Showing titles in 21st Century

A major new investigation into the Bhutto family, examining their influence in Pakistan from the colonial era to the present day.

Saudi Arabia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a major player on the international stage and the site of Islam's two holiest cities. It is also one of the world's only absolute monarchies. How did Saudi Arabia get to where it is today?

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Leon Trotsky, Reinhard Heydrich, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Osama bin Laden, Qasem Soleimani: assassination—the murder of a specific individual by an organized conspiracy in pursuit of political ends—has rarely failed to grip the imagination. In this incisive new history, Simon Ball shows how targeted political murder has become a tool of democratic states but also a key strategy of those who wish to topple them.

When Ed White, clad in his gleaming space suit with a large American flag on his left shoulder, eased himself outside his Gemini spacecraft in 1965, Americans had a new space hero. They also learned a new acronym: EVA, short for extravehicular activity, more commonly known as "spacewalking." Though few understood the tremendous risks White was taking in his twenty-two-minute space walk, Americans watched with immense pride and patriotism as White, tethered to Gemini 4, propelled himself around the spacecraft with a pressurized oxygen-fueled zip gun.

11 septembre 2001. En regardant à la télévision les images des deux avions percutant les tours du World Trade Center, Robert Laffont s’écrie : «Des dinosaures!» Surpris par cette association d’idées qu’il juge incongrue, il cherche à en comprendre le sens. Ses investigations l’entraînent sur les traces des dinosaures du jurassique et le conduisent jusqu’au cerveau humain. Il découvre l’étrange parallèle qui, à soixante-cinq millions d’années de distance, s’établit entre les «terribles lézards» et ce que l’homme a créé.

Since October 2023, Israel has carried out one of the most brutal military onslaughts in modern history on the Gaza Strip, in response to the Hamas-led attacks of October 7. But Gaza had long been in crisis even prior to the current violence, now widely recognized as genocidal. For seventy-seven years, the Palestinian people have endured displacement, occupation, collective punishment, and ethnic cleansing―with those in Gaza often bearing the brunt of it.

This book considers the complex and often contradictory relations that are forged between boredom and everyday media use in the twenty-first century and demonstrates how networked media have developed new technical means of capitalizing on boredom's state of suspension to make it into a source of value creation.

Brought to you by Penguin. What do you do when your country becomes a repressive authoritarian state? 2014: Russia prepares to host the Winter Olympics. Russia invades Crimea. Putin is re-elected president. Several political prisoners are amnestied and released early from prison. Maria Alyokhina...

The key to understanding the calamitous Afghan war is the complex, ultimately failed relationship between the powerful, duplicitous Karzai family and the United States, brilliantly portrayed here by the former Kabul bureau chief for The Washington Post. The United States went to Afghanistan on...

LONGLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2014 ‘A symphonic poem about postwar England and Englishness … A masterpiece’ Financial Times The 1950s were not grey. In Jonathan Meades’s detailed, petit-point memoir they are luridly polychromatic. They were peopled by embittered grotesques...

A close look at failed US policies in the Middle East, offering a fresh perspective on how best to reorient goals in the region.

2020 als globaler Wendepunkt - was das Virus mit der Welt gemacht hat Mit dem Ausbruch von Covid-19 markiert das Jahr 2020 das Ende einer Epoche. Lockdown, Social-Distancing und Isolation: Nichts war in unserem alltäglichen Leben mehr so, wie wir es kannten. Coronavirus: Ein Epochenjahr im...

Crypto Confidential tells the salacious story of the industry everyone is talking about right now. In doing so, it sheds light on some of the most scandalous financial crimes of the 21st century. From billion-dollar fraud cases to international money laundering cartels, political bribery and even faked deaths, it lifts the lid on the intricate and immense web of malpractice which crypto founders spin to trap ordinary investors. 

“The Devil’s Playground” was anything south of the second canal to the men of Charlie Company’s 2nd Platoon—Two Charlie—during their 2009–2010 deployment to the Arghandab River Valley in Afghanistan. The valley had been a notorious hot spot throughout history, with the Russians unable to maintain a foothold in the 80s and Coalition forces now facing the same problem during Operation Enduring Freedom.

Alla fine degli anni Sessanta, Italia, Francia, Germania occidentale e Gran Bretagna – Paesi già colpiti dal terrorismo interno – si trovarono a far fronte a una nuova minaccia: le organizzazioni armate, nate in Medio Oriente, che internazionalizzarono la propria lotta, esportando il terrorismo in Europa. Raggiunsero il loro obiettivo? Generarono il caos internazionale? O invece i Paesi europei riuscirono, almeno temporaneamente, a disarmare i terroristi, includendoli nel sistema delle relazioni internazionali?

Łódź, primavera del 1947. Sul banco degli imputati della Corte Distrettuale siede Hans Biebow, nato a Brema nel 1902 e che, durante la guerra, era stato amministratore (Amtsleiter) del ghetto di Łódź. Lo stato polacco considera quest’uomo, alto, biondo e dagli occhi azzurri, come uno dei dieci peggiori criminali nazisti ancora in circolazione, al pari di Rudolf Höß (capo di Auschwitz), Arthur Greiser (Gauleiter del Warthegau) o Hans Frank (governatore del Governatorato Generale). Ma Biebow non era un militare e nemmeno un alto esponente del partito nazionalsocialista.

"Il conflitto tra israeliani e palestinesi in questi ultimi anni è di nuovo andato avvitandosi su di sé, dopo gli spiragli degli anni Novanta. Delle speranze trascorse rimane ben poco mentre delle antiche diffidenze tutto sembra essere stato riconfermato. Alla radice rimane il mancato riconoscimento reciproco, la tragica finzione per cui, affinché l'uno possa esistere, l'altro debba scomparire una volta per sempre". Una terra, due popoli, ma non ancora due Stati.

Brought to you by Penguin. From the author of Abbey Road comes the story of how enduring rock icons like Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen and many more have remained in the ever changing music game. When Paul McCartney closed Live Aid in July 1985 we thought he was rock's Grand Old Man. He was...

Brought to you by Penguin. What if Chernobyl was just the beginning? The acclaimed winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize returns to Chernobyl to tell the gripping story of thirty-five days of war On 24 February 2022, the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, armoured vehicles...

From a social critic and journalist, a poignant book that encourages publicly grieving of what we've lost in order to move towards a hopeful future. “Detailed, lucid and richly sourced, Sarah Jaffe’s From the Ashes shows how the transformational power of grief can fuel revolutionary change...