The Washington Post's former Baghdad bureau chief, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, takes us into the Green Zone, headquarters for the American occupation in Iraq. In this bubble separated from wartime realities, the task of reconstructing Iraq is in the hands of 20-somethings chosen for their Republican Party loyalty. They pursue irrelevant neoconservative solutions and pie-in-the-sky policies instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity, angering the locals and fueling the insurgency.

Long neglected in world history, the Ottoman Empire was a hub of intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. Yet, despite its towering influence and centrality to the rise of our modern world, the Ottoman Empire's history has for centuries been distorted, misrepresented, and even suppressed in the West. Now Alan Mikhail presents a vitally needed recasting of Ottoman history, retelling the story of the Ottoman conquest of the world through the dramatic biography of Sultan Selim I (1470-1520).

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker and the Years of Lyndon Johnson series: an unprecedented gathering of vivid, candid, deeply revealing recollections about his experiences researching and writing his acclaimed books.

This landmark book, first published in 1978, remains one of the most influential books in the Social Sciences, particularly Ethnic Studies and Postcolonialism. Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In Orientalism Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."

If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us.

The Middle East has long been a region of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and ambitions. All of these conflicts are rooted in the region's political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed by the Allies after the First World War. Author David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies drew lines on an empty map that remade the geography and politics of the Middle East. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when all seemed possible, he delivers in this sweeping and magisterial book the definitive account of this defining time.

Andrew Roberts' Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon's thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine.

After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon & Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other best sellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, and John le Carré - not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy.

The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic Asian antithesis of the Christian European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans’ multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe’s heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans’ remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, historian Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage.

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.

Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required listening for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

The first volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I chronicles the early history of Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia.

Stephen R. Platt is widely respected for his incisive nonfiction, particularly in regard to his knowledge and understanding of China. With Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, Platt details the absorbing narrative of the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in the loss of 20 million lives. Occurring in the 1850s, this is the story of a cultural movement characterized by intriguing personages such as influential military strategist Zeng Guofan and brilliant Taiping leader Hong Rengan.

Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: Defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off-course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives.

Since William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel in 1066 to defeat King Harold II and unite England’s various kingdoms, 41 kings and queens have sat on Britain’s throne. “Shining examples of royal power and majesty alongside a rogue’s gallery of weak, lazy, or evil monarchs,” as Tracy Borman describes them in her sparkling chronicle, Crown & Sceptre.

It's 1994, and three stand-up comedians have embarked on a tour of smaller communities across a remote stretch of rural countryside. Dale is a forty-something comic from Chicago who's on the back half of a mediocre career and thinking about quitting the business. Rynn is a twenty-something fast-rising comedy star from Dublin with a big Hollywood break on her horizon. The third performer is a local act, a late addition to the bill who has agreed to open the shows and do all the driving. He goes by the name Hobie Huge, and he is, indeed, enormous.

The crew of the Scarlet Gaze are figuring out what they want to do now that Lord Straik sa'Rin is no longer running a corsair ship. Some of the a'ani crew want to run a cantina on Risda III. Kazex just wants Ruthie. Ruthie just wants to have a nervous breakdown. Well, she wants Kazex, too. The delicious a'ani chief of security has been a steady, protective, delicious presence ever since she joined the crew. He's made it clear that he loves Ruthie as she is, nervous wreck and all. But Ruthie's afraid of what will happen to their easy friendship if she asks for more.

After an unsuccessful season in London, Miss Mary Mifford has returned to the village of Plumpton, determined to be the most upstanding spinster the Cotswolds have ever seen. Not even the arrival of the elusive Duke of Northcott can distract Mary from her plan; until the local rector is found bludgeoned to death and Mary is named as the prime suspect.

Life has a sick sense of humor. One minute, I'm arguing with my mobster ex while dripping wet in nothing but a towel. The next, he's dead on the floor, and I'm naked, vulnerable, and at the sole mercy of the most dangerous man in New York City. I've heard the rumors that all the mafia families bow to Creed Ferraro, but I never expected him to drag me into their world. Creed blames me for his brother's death, and now, I'm also a witness to his violent crime. I know the rules. In the mafia, witnesses and enemies don't get to live.

