарной рок-группы «Scorpions» вспоминает о начале своего пути, о том, как «Скорпы» пробивались к вершине музыкального Олимпа, откровенно рассказывает о своей личной жизни, о встречах с самыми разными людьми — как известными всему миру: Михаил Горбачев, Пауло Коэльо, так и самыми обычными, но оставившими свой след в его судьбе. В этой книге любители рока найдут множество интересных фактов и уникальных подробностей, знакомых имен… Но книга адресована гораздо более широкому кругу читателей. На ее страницах Руди Шенкер увлекательно излагает свою жизненную философию, благодаря которой он и добился столь головокружительного успеха. Занятия йогой, упорные медитации, чтение книг восточных мудрецов позволили ему заглянуть в глубины человеческого Эго, увидеть путь к истинным ценностям, познать, из чего складывается человеческое счастье и как его добиться. Это раздумья о сути нашего бытия немало повидавшего и передумавшего человека, испытавшего множество самых разнообразных трудностей и соблазнов и все же оставшегося верным самому себе. Он убежден, что любому человеку независимо от его возраста и положения никогда не поздно сломать господствующие в современном обществе стереотипы, вырваться из осточертевшей колеи, сделать решительный шаг к новой жизни. Его девиз — жить здесь и сейчас! Не надо бояться встряхнуть свою жизнь, и тогда твои мечты, далее самые смелые, непременно сбудутся.

Based on newly available information, the son of famed U-2 pilot, Francis Gary Powers, presents the facts and dispels misinformation about the Cold War espionage program that his father was part of.

One of the most talked-about events of the Cold War was the downing of the American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960. The event was recently depicted in the Steven Spielberg movie Bridge of Spies. Powers was captured by the KGB, subjected to a televised show trial, and imprisoned, all of which created an international incident. Soviet authorities eventually released him in exchange for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. On his return to the United States, Powers was exonerated of any wrongdoing while imprisoned in Russia, yet a cloud of controversy lingered until his untimely death in 1977.

Now his son, Francis Gary Powers Jr., has written this new account of his father’s life based on personal files that have never been previously available. Delving into old audio tapes, the transcript of his father’s debriefing by the CIA, other recently declassified documents about the U-2 program, and interviews with his contemporaries, Powers sets the record straight. The result is a fascinating piece of Cold War history.

Almost sixty years after the event, this will be the definitive account of a famous Cold War incident, one proving that Francis Gary Powers acted honorably through a trying ordeal in service to his country.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From the writer and director of Knocked Up and the producer of Freaks and Geeks comes a collection of intimate, hilarious conversations with the biggest names in comedy from the past thirty years—including Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Roseanne Barr, Harold Ramis, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Lena Dunham.

Before becoming one of the most successful filmmakers in Hollywood, Judd Apatow was the original comedy nerd. At fifteen, he took a job washing dishes in a local comedy club—just so he could watch endless stand-up for free. At sixteen, he was hosting a show for his local high school radio station in Syosset, Long Island—a show that consisted of Q&As with his comedy heroes, from Garry Shandling to Jerry Seinfeld. They talked about their careers, the science of a good joke, and their dreams of future glory (turns out, Shandling was interested in having his own TV show one day and Steve Allen had already invented everything).

Thirty years later, Apatow is still that same comedy nerd—and he’s still interviewing funny people about why they do what they do.

Sick in the Head gathers Apatow’s most memorable and revealing conversations into one hilarious, wide-ranging, and incredibly candid collection that spans not only his career but his entire adult life. Here are the comedy legends who inspired and shaped him, from Mel Brooks to Steve Martin. Here are the contemporaries he grew up with in Hollywood, from Spike Jonze to Sarah Silverman. And here, finally, are the brightest stars in comedy today, many of whom Apatow has been fortunate to work with, from Seth Rogen to Amy Schumer. And along the way, something kind of magical happens: What started as a lifetime’s worth of conversations about comedy becomes something else entirely. It becomes an exploration of creativity, ambition, neediness, generosity, spirituality, and the joy that comes from making people laugh.

Loaded with the kind of back-of-the-club stories that comics tell one another when no one else is watching, this fascinating, personal (and borderline-obsessive) book is Judd Apatow’s gift to comedy nerds everywhere.

