'A lyrical investigation ... both powerful and transcendent' CHIGOZIE OBIOMA 'Acutely observed, hauntingly rendered and deeply affecting' AMINATTA FORNA 'Both epic and intimate' MARGO JEFFERSON An astonishing search for a missing person, the hidden tragedies of war and the truth of Nigeria's history. Emmanuel Iduma never met his uncle, his father's favourite brother and the man for whom he is named. The elder Emmanuel left home in 1967 to fight in the Biafran War and was not seen again. The war lasted for three years, with young Igbo men volunteering to fight for a breakaway republic in the chaotic wake of British decolonization. Around one hundred thousand others who fought in the war share a fate like Emmanuel's uncle, though there are no official records of these losses. The tensions that gave rise to the conflict remain live, threatening sometimes to bubble over. In this landscape, there are no monuments or graves. Instead, a collective remembering that remains, for the most part, silent. I Am Still with You sees a young Nigerian return to his place of birth. Travelling the route of the war, Iduma explores both a national history and the mysteries of his own family, finding both somewhat scarred and haunted, the memories warped by time and the darkest parts left for decades unspoken.

In 2008, the presidential election became blockbuster entertainment. Everyone was watching as the race for the White House unfolded like something from the realm of fiction. The meteoric rise and historic triumph of Barack Obama. The shocking fall of the House of Clinton--and the improbable resurrection of Hillary as Obama's partner and America's face to the world. The mercurial performance of John McCain and the mesmerizing emergence of Sarah Palin. But despite the wall-to-wall media coverage of this spellbinding drama, remarkably little of the real story behind the headlines had been told--until now.

In Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin pull back the curtain on the Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Palin campaigns. Based on hundreds of interviews with the people who lived the story, Game Change is a reportorial tour de force that reads like a fast-paced novel.

Photographs by Sanford Roth.

Party-States and their Legacies in Post-Communist Transformation is a unique investigation into the construction, operation, self-destruction and transition of Hungarian politics from the 1960s to the mid- 1990s. It presents a rich picture which draws upon an extraordinary body of data and provides not just simply a retrospective theoretical analysis of the system, but details of everyday life within the state apparatus. This remarkable book includes extensive interviews with over four hundred key individuals in the party, state and the economy from 1975 onwards. In addition, Dr Csanadi draws upon other unique empirical research including internal memos and secret state documents as well as a full range of studies by East and West European scholars to reveal the realities of the system as observed by those closest to it. She not only considers the workings of the system during the communist era, but also analyses the legacy it continues to exert on the period of the transformation. As such the book contributes to our understanding of the Hungarian transformation and sheds new light on how party states worked throughout Eastern and Central Europe during the communist era and what the consequences of their self-similar features on the transformation are. In addition the book offers comparisons with other formerly centrally planned systems to reveal the structural differences in the distribution of power in party states and the very different legacies they leave for post-communist transformation. This comprehensive book will be welcomed by researchers, academics and postgraduates interested in the politics, economics, history and political science of Hungary and other East and Central European countries in transition.

In the tradition of The Wire, the "utterly absorbing" (The New York Times) story of the cinematic transformation of Miami, one of America's bustling cities--rife with a drug epidemic, a burgeoning refugee crisis, and police brutality--from journalist and award-winning author Nicholas Griffin. Miami, Florida, famed for its blue skies and sandy beaches, is one of the world's most popular vacation destinations, with nearly twenty-three million tourists visiting annually. But few people have any idea how this unofficial capital of Latin America came to be. The Year of Dangerous Days is "an engrossing, peek-between-your-fingers history of an American city on the edge" (Kirkus Reviews). With a cast that includes iconic characters such as Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, and Janet Reno, this slice of history is brought to life through intertwining personal stories. At the core, there's Edna Buchanan, a reporter for the Miami Herald who breaks the story on the wrongful murder of a black man and the shocking police cover-up; Captain Marshall Frank, the hardboiled homicide detective tasked with investigating the murder; and Mayor Maurice Ferre, the charismatic politician who watches the case, and the city, fall apart. On a roller coaster of national politics and international diplomacy, these three figures cross paths as their city explores one of the worst race riots in American history as more than 120,000 Cuban refugees land south of Miami, and as drug cartels flood the city with cocaine and infiltrate all levels of law enforcement. In a battle of wills, Buchanan has to keep up with the 150 percent murder rate increase; Captain Frank has to scrub and rebuild his homicide bureau; and Mayor Ferre must find a way to reconstruct his smoldering city. Against all odds, they persevere, and a stronger, more vibrant, Miami begins to emerge. But the foundation of this new Miami--partially built on corruption and drug money--will have severe ramifications for the rest of the country. Deeply researched, "well-written" (New York Journal of Books), and covering many timely issues including police brutality, immigration, and the drug crisis, The Year of Dangerous Days is both a clarion call and a dramatic rebirth story of one of America's most iconic cities.

