NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'Hilarious, nimble, and thoroughly illuminating' Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad 'Recalls the work of John Jeremiah Sullivan and the late David Foster Wallace, with a dash of Janet Malcolm' Vogue From its opening journey into remote Alaska for the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, IMPOSSIBLE OWLS leads us on a kaleidoscopic exploration of contemporary reality. Brian Phillips takes us to a sumo tournament in Japan, the jungle in India, the studio of a great Russian animator, a royal tour of the Yukon Territory with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and into the weird heart of America. This exhilarating debut visits borders both real and imagined, and asks what it means, in our age, to travel to the end of the map.

The Pyramid of Lies by international financial journalist Duncan Mavin, is the true story of Lex Greensill, the Australian farmer who became a hi-flying billionaire banker before crashing back down to earth, exposing a tangled network of flawed financiers, politicians and industrialists. Lex Greensill had a simple, billion-dollar idea - democratising supply chain finance. Suppliers want to get their invoices paid as soon as possible. Companies want to hold off as long as they can. Greensill bridged the two, it's mundane, boring even, but he saw an opportunity to profit. However, margins are thin and Lex, ever the risk taker, made lucrative loans with other people's money: to a Russian cargo plane linked to Vladmir Putin, to former Special Forces who ran a private army, and crucially to companies that were fraudulent or had no revenue. When the company finally collapsed it exposed the revolving door between Westminster and big business and how David Cameron was allowed to lobby ministers for cash that would save Greensill's doomed business. Instead, Credit Suisse and Japan's SoftBank are nursing billions of dollars in losses, a German bank is under criminal investigation, and thousands of jobs are at risk. What Bad Blood did for Silicon Valley and The Smartest Guys in the Room did for Wall Street, The Pyramid of Lies will do for the world of shadow banking and supply chain finance. It is a world populated with some of the most outlandish characters in business and some of the most outrageous examples of excess. It is a story of greed and ambition that shines a light on the murky intersection between politics and business, where lavish fortunes can be made and lost.

The Best American Magazine Writing 2019 presents articles honored by this year's National Magazine Awards, showcasing outstanding writing that addresses urgent topics such as justice, gender, power, and violence, both at home and abroad. The anthology features remarkable reporting, including the story of a teenager who tried to get out of MS-13, only to face deportation (ProPublica); an account of the genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar (Politico); and a sweeping California Sunday Magazine profile of an agribusiness empire. Other journalists explore the indications of environmental catastrophe, from invasive lionfish (Smithsonian) to the omnipresence of plastic (National Geographic). Personal pieces consider the toll of mass incarceration, including Reginald Dwayne Betts's "Getting Out" (New York Times Magazine); "This Place Is Crazy," by John J. Lennon (Esquire); and Robert Wright's "Getting Out of Prison Meant Leaving Dear Friends Behind" (Marshall Project with Vice). From the pages of the Atlantic and the New Yorker, writers and critics discuss prominent political figures: Franklin Foer's "American Hustler" explores Paul Manafort's career of corruption; Jill Lepore recounts the emergence of Ruth Bader Ginsburg; and Caitlin Flanagan and Doreen St. Felix reflect on the Kavanaugh hearings and #MeToo. Leslie Jamison crafts a portrait of the Museum of Broken Relationships (Virginia Quarterly Review), and Kasey Cordell and Lindsey B. Koehler ponder "The Art of Dying Well" (5280). A pair of never-before-published conversations illuminates the state of the American magazine: New Yorker writer Ben Taub speaks to Eric Sullivan of Esquire about pursuing a career as a reporter, alongside Taub's piece investigating how the Iraqi state is fueling a resurgence of ISIS. And Karolina Waclawiak of BuzzFeed News interviews McSweeney's editor Claire Boyle about challenges and opportunities for fiction at small magazines. That conversation is inspired by McSweeney's winning the ASME Award for Fiction, which is celebrated here with a story by Lesley Nneka Arimah, a magical-realist tale charged with feminist allegory.