Praise for Sick in the Head

“Open this book anywhere, and you’re bound to find some interesting nugget from someone who has had you in stitches many, many times.”

—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Incandescent . . . an irresistible, ultimate-insider’s comedy-interview extravaganza . . . Apatow never loses his unabashed fan’s enthusiasm even as he asks canny questions that yield superbly illuminating conversations rich in shop talk and musings on the lure, demands, and resonance of comedy.”

—Booklist (starred review)

“If Apatow’s gift for comedy is a sickness, may he never be cured.”

—Playboy

“Sprawling and insightful . . . The candidness of the interviews also exposes the peculiar community of comedians with anecdotes and cameos unlikely to be heard elsewhere. A delightful and hilarious read.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“These are wonderful, expansive interviews—at times brutal, at times breathtaking—with artists whose wit, intelligence, gaze, and insights are all sharp enough to draw blood.”

—Michael Chabon

“Anyone even remotely interested in comedy or humanity should own this book. It is hilarious and informative and it contains insightful interviews with the greatest comics, comedians, and comediennes of our time. My representatives assure me I will appear in a future edition.”

—Will Ferrell

From the New York Times bestselling author of A Higher Call comes the riveting story of an American tank gunner’s journey into the heart of the Third Reich, where he will meet destiny in an iconic armor duel—and forge an enduring bond with his enemy.

When Clarence Smoyer is assigned to the gunner’s seat of his Sherman tank, his crewmates discover that the gentle giant from Pennsylvania has a hidden talent: He’s a natural born shooter.

At first, Clarence and his fellow crews in the legendary 3rd Armored Division—“Spearhead”—thought their tanks were invincible. Then they met the German Panther, with a gun so murderous it could shoot through one Sherman and into the next. Soon a pattern emerged: The lead tank always gets hit.

After Clarence sees his friends cut down breaching the West Wall and holding the line in the Battle of the Bulge, he and his crew are given a weapon with the power to avenge their fallen brothers: the Pershing, a state-of-the-art “super tank,” one of twenty in the European theater.

But with it came a harrowing new responsibility: Now they will spearhead every attack. That’s how Clarence, the corporal from coal country, finds himself leading the U.S. Army into its largest urban battle of the European war, the fight for Cologne, the “Fortress City” of Germany.

Battling through the ruins, Clarence will engage the fearsome Panther in a duel immortalized by an army cameraman. And he will square off with Gustav Schaefer, a teenager behind the trigger in a Panzer IV tank, whose crew has been sent on a suicide mission to stop the Americans.

As Clarence and Gustav trade fire down a long boulevard, they are taken by surprise by a tragic mistake of war. What happens next will haunt Clarence into modern day, drawing him back to Cologne to do the unthinkable: to face his enemy, one last time.

« L’homosexualité dans le clergé est une question très sérieuse qui me préoccupe. »

Pape François

Le célibat des prêtres ; l’interdiction du préservatif par l’Église ; la culture du secret sur les affaires d’abus sexuels ; la démission du pape Benoît XVI ; la misogynie du clergé ; la fin des vocations sacerdotales ; la fronde contre le pape François : un même secret relie toutes ces questions. Ce secret a longtemps été indicible. Il porte un nom : Sodoma. La ville biblique de Sodome aurait été détruite par Dieu en raison de l’homosexualité de ses habitants. Or, aujourd’hui, c’est au Vatican que l’on trouve l’une des plus grandes communautés homosexuelles au monde.

Pendant quatre années, Frédéric Martel a vécu en immersion à l’intérieur du Vatican et mené l’enquête sur le terrain dans une trentaine de pays. Il a interrogé des dizaines de cardinaux et rencontré des centaines d’évêques et de prêtres.

Ce livre révèle la face cachée de l’Église : un système construit depuis les plus petits séminaires jusqu’au Vatican à la fois sur la double vie homosexuelle et sur l’homophobie la plus radicale. La schizophrénie de l’Église est insondable : plus un prélat est homophobe en public, plus il est probable qu’il soit homosexuel en privé.

« Derrière la rigidité, il y a toujours quelque chose de caché ; dans de nombreux cas, une double vie. » En prononçant ces mots, le pape François nous a confié un secret que cette enquête vertigineuse révèle pour la première fois.