The summer of 2022 saw the celebration of the seventieth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, the first time in British history that a monarch has reached this remarkable milestone. As the event was the first of its kind to be televised, images from the ceremony inside Westminster Abbey are instantly recognisable. Far less familiar are the scenes in the streets outside, where huge crowds assembled to see a procession of state coaches and historic regiments marching past public buildings festooned with patriotic banners and colourful grandstands erected outside many famous landmarks. Using a private collection of more than 200 rare images of London's West End, Protect and Keep looks back to the day that the Queen pledged herself to her country. It provides a unique and precious record of an historic occasion: the day of the Coronation as it was seen by ordinary members of the public.

Angola has been embroiled in internal conflict since 1975. Yet despite countless casualties, two million displaced people and over 500,000 refugees, Western media have paid scant attention. This account provides an outline of key events and figures in recent Angolan history, offering first-hand reportage of how the revolution was deliberately derailed and the fabric of Angola systematically destroyed. Victoria Brittain describes the bombings and sabotage following Angola's invasion by South Africa in 1975 and examines the subsequent deployment of Cuban troops and the Soviet-supported MPLA's confrontations with a militia backed by the US, Morocco and Zaire. She looks at how Savimba's UNITA movement became a formidable army, and reveals his regime in Angola to be as brutal as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The author argues that the terrorism of thousands of people and their human rights violations have been largely hidden from the world by US-driven propaganda portraying Savimbi as a democrat.

A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR - 'a dark remembrance of 1953, when nuclear annihilation was only the press of a button away'. January 1953. Eight years on from the most destructive conflict in human history, the Cold War enters its deadliest phase. An Iron Curtain has descended across Europe, and hostilities have turned hot on the Korean peninsula as the United States and Soviet Union clash in an intractable and bloody proxy war. Former wartime allies have grown far apart. An ageing Winston Churchill, back in Downing Street, yearns for peace with the Kremlin - but new American President Dwight Eisenhower cautions the West not to drop its guard. Joseph Stalin, implacable as ever, conducts vicious campaigns against imaginary internal enemies. Meanwhile, the pace of the nuclear arms race has become frenetic. The Soviet Union has finally tested its own atom bomb, as has Britain. But in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the United States has detonated its first thermonuclear device, dwarfing the destruction unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For the first time, the Doomsday Clock is set at two minutes to midnight, with the risk of a man-made global apocalypse increasingly likely. As the Cold War powers square up, every city has become a potential battleground and every citizen a target. 1953 is set to be a year of living dangerously.

'Fascinating... One of the most astute political commentators on Putin and modern Russia' Financial Times 'An amazing achievement' Peter Frankopan Can anyone truly understand Russia? Russia is a country with no natural borders, no single ethos, no true central identity. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, it is everyone's 'other'. And yet it is one of the most powerful nations on earth, a master game-player on the global stage with a rich history of war and peace, poets and revolutionaries. In this essential whistle-stop tour of the world's most complex nation, Mark Galeotti takes us behind the myths to the heart of the Russian story: from the formation of a nation to its early legends - including Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great - to the rise and fall of the Romanovs, the Russian Revolution, the Cold War, Chernobyl and the end of the Soviet Union - plus the rise of a politician named Vladimir Putin, and the events leading to the Ukrainian war.

