"Jonathan Chait ... digs deep into Obama's record on major policy fronts-- economics, the environment, domestic reform, health care, race, foreign policy, and civil rights-- to demonstrate why history will judge our forty-fourth president as among the greatest in history"--

Returning to the UK in September 2010 after serving in Iraq as the political adviser to the top American general, Emma Sky felt no sense of homecoming. She soon found herself back in the Middle East travelling through a region in revolt. In A Time of Monsters bears witness to the demands of young people for dignity and justice during the Arab Spring; the inability of sclerotic regimes to reform; the descent of Syria into civil war; the rise of the...

"Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. After providing an accessible history...

"From America's leading scholar of democracy, a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order--and the very value of liberty. Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched...

In 1944, the Polish city of Lwów has been liberated from Germany but is caught among the insurgent armies of several countries and resistance fighters; in this city, loyalty comes second to self-preservation. In order to eat, Tolya joins the Red Army but is rescued by Ukranian freedom fighters after he murders a Soviet officer in the street. That doesn't mean he trusts them, though. Poland, 1944. After the Soviet liberation of Lwów from Germany,...

A dramatic account of the life of Cold War pianist Van Cliburn describes his early years as a musical prodigy in Texas and the ways he charmed both American and Russian audiences, helping to ease tensions between the two nations.--Publisher's description.

"A highly original narrative history by The Economist Moscow bureau chief that does for modern Russia what Evan Osnos did for China in Age of Ambition. "--Amazon.com. The end of communism and breakup of the Soviet Union was a time of euphoria around the world, but Russia today is violently expansionary and dangerously nationalistic. So how did we go from the promise of those days to the autocratic police state of Putin's new Russia? The Invention...

Joseph Stalin - the supreme leader of the Soviet Union - was a tyrant responsible for the death of millions. He also had some unlikely relationships during the Second World War. This ambitious series uses exclusive evidence gained from the actual conversations and secret meetings Stalin conducted. Dramatic reconstructions carefully sourced from archive material, reveal how the great leaders decided the future shape of the post-war world. These decisions...