SODOMA paraît simultanément dans vingt pays.

The Battle of Iwo Jima has been memorialized innumerable times as the subject of countless books and motion pictures, most recently Clint Eastwood’s films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, and no wartime photo is more famous than Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning image of Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi. Yet most Americans know only one side of this pivotal and bloody battle. First published in Japan to great acclaim, becoming a bestseller and a prize-winner, So Sad to Fall in Battle shows us the struggle, through the eyes of Japanese commander Tadamichi Kuribayashi, one of the most fascinating and least-known figures of World War II.

As author Kumiko Kakehashi demonstrates, Kuribayashi was far from the stereotypical fanatic Japanese warrior. Unique among his country’s officers, he refused to risk his men’s lives in suicidal banzai attacks, instead creating a defensive, insurgent style of combat that eventually became the Japanese standard. On Iwo Jima, he eschewed the special treatment due to him as an officer, enduring the same difficult conditions as his men, and personally walked every inch of the island to plan the positions of thousands of underground bunkers and tunnels. The very flagpole used in the renowned photograph was a pipe from a complex water collection system the general himself engineered.

Exclusive interviews with survivors reveal that as the tide turned against him, Kuribayashi displayed his true mettle: Though offered a safer post on another island, he chose to stay with his men, fighting alongside them in a final, fearless, and ultimately hopeless three-hour siege.

After thirty-six cataclysmic days on Iwo Jima, Kurbiayashi’s troops were responsible for the deaths of a third of all U.S. Marines killed during the entire four-year Pacific conflict, making him, in the end, America’s most feared—and respected—foe. Ironically, it was Kuribayashi’s own memories of his military training in America in the 1920s, and his admiration for this country’s rich, gregarious, and self-reliant people, that made him fear ever facing them in combat—a feeling that some suspect prompted his superiors to send him to Iwo Jima, where he met his fate.

Along with the words of his son and daughter, which offer unique insight into the private man, Kuribayashi’s own letters cited extensively in this book paint a stirring portrait of the circumstances that shaped him. So Sad to Fall in Battle tells a fascinating, never-before-told story and introduces America, as if for the first time, to one of its most worthy adversaries.

«Sauber» – книга, посвященная одноименной швейцарской команде Формулы-1. Она повествует о жизненном пути ее основателя – Петера Заубера, который своим примером наглядно демонстрирует, что даже в условиях жесткой конкуренции можно сохранять лучшие человеческие качества. За 36 лет участия в соревнованиях команда сумела ощутить вкус побед и познать горечь поражений, но никогда не опускала рук, продолжая напряженно работать в любой ситуации.

Более ста лет Shell считалась мировым лидером, обладавшим большим влиянием, чем некоторые европейские государства. Как гласил слоган компании: Shell можно доверять. Так было до января 2004 года, когда компания сообщила, что данные о ее нефтяных запасах были завышены на 3,9 млрд баррелей!

Эта книга уникальна, так как столь подробный и достоверный материал о нефтяном бизнесе Shell публикуется впервые. Авторы предлагают детальное описание финансовых махинаций компании, ее планов по добыче нефти на Сахалине и ужасающего воздействия на экологию стран – от разорения земель в Нигерии до уничтожения целых сообществ в США. Вы узнаете, как бывший торговец ракушками создал крупнейшее предприятие в мире, чье доброе имя было запятнано внутренними раздорами, ложью и стремлением превзойти конкурентов любой ценой.

Я надеюсь, что моя книга поможет амбициозным людям, мечтающим стать «номер один» в чем угодно, не продать душу дьяволу – выйти из клетки излишних амбиций, подчиняясь Большой компании или Большому боссу, не потерять собственное достоинство. Быть эффективными, оставаясь при этом свободными, а самое главное – счастливыми. Потому что, когда ты бесконечно богат, но при этом – раб, ощущение счастья исчезает. А когда ты достиг карьерного успеха и удивительно при этом свободен – это кайф.

Такая вот методика карьерного счастья: как совместить драйв, кайф и карьеру.