'Beautifully written and deeply researched' The Observer Upon victory in 1945, Britain still dominated the Middle East. But her motives for wanting to dominate this crossroads between Europe, Asia and Africa were changing. Where 'imperial security' - control of the route to India - had once been paramount, now oil was an increasingly important factor. So, too, was prestige. Ironically, the very end of empire made control of the Middle East precious in itself: on it hung Britain's claim to be a great power. Unable to withstand Arab and Jewish nationalism, within a generation the British were gone. But that is not the full story. What ultimately sped Britain on her way was the uncompromising attitude of the United States, which was determined to displace the British in the Middle East. Using newly declassified records and long-forgotten memoirs, including the diaries of a key British spy, James Barr tears up the conventional interpretation of this era in the Middle East, vividly portraying the tensions between London and Washington, and shedding an uncompromising light on the murkier activities of a generation of American and British diehards in the region, from the battle of El Alamein in 1942 to Britain's abandonment of Aden in 1967. Reminding us that the Middle East has always served as the arena for great power conflict, this is the tale of an internecine struggle in which Britain would discover that her most formidable rival was the ally she had assumed would be her closest friend. 'Bustles impressively with detail and anecdote' Sunday Times 'Consistently fascinating' The Spectator 'Barr draws on a rich and varied trove of sources to knit a sequence of dramatic episodes into an elegant whole. Great events march through these pages' Wall Street Journal

'A darkly entertaining tale about American espionage, set in an era when Washington's fear and skepticism about the agency resembles our climate today.' New York Times At the end of World War II, the United States dominated the world militarily, economically, and in moral standing - seen as the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear - to some - that the Soviet Union was already executing a plan to expand and foment revolution around the world. The American government's strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly-formed CIA. The Quiet Americans chronicles the exploits of four spies - Michael Burke, a charming former football star fallen on hard times, Frank Wisner, the scion of a wealthy Southern family, Peter Sichel, a sophisticated German Jew who escaped the Nazis, and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. The four ran covert operations across the globe, trying to outwit the ruthless KGB in Berlin, parachuting commandos into Eastern Europe, plotting coups, and directing wars against Communist insurgents in Asia. But time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination of stupidity and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government - and more profoundly, the decision to abandon American ideals. By the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union had a stranglehold on Eastern Europe, the US had begun its disastrous intervention in Vietnam, and America, the beacon of democracy, was overthrowing democratically elected governments and earning the hatred of much of the world. All of this culminated in an act of betrayal and cowardice that would lock the Cold War into place for decades to come. Anderson brings to the telling of this story all the narrative brio, deep research, sceptical eye, and lively prose that made Lawrence in Arabia a major international bestseller. The intertwined lives of these men began in a common purpose of defending freedom, but the ravages of the Cold War led them to different fates. Two would quit the CIA in despair, stricken by the moral compromises they had to make; one became the archetype of the duplicitous and destructive American spy; and one would be so heartbroken he would take his own life. Scott Anderson's The Quiet Americans is the story of these four men. It is also the story of how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world.

A BARACK OBAMA AND A BILL GATES SUMMER READING PICK 2022 A NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER 'This book helped me understand modern politics better' - Bill Gates, Summer Reading Pick 2022 'Superbly researched and written' - Francis Fukuyama, The Washington Post 'It's been a long time since I learned so much from one book.' - Rutger Bregman author of Utopia for Realists 'Powerful [and] intelligent.' - Fareed Zakaria, CNN America's political system isn't broken. The truth is scarier: it's working exactly as designed. In Why We're Polarized, Ezra Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America's deep political divisions, revealing how a system filled with rational, functional parts can combine into a dysfunctional whole. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump's rise to the Democratic Party's leftward shift to the politicisation of everyday culture. Klein shows how and why American politics polarised in the twentieth century, what that polarisation did to Americans' views of the world and one another, and how feedback loops between polarised political identities and polarised political institutions drive the system toward crisis. This revelatory book will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself.

