World

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values.

A powerful, fascinating, and groundbreaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the US confronted the USSR during the Cold War....

From the recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize comes an impassioned and inspiring memoir that chronicles her career fighting fascism, filled with insights and advice for standing against authoritarian bullies and confronting disinformation and lies. It includes a foreword by Amal Clooney.

A landmark history of 100 years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history....

Senator Tom Cotton offers an unflinching look at the deadly threat of Communist China and reveals the truth about America’s most dangerous enemy.“

A bestselling national security expert delivers a chilling analysis of how Western indecision and apathy made possible the return of brutal Russian expansionism—with catastrophic consequences.

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilizations....

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dead Hand comes the riveting story of the CIA's most valuable spy in the Soviet Union and an evocative portrait of the agency's Moscow station....

This is a story about the dirty secrets of the most powerful people in the world—including Donald Trump. From Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat was used in operations far more sinister than the public could ever imagine....

A leading national security expert lays out how the U. S. can keep its place as the world’s top superpower in the face of a rising China....

One of the US government's leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country's rise - and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us....

Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. This essential audiobook is crucial to understanding the real powers at play in the shadows of today’s world....

The shocking inside story of how the Wagner Group made private military companies inextricable from Russia’s anti-Western foreign strategy.

When Hisham Matar was a 19-year-old student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison....

What would it feel like To Run the World? The Soviet rulers spent the Cold War trying desperately to find out.

In 1967, not long after the Six-Day War, three young Arab men ventured into the town of Ramle, in what is now Jewish Israel....

When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre", describing her work as "a history of emotions - a history of the soul"....

A thrilling firsthand account by husband-and-wife ex-CIA operatives....

Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, with disturbing resonances for our own time....

The Last Punisher is a bold, no-holds-barred first-person account of the Iraq War. With wry humor and moving testimony, Kevin Lacz tells the story of his tour in Iraq with SEAL Team Three....

Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return."

Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world....

In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative élan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalin’s court from the time of his acclamation as “leader” in 1929, five years after Lenin’s death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of 73....

World-renowned economist and professor at the London School of Economics Keyu Jin presents a myth-dispelling, comprehensive guide to the Chinese economy and its path to ascendancy....

No Mission Is Impossible sheds light on some of the most harrowing, nail-biting operations of the Israeli special forces....

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, six US presidential administrations of both parties pursued policies for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia that emboldened Russia, playing into its imperialist, centuries-long mythos of regional hegemony. The result: military aggression and full-scale invasion. It was all too foreseeable. In The Folly of Realism, leading national security expert and bestselling author Alexander Vindman argues that America’s mistakes in Eastern Europe result from policymakers’ fixation on immediate, short-term problem-solving and misplaced hopes and fears.

As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege.

With the rigorous scholarship he brought to his influential Orientalism and an exile's passion (he is Palestinian by birth), Edward W. Said traces the fatal collision between two peoples in the Middle East and its repercussions in the lives of both the occupier and the occupied--as well as in the conscience of the West.

Dually armed with military and strategic prowess, the Wagner Group created a new market in a vast geopolitical landscape increasingly receptive to the promises of private actors. In this trailblazing account of the Group’s origins and operations, John Lechner—the only journalist to report across its many warzones—brings us on the ground to witness Wagner partner with fragile nation states, score access to natural resources, oust peacekeeping missions, and cash in on conflicts reframed as Kremlin interests.

Mosab Hassan Yousef has worn many labels: Hamas terrorist, Green Prince, spy, traitor, hero, Hollywood player, Muslim, Christian, yogi, stateless, refugee, deportee, citizen. But all these labels have one thing in common: they serve someone else’s agenda. Now, for the first time, the New York Times bestselling author of Son of Hamas tells the full truth of his story.

The Baltic's time has come. It is not only critical to Europe's security and increasingly a centre of political and military power in its own right; it is a reservoir of ideas and experiences that could shape the continent's future. This books explores the history, their culture, their peculiarities and national dilemmas of all nine Baltic countries. At its core is a search for fresh answers to Europe's problems, at a point where the continent's previously dominant powers appear tired and divided.

This Very Short Introduction provides a guide to understanding Russian Politics that goes beyond the headlines, offering a vivid account of the key forces driving Russian politics. It places Russia in a global context while explaining its internal political development. Several major themes run through the book, including the primacy of the state over society, the role of the so-called "West," which has represented a source of inspiration, of threat, and of competition for generations of Russians, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Using granular data and authoritative Chinese sources, Oriana Skylar Mastro demonstrates that China was able to climb to great power status through a careful mix of strategic emulation, exploitation, and entrepreneurship on the international stage. This “upstart approach”—determined by where and how China chose to compete—allowed China to rise economically, politically, and militarily, without triggering a catastrophic international backlash that would stem its rise.

This is the definitive, inside story of Ukraine's long fight for freedom. Told through Miller’s personal experiences, vivid front-line dispatches and illuminating interviews with unforgettable characters, The War Came To Us takes listeners on a riveting journey through the key locales and pivotal events of Ukraine’s modern history.

On March 22, 2023, the Swedish Academy organized a conference on threats to democracy and freedom of expression featuring a slate of distinguished speakers including Arundhati Roy, Timothy Snyder, and Sofi Oksanen. Oksanen’s address—entitled “Putin's War on Women”— would go on to spark such interest that the acclaimed Finnish writer felt compelled to return to it as the basis for a larger, more in-depth look at Putin’s threat to women. The result is Same River, Twice, a devastating book-length essay that incisively builds on the themes and arguments first presented in her powerful speech.