In a realm starved of magic, Vellene Winloc is next in line to inherit it, but her abusive, tyrannical father will never let her have it. Surrounded by the heads of her father's conquests, she must defy years of physical and emotional abuse if she ever wants to give the rage within her a voice. Out of his mind on drugs, Eledar Lirik is one of the last of the golem in the realm. After leading his species to their deaths, he traded heroism for drowning. That is until the mysterious, masked leader of a resistance group offers him a chance to steal the source of all magic.

Rhode Tremblay is Nashville's Naughtiest Hockey Player—at least, that's what everyone believes after the Tenerife Incident. With a thigh tattoo that's catnip for women and a wicked smirk that needs a warning label, everyone flocks to the NHL's resident bad boy. Sure, Rhode accidentally set a yacht on fire while bringing a woman to the brink of ecstasy, but that happened over a decade ago. Now, at thirty-three, Rhode's searching for something real. He's ready to get down on one knee for the right person, but he has one rule—no dating anyone under thirty.

An unforgettable tale of revenge and rebellion unfolds when a reckless king implements an ill-fated plan to end a thousand-year war in this relentlessly gripping epic fantasy debut.

When Luna is sold into marriage to the Prince of Darkness on her twenty-first birthday, she thinks she knows what to expect. Arranged marriages happen all the time, right? Wrong. No one could have prepared her for the reality of being married to the vampire prince. Ever since the day he was made, Sebastian has been living according to Queen Marguerite's rules. After all, he's only alive because of her. When she orders him to marry and bind himself to Luna, a human hailing a neighboring kingdom, he has no choice. He agrees to the marriage but never expects to feel anything for her.

As World War II comes to a close, the United States and the Soviet Union emerge as the two greatest world powers on extreme opposites of the political spectrum. After the United States showed its hand with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the Soviets refuse to be left behind. With communism sweeping the globe, the two nations begin a neck-and-neck competition to build even more destructive bombs and conquer the Space Race. In their battle for dominance, spy planes fly above, armed submarines swim deep below, and undercover agents meet in the dead of night.

Once there were three Irish sisters—Gwendolyn, Dara, and Elise—who had to fend for themselves when their gambler of a father disappeared, leaving them with an unscrupulous cousin. Dara hatches a daring plan: they gamble what little they own to finance a London season. Her goal: to use their looks and their wits to find a duke to marry for each sister! It seems her crazy plot might work when the sisters are declared the “Incomparables” of the Season. Dukes and lords line up at their door, but bold women and scandal always go hand in hand.

What do you do when you’re so empty inside, you feel nothing? When all you’ve ever known was pain? You run. That’s what I did—I ran away without once looking back. People say starting over is the best way for a new beginning, but that’s far from the truth if you end up back where you began. Sometimes life likes to throw lemons at you really hard until there’s nothing left to do but make lemonade. I’ve known pain, but not the kind that messes with my heart.

The Lost Ones are wanderers who come here from a distant world known as "Japan." No one knows how or why they leave their homes. The only thing that is certain is that they bring disaster and calamity. The duty of exterminating them without remorse falls to Menou, a young Executioner. When she meets Akari, it seems like just another job...until she discovers it's impossible to kill this girl! And when Menou begins to search for a way to defeat this immortality, Akari is more than happy to tag along! So begins a journey that will change Menou forever...

In the summer of 1959 Stella Raphael joins her psychiatrist husband, Max, at his new posting - a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. Stella soon falls under the spell of Edgar Stark, a brilliant sculptor who has been confined to the hospital for murdering his wife in a psychotic rage. But Stella's knowledge of Edgar's crime is no hindrance to the volcanic attraction that ensues -a passion that will consume Stella's sanity and destroy her and the lives of those around her.

It's DS Logan McRae's first day back on the job after a year off on the sick, and it couldn't get much worse. Three-year-old David Reid's body is discovered in a ditch: strangled, mutilated and a long time dead. And he's only the first. There's a serial killer stalking the Granite City, and the local media are baying for blood. Soon the dead are piling up in the morgue almost as fast as the snow on the streets, and Logan knows time is running out. More children are going missing. More are going to die.

There’s no way in Helgar's Nebula I’m marrying the candidate my parents have chosen for me. I don’t want to be the house-husband of some stoic warrior who only cares about training all day. Boring! Thankfully, I’ve learned a thing or two from all those rom-com human movies I’ve illegally downloaded off the intergalactic web. No one will see it coming when I pull a runaway groom maneuver on them!