A fascinating insight into the complexity, history and unpredictability of Iraq. By September 2003, six months after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the anarchy had begun. Rory Stewart, a young Biritish diplomat, was appointed as the Coalition Provisional Authority's deputy governor of a province of 850,000 people in the southern marshland region. There, he and his colleagues confronted gangsters, Iranian-linked politicians, tribal vendettas and a full Islamist insurgency. Occupational Hazards is Rory Stewart's inside account of the attempt to rebuild a nation, the errors made, the misunderstandings and insurmountable difficulties encountered. It reveals an Iraq hidden from most foreign journalists and soldiers. Stewart is an award-winning writer, gifted with extraordinary insight into the comedy, occasional heroism and moral risks of foreign occupation. 'Beautifully written, highly evocative . . . a joy to read' - John Simpson 'A marvellous book . . . a devastating narrative' - Simon Jenkins 'Absolutely absorbing' - Ken Loach 'Strikes gut and brain at once' - James Meek 'Wonderfully observed, wise, evocative' - Observer

A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year 2022 'I can't tell you how refreshing it is in these polarised times to read a book on politics that doesn't have an axe to grind . . . an essential read.' The Sunday Times 'Subtle, sophisticated . . . compellingly told . . . This is a gentle and intelligent book, refreshingly unpolemical and reflective.' Observer Book of the Week Jason Cowley, editor-in-chief of the New Statesman, examines contemporary England through a handful of the key news stories from recent times to reveal what they tell us about the state of the nation and to answer the question Who Are We Now? Spanning the years since the election of Tony Blair's New Labour government to the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, the book investigates how England has changed and how those changes have affected us. Cowley weaves together the seemingly disparate stories of the Chinese cockle-pickers who drowned in Morecambe Bay, the East End Imam who was tested during a summer of terror, the pensioner who campaigned against the closure of her GP's surgery and Gareth Southgate's transformation of English football culture. And in doing so, Cowley shows the common threads that unite them, whether it is attitudes to class, nation, identity, belonging, immigration, or religion. He also examines the so-called Brexit murder in Harlow, the haunting repatriation of the fallen in the Iraq and Afghan wars through Wootton Bassett, the Lancashire woman who took on Gordon Brown, and the flight of the Bethnal Green girls to Islamic State, fleshing out the headlines with the very human stories behind them. Through these vivid and often moving stories, Cowley offers a clear and compassionate analysis of how and why England became so divided and the United Kingdom so fragmented, and how we got to this cultural and political crossroads. Most importantly, he also shows us the many ways in which there is genuine hope for the future.

'I get enormously impressed when she walks into a room,' Princess Margaret once said of her sister. 'It's a kind of magic.' Prince William recalled, 'As I learned growing up, you don't mess with your grandmother. What she says goes.' In the year of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, royal biographer Ian Lloyd reveals the woman behind the legend over 70 themed chapters. Drawing on interviews with relatives, friends and courtiers, he explores her relationship with seven generations of the royal family, from the children of Queen Victoria to Elizabeth's own great-grandchildren. He also sheds light on some lesser-known aspects of her character, such as her frugality and her gift for mimicry. In addition, we see her encounters with A-listers, from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna, and her adept handling of several of the twentieth century's most difficult leaders. Above all, Lloyd examines how the Queen has stayed true to the promise she made to the nation at the age of 21, 'that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service'.

Kate Webb, an Australian iconoclast, Catherine Leroy, a French dare devil photographer, and Frances FitzGerald, a blue-blood American intellectual, arrived in Vietnam with starkly different life experiences but one shared purpose: to report on the most consequential story of the decade. At a time when women were considered unfit to be foreign reporters, Frankie, Catherine and Kate paid their own way to war, arrived without jobs, challenged the rules imposed on them by the military, ignored the belittlement and resentment of their male peers and found new ways to explain the war through the people who lived through it. In You Don't Belong Here, Elizabeth Becker uses these women's work and lives to illuminate the Vietnam War from the 1965 American buildup, through the Tet Offensive, the expansion into Cambodia, the American defeat and its aftermath. Arriving herself in the last years of the war, Elizabeth writes as an historian and a witness to what these women accomplished. What emerges is an unforgettable story of three journalists forging their place in a land of men, often at great personal sacrifice, and forever altering the craft of war reportage for generations. Deeply reported and filled with personal letters, interviews, and profound insight, You Don't Belong Here fills a void in the history of women and of war.

