Showing titles in 21st Century

Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks's #1 New York Times bestseller, transformed the political dialogue on the war in Iraq - The Gamble is the next news-breaking installment. Thomas E. Ricks uses hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top officers in Iraq and extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to document the inside story of the Iraq War since late 2005 as only he can, examining the events that took place as the military was forced to reckon with itself.

The definitive book on the hunt to find the most ruthless serial killer in Los Angeles' history, told by the fearless reporter who broke the story. In 2008, Christine Pelisek broke the story of a terrifying serial killer who went unchecked in Los Angeles for decades, killing the most vulnerable women in one South Central neighborhood.

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has been shaken to its core three times. September 11, 2001, the financial collapse of 2008 and - most of all - COVID-19. Each was an asymmetrical threat, different from anything the world had experienced before. Fareed Zakaria presents 10 surprising, hopeful and vital lessons for recovery in our age of asymmetry.

I Love Russia takes us to places that non-Russians have never seen and brings us voices we have never heard. It is Elena Kostyuchenko’s courageous attempt to document Russia as experienced by those whom it systematically and brutally erases: village girls recruited into sex work, queer people in the outer provinces, patients and doc­tors at a Ukrainian maternity ward, and reporters like herself. At once uncompromising and deeply humane, it stitches reportage and personal essays into a kaleidoscopic, often other-worldly journey. Here is Russia as it is, not as we imagine it.

Returning to the UK in September 2010 after serving in Iraq as the political adviser to the top American general, Emma Sky felt no sense of homecoming. She soon found herself back in the Middle East traveling through a region in revolt. In a Time of Monsters bears witness to the demands of young people for dignity and justice during the Arab Spring; the inability of sclerotic regimes to reform; the descent of Syria into civil war; the rise of the Islamic State; and the flight of refugees to Europe.

For many years after its reform and opening in 1978, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That role, reports Howard French, has been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian dominance by building its navy, increasing territorial claims to areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players.

This insightful study explores how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control over the country. By appointing his close associates as heads of state enterprises and by giving control of the FSB and the judiciary to his friends from the KGB, he has enriched his business friends from Saint Petersburg with preferential government deals. Thus, Putin has created a super wealthy and loyal plutocracy that owes its existence to authoritarianism.

If you think the wildest, wackiest stories that Carl Hiaasen can tell have all made it into his hilarious, bestselling novels, think again. Dance of the Reptiles collects the best of Hiaasen’s Miami Herald columns, which lay bare the stories—large and small—that demonstrate anew that truth is far stranger than fiction.

In Jawbreaker, Gary Berntsen, until recently one of the CIA's most decorated officers, comes out from under cover for the first time to describe his no-holds-barred pursuit of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an "American society" - one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy's winners and losers in today's France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on "the periphery".

The story of Paul LeRoux, the twisted genius entrepreneur and cold-blooded killer who brought revolutionary innovation to international crime, and the exclusive inside story of how the DEA’s elite, secretive 960 Group brought him down.

An immigrant with a parrot in Stockholm, a photo of a girl in Lviv, a sculpture of Alexander the Great in Skopje, a memorial ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the Soviet led army invasion of Prague: these are a few glimpses of life in Eastern Europe today. Three decades after the Velvet Revolution, Slavenka Drakulic, the author of Cafe Europa and A Guided Tour of the Museum of Communism, takes a look at what has changed and what has remained the same in the region in her daring new essay collection.

The past is another country, the old saying goes. The same might be said of the future. But which country? For Europeans and Americans today, the answer is Russia.Today's Russia is an oligarchy propped up by illusions and repression. But it also represents the fulfilment of tendencies already present in the West. And if Moscow's drive to dissolve Western states and values succeeds, this could become our reality, too. In this visionary work of contemporary history, Timothy Snyder shows how Russia works within the West to destroy the West.

No Shadows in the Desert reveals the untold story of the behind-the-scenes fight against ISIS - one coordinated by heads of state and ultimately fought in the alleyways and open deserts of the Middle Eastern battlefield by spies and soldiers. Samuel M. Katz draws upon his sources within the global intelligence and counterterrorism community, as well as the international special operations and espionage fraternity, to tell the story of the covert campaign against ISIS by the operatives who ventured deeply and secretly into enemy territory.

Here are the voices of London - rich and poor, native and immigrant, women and men. From the woman whose voice announces the stations on the London Underground to the man who plants the trees along Oxford Street; from a Pakistani currency trader to a Guardsman at Buckingham Palace - together, these voices paint a vivid, epic and wholly fresh portrait of 21st Century London.

Given how quickly its operations have achieved global impact, it may seem that the Islamic State materialized suddenly. In fact, al-Qaeda's operations chief, Sayf al-Adl, devised a seven-stage plan for jihadis to conquer the world by 2020 that included reestablishing the Caliphate in Syria between 2013 and 2016. Despite a massive schism between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, al-Adl's plan has proved remarkably prescient. In summer 2014, ISIS declared itself the Caliphate after capturing Mosul, Iraq - part of stage five in al-Adl's plan.

One by one, Tahir Hamut Izgil's friends disappeared. The Chinese government's brutal persecution of the Uyghur people had continued for years, but in 2017 it assumed a terrifying new scale. The Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group in western China, were experiencing an echo of the worst horrors of the twentieth century. Over a million people have vanished into China's internment camps for Muslim minorities. Waiting to Be Arrested at Night is the story of the political, social, and cultural destruction of Tahir Hamut Izgil's homeland.

The Iran Wars is an absorbing account of a battle waged on many levels - military, financial, and covert. Jay Solomon’s book is the product of extensive in-depth reporting and interviews with all the key players in the conflict - from high-ranking Iranian officials to Secretary of State John Kerry and his negotiating team. With a reporter’s masterly investigative eye and the narrative dexterity of a great historian, Solomon shows how Iran’s nuclear development went unnoticed for years by the international community only to become its top security concern.

Spain's transition to democracy after Franco's long dictatorship was widely hailed as a success, ushering in three decades of unprecedented progress and prosperity. Yet over the past decade, its political consensus has been under severe strain. A stable two-party system has splintered, with disruptive new parties on the far left and far right. No government has had a majority since 2015. Michael Reid overturns the stereotypical view of Spain as a country haunted by its Francoist past.

Told through the careers and life stories of some of the most high-profile women of the decade - including Britney Spears, Jennifer Aniston, Janet Jackson and Paris Hilton - Toxic explores how the media, empowered through the tools of the early internet age, created a new and brutal environment in which the rules of engagement between celebrities, the press and the public were changed.