Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

    Her stories are gripping, especially when she dives deep into little-known waters." — The Wall Street Journal "Fascinating...In McConahay's telling, wartime Latin America is a hotbed of skullduggery, violence, and cinematic propaganda straight out of Hollywood." —Christian Science Monitor The gripping and little known story of the fight for the allegiance of Latin America during World War IIThe Tango War by Mary Jo McConahay fills an important gap in WWII history. Beginning in the thirties, both sides were well aware of the need to control not just the hearts and minds but also the resources of Latin America. The fight was often dirty: residents were captured to exchange for U.S. prisoners of war and rival spy networks shadowed each other across the continent. At all times it was a Tango War, in which each side closely shadowed the other’s steps.Though the Allies triumphed, at the war’s inception it looked like the Axis would win. A flow of raw materials in the Southern Hemisphere, at a high cost in lives, was key to ensuring Allied victory, as were military bases supporting the North African campaign, the Battle of the Atlantic and the invasion of Sicily, and fending off attacks on the Panama Canal. Allies secured loyalty through espionage and diplomacy—including help from Hollywood and Mickey Mouse—while Jews and innocents among ethnic groups —Japanese, Germans—paid an unconscionable price. Mexican pilots flew in the Philippines and twenty-five thousand Brazilians breached the Gothic Line in Italy. The Tango War also describes the machinations behind the greatest mass flight of criminals of the century, fascists with blood on their hands who escaped to the Americas.A true, shocking account that reads like a thriller, The Tango War shows in a new way how WWII was truly a global war.

    Following the Rwandan genocide, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrew the brutal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that made Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. But the truth was considerably more sinister.  Vividly sourcing her story with direct testimony from key participants, Wrong uses the story of the murder of Patrick Karegeya, once Rwanda’s head of external intelligence and a quicksilver operator of supple charm, to paint the portrait of a modern African dictatorship created in the chilling likeness of Paul Kagame, the president who sanctioned his former friend’s assassination.

    Butler was a military hero of the first rank, the winner of two Medals of Honour, a true 'fighting marine' whose courage and patriotism could not be doubted. Yet he came to believe that the wars in which he and his men had fought and bled and died were all pre-planned conflicts, designed not so much to defend America as to bloat the balance sheets of US banks and corporations.War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley D. Butler. In them, Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests commercially benefit from warfare.After his retirement from the Marine Corps, Gen. Butler made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech "War is a Racket". The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as a small book with the same title that was published in 1935 by Round Table Press, Inc., of New York. The booklet was also condensed in Reader's Digest as a book supplement which helped popularize his message. In an introduction to the Reader's Digest version, Lowell Thomas, the "as told to" author of Butler's oral autobiographical adventures, praised Butler's "moral as well as physical courage".

    The novel follows Yejide and Akin, a Nigerian couple who have been married since they met at university. Yejide’s difficulties with becoming pregnant eventually lead Akin to take a second wife, breaking the couple’s agreement to remain monogamous. As Yejide attempts to get pregnant, she must deal with the jealousy and fury she feels at her husband’s choice.Ayobami Adebayo’s debut novel is unforgettable, bursting with color and heart and, as The Guardian describes, “demonstration of female spirit”. The beautiful and nuanced prose invites readers to explore the familiar motif of marital struggles through the lens of a culture that is patriarchal and oppressive. Heartbreak and the expectations of family and community weigh heavily in Adebayo’s narrative, creating a rich and layered story that earned both critical and commercial acclaim.A Brief Look Inside:EVERY GOOD BOOK CONTAINS A WORLD FAR DEEPER than the surface of its pages. The characters and their world come alive, and the characters and its world still live on. Conversation Starters is peppered with questions designed to bring us beneath the surface of the page and invite us into the world that lives on.These questions can be used to...Create Hours of Conversation:• Promote an atmosphere of discussion for groups• Foster a deeper understanding of the book• Assist in the study of the book, either individually or corporately• Explore unseen realms of the book as never seen beforeDisclaimer: This book you are about to enjoy is an independent resource meant to supplement the original book. If you have not yet read the original book, we encourage doing before purchasing this unofficial Conversation Starters.