'No one else can make me laugh and cry quite like Jilly Cooper.' Gill Sims 'Jilly Cooper's non-fiction is just as entertaining as her novels.' Pandora Sykes ____________________ 'One truth I have learnt, as middle age enmeshes me like Virginia creeper, is that I shall never change-because my capacity for self-improvement is absolutely nil.' Jilly Cooper's observations from her days as a much-loved newspaper columnist cover everything to do with sex, socialising and survival - from marriage, friendship and the minutiae of family life, to the tedium of going to visit people for the weekend, the stress of hosting dinner parties and the descent of middle age. Entertaining and full of heart, this classic collection of journalism from the legendary author explores the highs and lows of everyday life with wit, wisdom and warmth. Praise for Jilly Cooper: 'Joyful and mischievous' Jojo Moyes 'Fun, sexy and unputdownable' Marian Keyes 'Flawlessly entertaining' Helen Fielding

This short book calls to account the government misrulers and corporate criminals who made suffering from the global coronavirus pandemic more acute. Modeled on a famous 1940 bestseller--a pamphlet exposing appeasers of Nazi Germany--Guilty Men shows how the crisis has been stoked by the callous and opportunistic decisions of powerful men. The rogues gallery begins with Donald Trump, who deliberately downplayed the crisis despite knowing its dangers, as well as his international political allies, above all Boris Johnson. Billionaire politicians like Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler moved stocks at the same time they were telling Americans all was well . Political charlatans like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos undermined public safety in order to advance their agenda, Trump-controlled agencies, led by the ever-crooked Federal Reserve, bailed out Wall Street while failing to provide basic relief for workers. Libertarian "think tanks" like the Ayn Rand Institute decried public expenditures but were first in line to get bailout checks. Pharmaceutical companies gamed the vaccine race, and the most rapacious global corporations like Facebook, Visa, and Pfizer have found the pandemic to be very profitable indeed, vastly enriching the already grotesquely bloated fortunes of trillionaires like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Charles Koch. Guilty Men closes with a call for a version of the Pecora Commission, initiated by newly elected Franklin Roosevelt, that took aim at what FDR called "speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, and profiteering" that stoked the Depression. The commission led to some of the most far-reaching reforms in US history, as well as sensational hearings that led to the fall of the leading bankers and financiers of that era.

In Dreams of Leaving and Remaining, award winning journalist Meek explores a nation uneasy with itself. In the decades since the twilight of empire, Britain has struggled to find its place, and identity, in the world. This has come to the point of crisis since the 2008 financial crash. Meek meets the farmers and fishermen who wish Britain to turn its back on the world and restore its former glory, and are willing to lose the very support that their industry depends on. He reports on a Cadbury's factory that is to be shut down and moved to Poland in the name of free market economics, exploring the impact on the local community left behind. He charts how the NHS is coping with the twin burdens of austerity and an ageing population. Through his journey he asks what we can recover from the debris of an old nation as we head towards new horizons, and what we must leave behind. There are no easy answers, and what he creates instead is a masterly portrait of an anxious, troubled nation. Instead, he demands that we reconsider the power of the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, a nation's alienated from itself.

"Much madness is divinest sense," wrote Emily Dickinson, "And much sense the starkest madness." The idea that poetry and madness are deeply intertwined, and that madness sometimes leads to the most divine poetry, has been with us since antiquity. In his critical and clinical introduction to this splendid anthology--the first of its kind--psychiatrist and poet Mark S. Bauer considers mental disorders from multiple perspectives and challenges us to broaden our outlook. He has selected more than 200 poems from across seven centuries that reflect a wide range mental states--from despondency and despair to melancholy, mania, and complete submersion into a world of heightened, original perception. Featuring such poets as George Herbert, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Ann Sexton, Weldon Kees, Lucille Clifton, Jane Kenyon, and many others, A Mind Apart has much to offer those who suffer from mental illness, those who work to understand it, and all those who value the poetry that has come to us from the heights and depths of human experience.

'And O, Angelica, what has become of you, this present Sunday morning when I can't attend to the sermon; and, more difficult question than that, what has become of Me as I was when I sat by your side?' At the height of his career, around the time he was working on Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens wrote a series of sketches, mostly set in London, which he collected as The Uncommercial Traveller. In the persona of 'the Uncommercial', Dickens wanders the city streets and brings London, its inhabitants, commerce and entertainment vividly to life. Sometimes autobiographical, as childhood experiences are interwoven with adult memories, the sketches include visits to the Paris Morgue, the Liverpool docks, a workhouse, a school for poor children, and the theatre. They also describe the perils of travel, including seasickness, shipwreck, the coming of the railways, and the wretchedness of dining in English hotels and restaurants. The work is quintessential Dickens, with each piece showcasing his imaginative writing style, his keen observational powers, and his characteristic wit. In this edition Daniel Tyler explores Dickens's fascination with the city and the book's connections with concerns evident in his fiction: social injustice, human mortality, a fascination with death and the passing of time. Often funny, sometimes indignant, always exuberant, The Uncommercial Traveller is a revelatory encounter with Dickens, and the Victorian city he knew so well.