First time in paperback, with a new Introduction and final chapter

World affairs expert and intrepid travel journalist Robert D. Kaplan braved the dangers of war-ravaged Afghanistan in the 1980s, living among the mujahidin—the “soldiers of god”—whose unwavering devotion to Islam fueled their mission to oust the formidable Soviet invaders. In Soldiers of God we follow Kaplan’s extraordinary journey and learn how the thwarted Soviet invasion gave rise to the ruthless Taliban and the defining international conflagration of the twenty-first century.

Kaplan returns a decade later and brings to life a lawless frontier. What he reveals is astonishing: teeming refugee camps on the deeply contentious Pakistan-Afghanistan border; a war front that combines primitive fighters with the most technologically advanced weapons known to man; rigorous Islamic indoctrination academies; a land of minefields plagued by drought, fierce tribalism, insurmountable ethnic and religious divisions, an abysmal literacy rate, and legions of war orphans who seek stability in military brotherhood. Traveling alongside Islamic guerrilla fighters, sharing their food, observing their piety in the face of deprivation, and witnessing their determination, Kaplan offers a unique opportunity to increase our understanding of a people and a country that are at the center of world events.

“Who am I? An alcoholic and a tramp. But I am no white raven. Our alcoholics outnumber the populations of France and Spain combined. And that’s only the men. If you count women you have to add on all Scandinavia and throw in Monaco for good measure.”

For forty years Ivan Petrov careered, stumbled, staggered and rampaged all over the vast Soviet empire. Homeless (an illegal condition in the communist utopia), in and out of prison camps, almost always drunk, and with a gift for hilariously sending up the tragic absurdities of Soviet life, Ivan was a real-life Svejk. This is his unforgettable story, as told to Caroline Walton just before his death.

The text is complemented by twelve original illustrations by Natalia Vetrova.

Grantland Book of the Year.

Vol. 1 Brooklyn, A Year of Favorites, Jason Diamond.

Book Riot, 2014’s Must-Read Books from Indie Presses.

"Valeria Luiselli is a writer of formidable talent, destined to be an important voice in Latin American letters. Her vision and language are precise, and the power of her intellect is in evidence on every page." — Daniel Alarcón

"I'm completely captivated by the beauty of the paragraphs, the elegance of the prose, the joy in the written word, and the literary sense of this author." — Enrique Vilas-Matas

Valeria Luiselli is an evening cyclist; a literary tourist in Venice, searching for Joseph Brodsky's tomb; an excavator of her own artifacts, unpacking from a move. In essays that are as companionable as they are ambitious, she uses the city to exercise a roving, meandering intelligence, seeking out the questions embedded in our human landscapes.

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. Her novel and essays have been translated into many languages and her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Granta, and McSweeney's. Some of her recent projects include a ballet performed by the New York City Ballet in Lincoln Center; a pedestrian sound installation for the Serpentine Gallery in London; and a novella in installments for workers in a juice factory in Mexico. She lives in New York City.

The writing career of John Berger — poet, storyteller, playwright, and essayist — has yielded some of the most original and compelling examinations of art and life of the past half century. In this essential volume, Geoff Dyer has brought together a rich selection of many of Berger’s seminal essays.

Berger’s insights make it impossible to look at a painting, watch a film, or even visit a zoo in quite the same way again. The vast range of subjects he addresses, the lean beauty of his prose, and the keenness of his anger against injustice move us to view the world with a new lens of awareness. Whether he is discussing the singleminded intensity of Picasso’s Guernica, the parallel violence and alienation in the art of Francis Bacon and Walt Disney, or the enigmatic silence of his own mother, what binds these pieces throughout is the depth and fury of Berger’s passion, challenging us to participate, to protest, and above all, to see.

Впервые! Две книги – в одном томе: «Succes (успех) в большом городе» и «Sex в большой политике».

Ирина Хакамада делится с читателем искусством выживания в большой политике и новейшей методикой карьерного (и личного) счастья.

Легкий и эмоциональный, с курьезами и анекдотами, точными наблюдениями и ироничным взглядом на известных лиц, «Самоучитель от self-made woman» понравится всем: как любителям серьезной литературы, так и поклонникам развлекательного чтения.

Israel describes itself as a Jewish state. What, then, is the status of the one-fifth of its citizens who are not Jewish? Are they Israelis, or are they Palestinians? Or are they a people without a country? How will a Palestinian state — if it is established — influence the sense of belonging and identity of Palestinian Israeli citizens? Based on conversations with Palestinians in Israel, Sleeping on a Wire, like The Yellow Wind, is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the Middle East today.

