Showing titles in 21st Century

For three years, Tom Burgis followed a lead that took him deeper and deeper into Cuckooland – the place where the rich own the truth. The trail snaked from the Kremlin to Kathmandu, Stockholm to the Steppe, from a blood-soaked town square in Uzbekistan to a royal retreat in Scotland. Burgis hunted down oligarchs, developed secret sources and traced vast sums of money flowing between multinational corporations, ex-Soviet dictators and the west’s ruling elites. And he found one man who wanted the power to bend reality to his will.

Conventional wisdom in the West blames the Ukraine crisis on Russian aggression. But this account is wrong: Washington and its European allies actually share most of the responsibility, having spent decades pushing east into Russia’s natural sphere of interest.

In Helmand province in July 2006, Major Adam Jowett was given command of Easy Company, a hastily assembled and understrength unit of Paras and Royal Irish rangers. Their mission was to hold the District Centre of Musa Qala at any cost. Easy Company found themselves in a ramshackle compound, cut off and heavily outnumbered by the Taliban in the town.

Deadliest Sea by Kalee Thompson is the spellbinding true story of the greatest rescue in US Coast Guard history. Recounting the tragic sinking of the fishing trawler, Alaska Ranger, in the Bering Sea and its remarkable aftermath in March 2008, Deadliest Sea is real-life action and adventure at its finest. The full story of an amazing rescue - where extraordinary courage, ingenuity, will, and technology combined in one of the most remarkable maritime feats ever recorded - has never been told before now. It’s The Perfect Storm meets Deadliest Catch.

During the peak of the Somali piracy crisis, three ships - from Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan - were hijacked and then abandoned to their fate by their employers, who lacked the money to pay ransoms. All would still be there, were it not for Colonel John Steed, a retired British military attaché, who launched his own private mission to free them. Author Colin Freeman, who has himself spent time held hostage by Somali pirates, takes listeners on an inside track into the world of hostage negotiation and one man’s heroic rescue mission.

From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. The Pentagon has officially confirmed more than 150 of Kyles kills (the previous American record was 109), but it has declined to verify the astonishing total number for this book. Iraqi insurgents feared Kyle so much they named him al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle earned legendary status among his fellow SEALs, Marines, and U.S. Army soldiers, whom he protected with deadly accuracy from rooftops and stealth positions.

After the overwhelming horrors of the first half of the 20th century, described by Ian Kershaw in his previous book as having gone 'to hell and back', the years from 1950 to 2017 brought peace and relative prosperity to most of Europe. Enormous economic improvements transformed the continent. The catastrophic era of the world wars receded into an ever more distant past, though its long shadow continued to shape mentalities. Europe was now a divided continent, living under the nuclear threat in a period intermittently fraught with anxiety.

Of the three dominant ideologies of the 20th century - fascism, communism, and liberalism - only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism's proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions.

Five years in the making, Cameron at 10 is the gripping inside story of the Cameron premiership, based on over 300 in-depth interviews with senior figures in 10 Downing Street, including the Prime Minister himself. As dusk descended on 11 May 2010, David Cameron entered 10 Downing Street as the youngest prime minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. He stood at the head of the first Coalition government in 65 years, with the country in dire economic straits following a deep financial crisis.

From the Pulitzer Prize winner and number one international best-selling author of The World Is Flat, an essential and entertaining field guide to thriving in the 21st century. We all sense it - something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your children. You can't miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are speeding up - and it is dizzying.

Historian and journalist Tony Perrottet chronicles the events of the Cuban Revolution and the figures at the center of the guerrilla uprising: Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and the scrappy band of rebel men and women who followed them. 

Included here is a selection of recordings of Federal Aviation Administration, Defense Department, and American Airlines communications from September 11, 2001. You will hear air traffic controllers, military aviation officers, airline and fighter jet pilots, as well as two of the hijackers, during two hours of that historic morning.

The British Secret Service has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created 100 years ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of James Bond and John le Carre. MI6 provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.

What do ordinary Russians think of Putin? Who are his supporters? And why might their support now be faltering? Alive with the voices and experiences of ordinary Russians and elites alike, Sam Greene and Graeme Robertson craft a compellingly original account of contemporary Russian politics.

This book is a comprehensive guide to modern Ukraine and to the versions of its past propagated by both Russians and Ukrainians. Andrew Wilson provides the most acute, informed, and up-to-date account available of the Ukrainians and their country. Concentrating on the complex relation between Ukraine and Russia, the book begins with the myth of common origin in the early medieval era, then looks closely at the Ukrainian experience under the tsars and Soviets, the experience of minorities in the country, and the path to independence in 1991.

Geography comes before history. Islands cannot have the same history as continental plains. The United Kingdom is a European country, but not the same kind of European country as Germany, Poland or Hungary. For most of the 150 centuries during which Britain has been inhabited it has been on the edge, culturally and literally, of mainland Europe.

New York City, 1972: Bobby Comfort and Sammy "the Arab" Nalo were highly skilled jewel thieves who specialized in robbing luxury Manhattan hotels. (They once robbed Sophia Loren's suite, relieving the Italian actress of over $1 million in gems.) With the blessing of the Lucchese crime family, their next plot targeted the posh Pierre Hotel - host to kings and queens, presidents and aldermen, and the wealthiest of the wealthy.

Codenamed Operation Telic, the British component of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the largest gathering of British troops since the Second World War. While the British public prepared for the worst as its soldiers were facing weapons of mass destruction, most servicemen and women were under no illusion that they were invading Iraq to rid the people of Saddam Hussein.

Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award and the basis of a major film adaptation, Seabiscuit is the true story of three men and their dreams for one racehorse. A story that symbolises a pivotal moment in US history, as modern America was born out of the crucible of the Depression and the new century’s greatest nation found the courage to bet on itself to win against the odds. In 1936, the habits of 19th-century America were finally consigned to history just as Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind was published.

In Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know®, New York Times best-selling author P. W. Singer and noted cyberexpert Allan Friedman team up to provide the kind of deeply informative resource book that has been missing on a crucial issue of 21st-century life. Written in a lively, accessible style, filled with engaging stories and illustrative anecdotes, the book is structured around the key question areas of cyberspace and its security: how it all works, why it all matters....