From government ministers and spies to activists, drag queens and celebrities, Odd men out charts the tumultuous history of gay men in 1950s and 60s Britain. It takes us from the earliest tentative steps towards decriminalisation to the liberation movement of the early 1970s. Along the way, it catalogues shocking repression, including laws against homosexual activity and the use of brutal medical 'treatments'. Odd men out draws on medical data and opinion polls, broadcast recordings, theatrical productions, and extensive interviews with key players, as well as an in-depth analysis of the Wolfenden Report and the circumstances surrounding its creation. It brings to life pivotal moments in gay mens' cultural representation, ranging across the West End and emerging writers like Joe Orton, the British film industry, the BBC, national newspapers, fashion catalogues and music magazines. Celebrating the joy of gay lives as well as the hardships, Odd men out preserves the voices of a disappearing generation who revolutionised what it meant to be a gay man in twentieth-century Britain. -- .

"Salon "founder David Talbot chronicles the cultural history of San Francisco and from the late 1960s to the early 1980s when figures such as Harvey Milk, Janis Joplin, Jim Jones, and Bill Walsh helped usher from backwater city to thriving metropolis.

Nina Anisimova was born in 1909 in imperial St Petersburg. One of the most renowned character dancers of the Stalinist period, she won her way into the hearts of her audience over many decades. Yet few knew that her exemplary career was a fragile construct built atop a dark secret. In 1938, at the height of the Great Terror, Nina vanished. Only a handful of people knew that this famous dancer had not only been arrested by Secret Police as a Nazi Spy, but sentenced to forced labour in a camp in Kazakhstan. There, her art would become a salvation, giving her a reason to fight for her life when she found herself without winter clothes in temperatures of minus 40 degrees. Over the coming weeks, Nina's husband, Kostia Derzhavin, began to piece together what had happened to his wife. What he decided to do next was almost without precedent - to take on the ruthless Soviet state to prove her innocence. He would put himself in danger to save the woman he loved. Dancing for Stalin is a remarkable true story of suffering and injustice of courage, resilience and love.

A Times Political Book of the Year 2022 A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war's echoing legacy. Elliot Ackerman left the American military ten years ago, but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and, later, as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indelibly. When the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August of 2021 and the Afghan regime began its death spiral, he found himself pulled back into the conflict. The official evacuation process was a bureaucratic failure that led to a humanitarian catastrophe. Ackerman was drawn into an impromptu effort to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds. These were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to America's longest war, but the success they achieved afforded a degree of redemption: and, for Ackerman, a chance to reconcile his past with his present. The Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week at its bitter end. Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice, Ackerman weaves in a personal history of the war's long progress, beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9/11. It is a play in five acts with a tragic denouement. Any reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the war's trajectory will find a trenchant accounting here. And yet The Fifth Act is not an exercise in finger-pointing: it brings readers into close contact with a remarkable group of characters, who fought the war with courage and dedication, in good faith and at great personal cost. Understanding combatants' experiences and sacrifices demands reservoirs of wisdom and the gifts of an extraordinary storyteller. In Elliot Ackerman, this story has found that author.The Fifth Act is a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic.

David Danelo spent three months traveling the 1,952 miles that separate the United States and Mexico - a journey that took him across four states and two countries through a world of rivers and canals, mountains and deserts, highways and dirt roads, fences and border towns. Here the border isn't just an abstraction thrown around in political debates in Washington; it's a physical reality, infinitely more complex than most politicians believe. Danelo's investigative report about a complex, longstanding debate that became a central issue of the 2016 presidential race examines the border in human terms through a cast of colorful characters. As topical today as it was when Danelo made his trek, this revised and updated edition asks and answers the core questions: Should we close the border? Is a fence or wall the answer? Is the U.S. government capable of fully securing the border?