В феномене «противозаконного» сайта Sci-Hub, дающего всем желающим свободный доступ к научным знаниям, словно в фокусе линзы оказались сконцентрированы и тяжкие беды мировой науки, и до смешного простые способы их лечения.

In 1947, Ayn Rand wrote a pamphlet for the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, entitled “Screen Guide for Americans,” based on her personal impressions of the American film industry. Rand cited examples of popular and critically acclaimed films which in her view contained hidden Communist or “Collectivist” messages that had not been recognized as such, even by conservatives. Examples included “The Best Years of Our Lives” (because it portrayed businessmen negatively, and suggested that bankers should give veterans collateral-free loans) and “A Song to Remember” (because it implied that Chopin sacrificed himself for a patriotic cause rather than devoting himself to his music).

In 2014, after a brief orientation course and a few fingerprinting sessions, Nicholson Baker became an on-call substitute teacher in a Maine public school district. He awoke to the dispatcher's five-forty a.m. phone call and headed to one of several nearby schools; when he got there, he did his best to follow lesson plans and help his students get something done. What emerges from Baker s experience is a complex, often touching deconstruction of public schooling in America: children swamped with overdue assignments, overwhelmed by the marvels and distractions of social media and educational technology, and staff who weary themselves trying to teach in step with an often outmoded or overly ambitious standard curriculum. In Baker s hands, the inner life of the classroom is examined anew mundane worksheets, recess time-outs, surprise nosebleeds, rebellions, griefs, jealousies, minor triumphs, daily lessons on everything from geology to metal tech to the Holocaust to kindergarten show-and-tell as the author and his pupils struggle to find ways to get through the day. Baker is one of the most inventive and remarkable writers of our time, and "Substitute," filled with humor, honesty, and empathy, may be his most impressive work of nonfiction yet."

Работа «Фашистский социализм» (1934) – яркое свидетельство проницательности правого крыла французской политической мысли предвоенной эпохи. Прослеживая современные ему политические тенденции и преобразования в России, Германии и Франции, Дриё вскрывает глубинное родство марксистской и фашистской доктрин, изначально завуалированное поверхностным различием теоретических обоснований. Фашистский социализм (или, если угодно, социалистический фашизм), этот политический кентавра обретает со всей его двойственностью достойное воплощение в описываемой Дриё в конце книги (на собственном примере) позиции интеллектуала, удивительно предвосхищающей поиски разрешения того кризиса демократии, что наступил по истечении периода послевоенной эйфории.

In America, 2.3 million people—a population about the size of Houston’s, the country’s fourth-largest city—live behind bars. Sick Justice explores the economic, social, and political forces that hijacked the criminal justice system to create this bizarre situation. Presenting frightening true stories of (sometimes wrongfully) incarcerated individuals, Ivan G. Goldman exposes the inept bureaucracies of America’s prisons and shows the real reasons that disproportionate numbers of minorities, the poor, and the mentally ill end up there.

Goldman dissects the widespread phenomenon of jailing for profit, the outsized power of prison guards’ unions, California’s exceptionally rigid three-strikes law, the ineffective and never-ending war on drugs, the closing of mental health institutions across the country, and other blunders and avaricious practices that have brought us to this point.

Sick Justice tells a big, gripping story that’s long overdue. By illuminating the system’s brutality and greed and the prisoners’ gratuitous suffering, the book aims to be a catalyst for reform, complementing the work of the Innocence Project and mirroring the effects of Michael Harrington’s The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962), which became the driving force behind the war on poverty.

How should the West deal with Putin’s Russia? For the U.S. and some European powers the answer is obvious: isolate Russia with punishing economic sanctions, remove it from global institutions such as the G8, and arm the nations directly threatened by Putin. In short, return to the Cold War doctrine that froze Soviet aggression in Europe and helped bring about the collapse of communist Russia.

Others argue that such a policy is a dead end. Putin’s Russia has legitimate grievances against Western and NATO powers meddling in its sphere of influence. Instead of further antagonizing Putin and risking a dangerous escalation of the current conflict, the U.S. and Europe should seek common cause with Russia to address shared threats, from the Middle East to Asia to combatting terrorism.