Fully updated from the original edition. As the retreat from Kabul shows, America goes to war not to bring democracy, or glory, but in the pursuit of profit. In The Spoils of War, leading Washington reporter, Andrew Cockburn, reveals the extent of the rot that stretches from the Pentagon and the White House, to Wall St and Silicon Valley. The American war machine can only be understood in terms of the "private passions" and "interests" of those who control it - principally a passionate interest in money. Thus, as he witheringly reports, Washington expanded NATO to satisfy an arms manufacturer's urgent financial requirements; the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet deployments were for years dictated by a corrupt contractor who bribed high-ranking officers with cash and prostitutes; senior marine commanders agreed to a troop surge in Afghanistan in 2017 "because it will do us good at budget time." Based on years of wide-ranging research, Cockburn lays bare the ugly reality of the largest military machine in history: squalid, and at the same time terrifyingly dangerous.

'...a good bit of spice to give the critlings a flavour, and plenty of treacle to make the mince-meat look rich' Radical Victorian reformer Henry Mayhew walked the streets of London interviewing ordinary flower girls, market traders, piemen and costermongers to create the first ever work of mass social observation, and the ultimate account of urban life - including an extraordinary description of the city from a hot air balloon. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Henry Mayhew (1812-1887). Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor is available in Penguin Classics.

Europe is facing a wave of migration unmatched since the end of World War II - and no one has reported on this crisis in more depth or breadth than the Guardian's migration correspondent, Patrick Kingsley. Throughout 2015, Kingsley travelled to 17 countries along the migrant trail, meeting hundreds of refugees making epic odysseys across deserts, seas and mountains to reach the holy grail of Europe. This is Kingsley's unparalleled account of who these voyagers are. It's about why they keep coming, and how they do it. It's about the smugglers who help them on their way, and the coastguards who rescue them at the other end. The volunteers that feed them, the hoteliers that house them, and the border guards trying to keep them out. And the politicians looking the other way.

This volume of the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the second volume of Wilde's journalism. Throughout the 1880s Oscar Wilde devoted the greater part of his creative energies to working as a professional journalist and he was prepared to write on a remarkable range of topics - from cookery books to lyric poetry, from classical translations to three-volume novels, from dress reform to transatlantic visitors. He also reviewed theatrical productions and art exhibitions of many kinds. Between 1887 and 1889 he edited the pioneering Woman's World magazine to which he contributed lengthy columns discussing literary and other matters of interest to an educated female readership. This is the first comprehensive edition of Wilde's journalism since 1908. It includes all of his known contributions, both signed and anonymous, to periodicals and newspapers. Of the more than 150 items - reviews, articles, editorials - a significant number have been identified for the first time, while the authenticity of others previously thought to be by Wilde is questioned. An extensive commentary offers the sources for Wilde's extraordinary cultural knowledge and provides cross-references to his oeuvre as whole. In the case of the book reviews, the commentary indicates relevant pages and passages in the works under discussion. Uniquely witty, intellectually acute, and socially aware Wilde's journalism not only displays the extensive reading and stylistic experimentation that prepared the way for his major works of the 1890s, it provides an essential record of the vibrant and rapidly changing journalistic culture in which he played a major part. This second volume of journalism presents all of Wilde's journalistic writings published between November 1887 and April 1895. It also contains a section of 'Dubia', which contains items where a degree of uncertainty regarding Wilde's authorship remains.

This volume of the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the first volume of Wilde's journalism. Throughout the 1880s Oscar Wilde devoted the greater part of his creative energies to working as a professional journalist and he was prepared to write on a remarkable range of topics - from cookery books to lyric poetry, from classical translations to three-volume novels, from dress reform to transatlantic visitors. He also reviewed theatrical productions and art exhibitions of many kinds. Between 1887 and 1889 he edited the pioneering Woman's World magazine to which he contributed lengthy columns discussing literary and other matters of interest to an educated female readership. This is the first comprehensive edition of Wilde's journalism since 1908. It includes all of his known contributions, both signed and anonymous, to periodicals and newspapers. Of the more than 150 items - reviews, articles, editorials - a significant number have been identified for the first time, while the authenticity of others previously thought to be by Wilde is questioned. An extensive commentary offers the sources for Wilde's extraordinary cultural knowledge and provides cross-references to his oeuvre as whole. In the case of the book reviews, the commentary indicates relevant pages and passages in the works under discussion. Uniquely witty, intellectually acute, and socially aware Wilde's journalism not only displays the extensive reading and stylistic experimentation that prepared the way for his major works of the 1890s, it provides an essential record of the vibrant and rapidly changing journalistic culture in which he played a major part.