    In captivating prose, Dowden spins tales of cults and commerce in Senegal and traditional spirituality in Sierra Leone; analyzes the impact of oil and the internet on Nigeria and aid on Sudan; and examines what has gone so badly wrong in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo. From the individual stories of failure and success comes a surprising portrait of a new Africa emerging--an Africa that, Dowden argues, can only be developed by its own people. Dowden's master work is an attempt to explain why Africa is the way it is and calls for a re-examination of the perception of Africa as "the dark continent." He reveals it as a place of inspiration and tremendous humanity.

    The dualism that emerged in Cuban ideology--between liberal constructs of patria and radical formulations of nationality--is fully investigated as a source of both national tension and competing notions of liberty, equality, and justice. P�rez integrates local and provincial developments with issues of class, race, and gender to give readers a full and fascinating account of Cuba's history, focusing on its struggle for nationality. This third edition features the latest research on Cuba, including a new chapter on post-Cold War Cuba that covers the years 1995 through 2004. The political chronology has been revised and updated and the extensive bibliography has been both condensed, where necessary, and expanded to highlight the scholarship of the past decade. The book now features photographs throughout and five maps.

    During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other “emerging markets” have transformed their economies, Africa's resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world's reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of the world's population, its share of global manufacturing stood in 2011 exactly where it stood in 2000: at 1 percent.In his first book, The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis exposes the truth about the African development miracle: for the resource states, it's a mirage. The oil, copper, diamonds, gold and coltan deposits attract a global network of traders, bankers, corporate extractors and investors who combine with venal political cabals to loot the states' value. And the vagaries of resource-dependent economies could pitch Africa's new middle class back into destitution just as quickly as they climbed out of it. The ground beneath their feet is as precarious as a Congolese mine shaft; their prosperity could spill away like crude from a busted pipeline.This catastrophic social disintegration is not merely a continuation of Africa's past as a colonial victim. The looting now is accelerating as never before. As global demand for Africa's resources rises, a handful of Africans are becoming legitimately rich but the vast majority, like the continent as a whole, is being fleeced. Outsiders tend to think of Africa as a great drain of philanthropy. But look more closely at the resource industry and the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world looks rather different. In 2010, fuel and mineral exports from Africa were worth 333 billion, more than seven times the value of the aid that went in the opposite direction. But who received the money? For every Frenchwoman who dies in childbirth, 100 die in Niger alone, the former French colony whose uranium fuels France's nuclear reactors. In petro-states like Angola three-quarters of government revenue comes from oil. The government is not funded by the people, and as result it is not beholden to them. A score of African countries whose economies depend on resources are rentier states; their people are largely serfs. The resource curse is not merely some unfortunate economic phenomenon, the product of an intangible force. What is happening in Africa's resource states is systematic looting. Like its victims, its beneficiaries have names.

    She describes their great romance and life together from the days when they first met as fellow guerrillas in Cuba's revolutionary war up to the tragic moment when she learned of Che's assassination in Bolivia less than a decade later.As Che's widow, Aleida writes with passion and poignancy of their shared political dreams for the future and their family. Never before have readers been offered such an intimate insight into the man behind one of the great political symbols of our time.Includes one hundred intimate photos taken from the private family albums of Che with his children and his wife, including the last photos of Che and Aleida together when Che had disguised himself in preparation for his secret mission to Bolivia.Also includes facsimiles of postcards and letters Che sent to his family from abroad, as well as poems written to Aleida and a moving short story sent from Africa.This book reveals Aleida's own great strength and courage as she came to terms with her private loss while under the international spotlight of millions of others who also mourned the death of a world-famous revolutionary, perhaps comparable to Yoko Ono after the death of John Lennon. She also describes her efforts to raise her four children as ordinary children despite their father's legendary status in Cuba and abroad.Aleida March is currently the director of the Che Guevara Studies Center, Cuba.