In the fifteenth semi-annual Munk Debate, acclaimed academic Stephen F. Cohen and veteran journalist and bestselling author Vladimir Pozner square off against internationally renowned expert on Russian history Anne Applebaum and Russian-born political dissident Garry Kasparov to debate the future of the West’s relationship with Russia.

Five noted writers and thinkers profile five of the world's leaders. For some of us, these leaders are heroes; for others, villains; for all of us—strongmen.

In this short book, five brilliant artists and writers confront five strongmen:

• American playwright Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) burrows beneath the skin of Donald Trump.

• Danish Husain, Indian storyteller and actor, finds himself recounting the story not only of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but also of the ascension of the extremism of the Sangh Parivar.

• Burhan Sönmez, Turkish novelist, ferrets about amidst the bewildering career of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

• Lara Vapnyar, Russian-American novelist and journalist, ponders the Stalinist origins of the Supreme Leader of All the Russias.

• Ninotchka Rosca, Filipina feminist novelist, unravels the macho world of Rodrigo Duterte.

These essays do not presume to be neutral. They are by partisan thinkers, magical writers, people who see not only the monsters but also a future beyond the ghouls. A future that is necessary. The present is too painful.

Since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, there has been much talk of a new Cold War between the West and Russia. Under Putin’s authoritarian leadership, Moscow is widely seen as volatile, belligerent and bent on using military force to get its way.

In this incisive analysis, top Russian foreign and security policy analyst Dmitri Trenin explains why the Cold War analogy is misleading. Relations between the West and Russia are certainly bad and dangerous but – he argues – they are bad and dangerous in new ways; crucial differences which make the current rivalry between Russia, the EU and the US all the more fluid and unpredictable. Unpacking the dynamics of this increasingly strained relationship, Trenin makes a compelling case for handling Russia with pragmatism and care rather than simply giving into fear.

Stalin: The Enduring Legacy considers the ‘Man of Steel’ in a manner that will outrage dogmatists of both Left and Right.

Stalinist Russia is reassessed as a state that transcended Marxism, and proceeded on a nationalist and imperial path rather than as the citadel of ‘world revolution’. Stalin reversed many early Bolshevik policies re-instituting, for example, the traditional family. He abolished the Communist International, championed ‘realism’ in the arts and rejected post-1945 US plans for a ‘new world order’. Despite so-called ‘de-Stalinization’ after his death, the Soviet bloc continued to oppose globalism, as does Putin’s Russia.

Stalin: The Enduring Legacy, examines the anti-Marxist character of Stalinism, the legitimacy of the Moscow Trials against the ‘Old Bolsheviks’, the origins of the Cold War, the development of Trotskyism as a tool of US foreign policy, the question of Stalin’s murder, and the relevance of Russia to the future of world power politics.

‘Dr. Bolton’s book Stalin: The Enduring Legacy is a major contribution to the proper understanding of Russian, as well as American, politics and society in the twentieth century. It brushes aside the anti-Stalinist biases of the Trotskyist American chroniclers of this historical period to reveal the unquestionable integrity of Stalin as a nationalist leader. At the same time, it highlights the vital differences between the Russian national character rooted in the soil and history of Russia, and its opposite, the rootless Jewish cosmopolitanism that Trotskyist Marxism sought to impose on the Russians – as well as on the rest of the world’.

– Dr Alexander Jacob

On 17 July 2014, Malaysian Airlines MH17 was shot out of the sky above Ukraine. Aboard were 298 people, 38 of whom were Australians. No one survived.

Subsequently it was shown that the airliner was almost certainly hit by a Buk surface-to-air missile fired by Ukrainian separatists aided by the Russian military. The debris from the plane’s disintegration mid-air was spread over 50 square kilometres, but for weeks rescue teams and investigators were denied access. The Russians have refused to take any responsibility for the deaths.

This is the story of some of the people who boarded that fatal flight and the conflict below them that was doomed to destroy their lives and the happiness of the people they left behind. The fullest account yet published, it is also the story of a continuing clamour for justice. Unsettling, compelling and revealing, Shot Down will provoke both outrage that this criminal act could have happened and deep sadness for the lives lost.

‘A compelling account of one of the most appalling aviation atrocities of our time.’

