Showing titles in 21st Century

A lot has been written about the time contractor Raymond Davis spent in a Pakistani jail in 2011. Unfortunately, much of it is misleading—or downright false—information. Now, the man at the center of the controversy tells his side of the story for the very first time. In The Contractor: How I Landed in a Pakistani Prison and Ignited a Diplomatic Crisis, Davis offers an up-close and personal look at the 2011 incident in Lahore, Pakistan, that led to his imprisonment and the events that took place as diplomats on both sides of the bargaining table scrambled to get him out.

Brought to you by Penguin. You know what went wrong. This is the untold story of what went right. Few were ready when a mysterious respiratory illness emerged in Wuhan, China, in January 2020. Politicians, government officials, business leaders and public-health professionals were unprepared for...

This book explores why there is a major war again in Europe. Putin's actions need to be understood if not forgiven. With the Ukraine conflict seen as a proxy war of NATO versus Russia, how likely is the fighting to spread?

New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 FINANCIAL TIMES AND MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR A New York Times technology and business reporter charts the dramatic rise of Bitcoin and the fascinating personalities who are striving to create a new global money for...

Age of Discovery explores a world on the brink of a new Renaissance and asks: how do we share more widely the benefits of unprecedented progress? How do we endure the inevitable tumult generated by accelerating change? How do we each thrive through this tangled, uncertain time? From gains in health, education, wealth and technology to crises of conflict, disease and mass migration, the similarities between today's world and that of the 15th century are both striking and prophetic: we have been here before.

A major new history of revolutionary Iran, from the 1940s to the present Iran’s revolution in 1979 shook the world. The Pahlavi dynasty came crashing down, and the Islamic Republic rose in its place. But what led to this seismic event? How did the revolutionary movement gain such strength? And...

While the world watched the uprising on the Maidan as an episode in geopolitics, those in Ukraine lived the revolution as an existential transformation: the blurring of night and day, the loss of a sense of time, the sudden disappearance of fear, the imperative to make choices. In this lyrical and intimate book, Marci Shore evokes the human face of the Ukrainian Revolution. Grounded in the true stories of activists and soldiers, parents, and children, Shore's book blends a narrative of suspenseful choices with a historian's reflections on what revolution is and what it means.

We live in a world of influence operations run amok, a world of dark ads, psy-ops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, Trump. We've lost not only our sense of peace and democracy - but our sense of what those words even mean. As Peter Pomerantsev seeks to make sense of the disinformation age, he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, 'behavioural change' salesmen, Jihadi fan-boys, Identitarians, truth cops and much more.

The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a similarly accelerated amnesia. The 20th century has become "history" at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 was so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it - and the results are proving calamitous.

Experts believe that Brazil, the world's fifth largest country and its seventh largest economy, will be one of the most important global powers by the year 2030. Yet far more attention has been paid to the other rising behemoths: Russia, India, and China. Often ignored and underappreciated, Brazil, according to renowned, award-winning journalist Michael Reid, has finally begun to live up to its potential but faces important challenges before it becomes a nation of substantial global significance.

This insightful study explores how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control over the country. By appointing his close associates as heads of state enterprises and by giving control of the FSB and the judiciary to his friends from the KGB, he has enriched his business friends from Saint Petersburg with preferential government deals. Thus, Putin has created a super wealthy and loyal plutocracy that owes its existence to authoritarianism. 

The definitive behind-the-scenes history of video games’ explosion into the twenty-first century and the war for industry power “A zippy read through a truly deep research job. You won’t want to put this one down.”—Eddie Adlum, publisher, RePlay Magazine As video games evolve, only the...

A blueprint for rescuing our fragile democracy by harnessing AI Democracy is in retreat at home and abroad. Our institutions and our politics are more broken than ever. At this delicate moment, artificial intelligence has burst onto the scene, a powerful technology that holds as much potential...

From the award-winning author of American Sirens and A Thousand Naked Strangers comes a real-life thriller about the most daring rescue in air-medical history. JULY 2014. Two American medical volunteers who joined the fight against the deadliest Ebola outbreak in world history have gotten...

Brought to you by Penguin. ECONOMIST, SUNDAY TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES AND GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 A century after Britain's Balfour Declaration promised a Jewish 'national home' in Palestine, veteran Guardian journalist Ian Black has produced a major new history of one of the most...

At a time when democracies seem paralyzed by fear and populations are turning inward, award-winning journalist John Kampfner travels to ten countries confronting our shared challenges with bravery and imagination. In Japan, he discovers inter-generational care homes ensuring dignity in later...

Should we stop caring about fading regional powers like China, Russia, Germany, and Iran? Will the collapse of international cooperation push France, Turkey, Japan, and Saudi Arabia to the top of international concerns? Most countries and companies are not prepared for the world Peter Zeihan...

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTELLER A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES, TELEGRAPH, DAILY MAIL, TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES ‘ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY, MIND-BLOWINGLY EXPLOSIVE’ ED BALLS 'SENSATIONAL' DAILY MAIL THE UNMISSABLE, UNVARNISHED MEMOIRS OF BORIS JOHNSON Boris Johnson has always been larger...

‘Very entertaining’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘A thoroughly enjoyable book, brimming over with historical nuggets and contemplations about the future’ NEW YORK TIMES Sunday Times bestselling author Simon Winchester returns with a thought-provoking history of the wind, written in his edifying and...

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