     The Lake formed the boundary between German East Africa (now Tanzania) and the Belgian Congo, and no Allied vessel could be brought against the gunboat because the only completed railway to the Lake was in German territory. No British or Belgian forces could advance into German territory because the Germans could always land troops behind them to cut their lines of communication. Breaking that hold was a military necessity and an incredibly difficult and dangerous task. Not only did the crew have to outwit the Germans but also navigate 3,000 miles of the world’s most hazardous and disease-ridden country. For Lieutenant-Commander Spicer-Simson the dilemma facing the Allied High Command was simply the chance for an incredible adventure. So the sailor turned explorer. Thus began the most astounding voyage in naval history, as ‘Spicer’ led an expedition of two motor-boats through hundreds of miles of bush and mountains to reach the Lake, through a wilderness laid waste by sleeping-sickness and uncharted by roads or communications of any kind. Here is one of the strangest, most exciting passages in the history of the Royal Navy – the true-life adventure which inspired C. S. Forester’s The African Queen. Praise for Phantom Flotilla… ‘A wonderful adventure yarn made all the more absorbing because it really did happen’ - The Evening News Peter Shankland was a military historian whose books include Byron of the Wager, The Phantom Flotilla and Dardanelles Patrol, a story of the submarine operation against Turkey in World War I.

    His older brother is violent; his philandering father doesn’t understand him; his intelligence and sensitivity do not endear him to the other children at school. He loves to read, especially Greek myths, but in Cuba in the 1970s, novels and gods can be dangerous. Despite the signs that warn Rauli to repress and fear what he is, he knows three things to be true: First, that he was born in the wrong body. Second, that he will die, aged eighteen, as a soldier in the Cuban intervention in Angola. And third, that he is the reincarnation of the Trojan princess Cassandra.Moving between Rauli’s childhood and adolescence, between the Angolan battlefield, the Cuban city of Cienfuegos, and the shores of ancient Troy, Marcial Gala’s Call Me Cassandra tells of the search for identity amid the collapse of Cuba’s utopian dreams. Burdened with knowledge of tragedies yet to come, Rauli nonetheless strives to know himself. Lyrical and gritty, heartbreaking and luminous, Rauli’s is the story of the inexorable pull of destiny.

    The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the ancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally succumbed and their capital city, history, and culture were almost utterly erased. Drawing on a wealth of new archaeological research, Richard Miles brings to life this lost empire-from its origins among the Phoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as the greatest seapower in the Mediterranean. And at the heart of the history of Carthage lies the extraordinary figure of Hannibal-the scourge of Rome and one of the greatest military leaders, but a man who also unwittingly led his people to catastrophe.

    In the following agonizing days, Israeli passengers were singled out and held hostage. A week later on July 4, one hundred Israeli commandos raced 2,500 miles from Israel to Entebbe, landed in the middle of the night, and in a heart-stopping mission that lasted ninety minutes, killed all guerillas and freed 103 hostages.In captivating detail, Stevenson provides a fast-paced hour-by-hour narration from the hijacking to the final ninety-minute mission. In addition to discussing the incredible rescue itself, Stevenson also covers the political backdrop behind the hijacking, especially Ugandan President Idi Amin’s support for the hijackers, which marked one of the first times a leader of a nation had backed terrorist activities. An illustration of one nation’s undying spirit, heroism, and commitment to its people in the face of threat, Operation Thunderbolt has become a legendary antiterrorist tale.Although first written in 1976 (and published within weeks of the event), Stevenson’s account presents this act of terrorism in a way that is still relevant in our modern-day political climate. A factual account of what could easily be read as sensational fiction, 90 Minutes at Entebbe will inspire, encourage, and instill hope in all readers.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

    With objectivity and restraint, Ramirez tells the story of the fight against Nicaragua's Somozan dictatorship, the anguish of the subsequent war with the U.S. and its mercenary armies, and the overwhelming Sandinista failure in the elections. Finally, as head of the Sandinista opposition in the country, he confronts his former lifelong colleagues.

    It brought down six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, returned de Gaulle to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and repressive torture.Nearly a half century has passed since this savagely fought war ended in Algerian independence, and yet ,as Alistair Horne argues in his new preface to his now-classic work of history,its repercussions continue to be felt not only in Algeria and France, but throughout the world. Indeed from today's vantage point the Algerian War looks like a full-dress rehearsal for the sort of amorphous struggle that convulsed the Balkans in the 1990s and that now ravages the Middle East, from Beirut to Baghdad struggles in which questions of religion, nationalism, imperialism, and terrorism take on a new and increasingly lethal intensity.A Savage War of Peace is the definitive history of the Algerian War, a book that brings that terrible and complicated struggle to life with intelligence, assurance, and unflagging momentum. It is essential reading for our own violent times as well as a lasting monument to the historian's art.