JIM EAMES, author of Courage in the Skies

The writing career of John Berger — poet, storyteller, playwright, and essayist — has yielded some of the most original and compelling examinations of art and life of the past half century. In this essential volume, Geoff Dyer has brought together a rich selection of many of Berger’s seminal essays.

Berger’s insights make it impossible to look at a painting, watch a film, or even visit a zoo in quite the same way again. The vast range of subjects he addresses, the lean beauty of his prose, and the keenness of his anger against injustice move us to view the world with a new lens of awareness. Whether he is discussing the singleminded intensity of Picasso’s Guernica, the parallel violence and alienation in the art of Francis Bacon and Walt Disney, or the enigmatic silence of his own mother, what binds these pieces throughout is the depth and fury of Berger’s passion, challenging us to participate, to protest, and above all, to see.

A book with a punch equal to its publicity hype! Journalist Carcaterra tells with gripping force of his days growing up in the tough New York City neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s (the names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty). He and his three closest buddies engaged in petty crime until the day their tricks got out of hand and escalated into a major offense, for which they were sent to a juvenile home in upstate New York. They were tormented during their months there, not by other young inmates but by their adult guards, who brutalized them relentlessly in a program of horror and torture that included rape. Once out, once grown up, one of the boys became a lawyer, and through a bizarre twist of events worthy of being turned into a movie (in fact, the movie rights have been sold, with Barry Levinson lined up as director), he, Carcaterra, and the other two friends expose the horrible wrongs they suffered in that detention home. Both difficult to read and difficult to put down, this book will garner lots of attention, and as a result, readership demand will be high.

This one makes for a very interesting read. Why? Stieg Larsson is the man who created Lisbeth Salander and penned down Millennium Trilogy, one of the best-selling crime thriller series in recent times. But very few know about the actual Larsson, his journalist days or his personal life. Kurdo Baksi, Larrson’s close friend (who also appears in the trilogy as himself) answers some of the questions that Larsson fans have been seeking for quite some time. In a candid tone, Baksi recounts Larsson’s upbringing, his battle against racism and for democracy, his anti fascist magazine Expo, his fascination with feminism, the death threats he faced and the insomnia that led to many sleepless nights.

Five years after his death, Stieg Larsson is best known as the author of the Millennium Trilogy, but during his career as a journalist he was a crucial protagonist in the battle against racism and for democracy in Sweden, and one of the founders of the anti-facist magazine Expo. Kurdo Baksi first met Larsson in 1992; it was the beginning of an intense friendship, and a fruitful but challenging working relationship. In this candid and rounded memoir, Baksi answers the questions a multitude of Larsson's fans have already asked, about his upbringing; the recurring death threats; his insomnia and his vices; his feminism – so evident in his books – and his dogmatism. What was he like as a colleague? Who provided the inspiration for his now-immortal characters (Baksi is one of the few who appears in the trilogy as himself)? Who was Lisbeth Salander?

The very first narrative published after the Titanic’s demise!

The Autobiography of the Top-ranked Marine Sniper

A non fiction book

With more than sixty confirmed kills, Jack Coughlin is the Marine Corps' top-ranked sniper. Shooter is his harrowing first-person account of a sniper's life on and off the modern battlefield.Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin is a divorced father of two who grew up in a wealthy Boston suburb. At the age of nineteen, although he had never even held a gun, he joined the Marines and would spend the next twenty years behind the scope of a long-range precision rifle as a sniper.In that time he accumulated one of the most successful sniper records in the Corps, ranging through many of the world's hotspots. During Operation Iraqi Freedom alone, he recorded at least thirty-six kills, thirteen of them in a single twenty-four-hour period.Now Coughlin has written a highly personal story about his deadly craft, taking readers deep inside an invisible society that is off-limits to outsiders. This is not a heroic battlefield memoir, but the careful study of an exceptional man who must keep his sanity while carrying forward one of the deadliest legacies in the U.S. military today.

SR-71 Blackbird in action /Авиабаза =KRoN=/

Вниманию общественности пpедлагается пеpевод книги «SR-71 Blackbird in action» издательства Squadron/Signal Publications сеpия Aircraft номеp 55.

Пеpевод – Serge Luzin 2:5080/37.105.