This book concentrates on Russia-related Pulitzer Prize-winning reports and editorial cartoons from leading American newspapers. The reports cover the span from the early stages of the Soviet Union under Lenin through to the Russian Federation under Putin. American top journalists and cartoonists show the suppression system of the Stalin era to Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika movement and the events thereafter. Each story is told on the basis of the original newspaper sources, the biography of the award-winners, and the confidential jury reports of the Pulitzer Prize juries, disclosing the decision-making processes. (Series: Pulitzer Prize Panorama - Vol. 5)

Trouens en terloops is 'n samestelling van Valiant Swart se rubrieke wat in Baba & Kleuter, Rapport en Rooi Rose verskyn het. Valiant skryf met deernis van die mense om hom, sy dogtertjie se grootword, sy seun se tienerjare en vriende en familie wat sy lewe raak. Vervleg deur die stories maak die leser kennis met sy gesin, Valiant die musikant, die mense wat hy ontmoet en dit wat hom raak wanneer hy terugkeer na sy reise.

A powerful and authoritative selection of critical essays and reviews by poet Padraic Fallon. Skilfully compiled and edited by his son Brian Fallon, this book is published to mark the centenary of his father's birth, and testifies to the enduring value of literature in the flux of the twenty-first century. Padraic Fallon (1905 - 1974), one of the foremost Irish poets of his generation and a prolific writer of radio plays, was also an active essay-reviewer in the leading periodicals of his day. His literary criticism was incisive and witty, his erudition lightly worn. Disinterred from old files of The Bell, The Dublin Magazine and The Irish Times, his work remains fresh and readable decades on. Fallon writes authoritatively about the key figures of the Literary Revival: Gregory, Yeats, Stephans, Synge, Shaw and O'Casey - he knew many of them - and also of his contemporaries F.R. Higgins and Austin Clarke, with whom he shared a dedicated engagement with the Irish tradition. He comines frank judgements of Eliot, Pound, Graves, Auden, Gunn, Lowell, Larkin, Kinsella and others with fascinating detours into an East Galway childhood and the folk memories of Antony Raftery. The book is built around a core of previously uncollected work, beginning with the controversial, highly influential 'Poet's Journal' (The Bell, 1951-2) and closing with the wide-ranging 'Verse Chronicles' (Dublin Magazine, 1956-8).

"International journalism at its best."--Stephen Kinzer

"Every conflict spawns a handful of journalists who are willing to not only brave the war zone but to seek out the stories ignored by the press pack. The Iraq War has brought us Dahr Jamail. . . . I suspect Jamail's account will prove an enduring document of what really happened during the chaotic years of occupation, and how it transformed ordinary Iraqis. . . . It tells everything."--"Mother Jones"

"From the earliest days of the war, Dahr Jamail has been a human conduit for the voices of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. In the face of tremendous personal risk, his commitment to the crucial, principled task of bearing witness has never wavered, and this extraordinary book is the result."--Naomi Klein

Named by AlterNet as one of the top three progressive books of 2007 alongside Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine "and Jeremy Scahill's "Blackwater," Dahr Jamail's "Beyond the Green Zone" goes past the polished desks of the corporate media and Washington politicians to tell first hand of the reality of life in Iraq.

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who has covered the Middle East for more than four years. Jamail writes for the Inter Press Service and many other outlets and is a regular guest on "Democracy Now ." He lives in California.

Amy Goodman is a best-selling author and the host of "Democracy Now ."

The yearly volumes of Censored, in continuous publication since 1976 and since 1995 available through Seven Stories Press, is dedicated to the stories that ought to be top features on the nightly news, but that are missing because of media bias and self-censorship. The top stories are listed democratically in order of importance according to students, faculty, and a national panel of judges. Each of the top stories is presented at length, alongside updates from the investigative reporters who broke the stories.

From the earliest FA Cup finals in the 1870s played between teams of former public schoolboys, to twenty-first-century Champions League matches contested by teams of billionaires - with stops along the way for Leicester City's extraordinary Premier League triumph, the Hand of God, and the 1966 World Cup - this is football history as it happened, straight from the pages of The Times. 'The players came off arm in arm. They knew they had finally fashioned something of which to be proud.'