OCR – Alex Pronin 2:5020/1802.4, 2:5020/1147.4

Заpанее всех пpедyпpеждаю, что книжка местами весьма тенденциозная и неоднозначная. Во всяком слyчае, я там далеко не со всеми yтвеpждениями могy согласиться. Hо, писал этy книгy не я:), так что все пpетензии – в адpес автоpов Скадpона:)…

С yважением, 2:5020/(1147, 1802).4 [email protected] icq13806487 Alex Pronin pager 234-9696 #667423

José Saramago was eighteen months old when he moved from the village of Azinhaga with his father and mother to live in Lisbon. But he would return to the village throughout his childhood and adolescence to stay with his maternal grandparents, illiterate peasants in the eyes of the outside world, but a fount of knowledge, affection, and authority to young José.

Shifting back and forth between childhood and his teenage years, between Azinhaga and Lisbon, this is a mosaic of memories, a simply told, affecting look back into the author's boyhood: the tragic death of his older brother at the age of four; his mother pawning the family's blankets every spring and buying them back in time for winter; his beloved grandparents bringing the weaker piglets into their bed on cold nights; and Saramago's early encounters with literature, from teaching himself to read by deciphering articles in the daily newspaper, to poring over an entertaining dialogue in a Portuguese-French conversation guide, not realizing that he was in fact reading a play by Molière.

Written with Saramago's characteristic wit and honesty, Small Memories traces the formation of an artist fascinated by words and stories from an early age and who emerged, against all odds, as one of the world's most respected writers.

The first full account, based on access to key players who have never before spoken, of the Munich Massacre and the Israeli response–a lethal, top secret, thirty-year-long antiterrorism campaign to track down the killers.

1972. The Munich Olympics. Palestinian members of the Black September group murder eleven Israeli athletes. Nine hundred million people watch the crisis unfold on television, witnessing a tragedy that inaugurates the modern age of terror and remains a scar on the collective conscience of the world.

Back in Israel, Prime Minister Golda Meir vows to track down those responsible and, in Menachem Begin’s words, “run these criminals and murderers off the face of the earth.” A secret Mossad unit, code named Caesarea, is mobilized, a list of targets drawn up. Thus begins the Israeli response–a mission that unfolds not over months but over decades. The Mossad has never spoken about this operation. No one has known the real story. Until now.

Award-winning journalist Aaron Klein’s incisive and riveting account tells for the first time the full story of Munich and the Israeli counterterrorism operation it spawned. With unprecedented access to Mossad agents and an unparalleled knowledge of Israeli intelligence, Klein peels back the layers of myth and misinformation that have permeated previous books, films, and magazine articles about the “shadow war” against Black September and other terrorist groups.

Spycraft, secret diplomacy, and fierce detective work abound in a story with more drama than any fictional thriller. Burning questions are at last answered, including who was killed and who was not, how it was done, which targets were hit and which were missed. Truths are revealed: the degree to which the Mossad targeted nonaffiliated Black September terrorists for assassination, the length and full scope of the operation (far greater than previously suspected), retributive acts against Israel, and much more.

Finally, Klein shows that the Israeli response to Munich was not simply about revenge, as is popularly believed. By illuminating the tactical and strategic purposes of the Israeli operation, Striking Back allows us to draw profoundly relevant lessons from one of the most important counterterrorism campaigns in history.

Морские пути земного шара бороздят тысячи самых разнообразных судов, начиная от гигантов-танкеров и кончая малыми рыболовными сейнерами. Безопасность плавания судов зависит от надежности их конструкции, мореходных качеств, а также от квалификации, слаженности и дисциплинированности экипажей. Несмотря на принимаемые меры по обеспечению безопасности плавания, на море случаются аварии, столкновения, пожары, опрокидывания судов, и в эфир несутся тревожные сигналы судовых радиостанций — SOS!

В книге, основанной на фактическом материале, рассказано о наиболее характерных случаях аварий и гибели морских судов. Причинами этих происшествий были штормы и столкновения, пожары и посадки на мель. В книге приведены примеры спасения судов и их экипажей с применением новых средств, в том числе вертолетов. Ряд аварий судов освещается с инженерных позиций, вскрываются недочеты, имевшие место при проектировании, постройке или эксплуатации судов.

Книга рассчитана на широкие круги читателей.