A remarkable combination of war reporting and analysis by an author who has witnessed the carnage of Beirut for twenty-five years, Fisk, the first journalist to whom bin Laden announced his jihad against the U.S., is one of the world's most fearless and honored foreign correspondents. He spares no one in this saga of the civil war and subsequent Israeli invasion: the PLO, whose thuggish behavior alienated most Lebanese; the various Lebanese factions, whose appalling brutality spared no one; the Syrians, who supported first the Christians and then the Muslims in their attempt to control Lebanon; and the Israelis, who tried to install their own puppets and, with their 1982 invasion, committed massive war crimes of their own. It includes a moving finale that recounts the travails of Fisk's friend Terry Anderson who was kidnapped by Hezbollah and spent 2,454 days in captivity. Fully updated to include the Israeli withdrawl from south Lebanon and Ariel Sharon's electoral victory over Ehud Barak, this edition has sixty pages of new material and a new preface. "Robert Fisk's enormous book about Lebanon's desperate travails is one of the most distinguished in recent times."—Edward Said

    Prime Minister Fitzwilliams' instincts tell him it's time to call a snap election. His cabinet team is adequate (just), the howling protests of the doctors after the GP changes has finally died down and, best of all, the Australian Greens are in receivership. So what could possibly go wrong?The PM is prepared for everything until he finds himself facing what he least expected - an actual opposition. How do you deal with a party that doesn't play by the rules, protests in the nude, sends mail by carrier pigeon and has a list of candidates all called Ned Ludd?Welcome to the Australia of 2028 where parking meters double as poker machines, radio shock jocks have been automated, the Communist Party of China has turned itself into a multinational corporation and ASIO's glory days are so far over that it's resorting to surveillance of a Charles Dickens reading group.

    Today these same two nations are leading the charge to abandon many of the global safeguards they once fought to establish. Crisp, impassioned, and hard-hitting, Lawless World is an exposé and an indictment of a catastrophic realignment of the laws that govern international affairs, the book that broke the stories on the "Downing Street memo" and the "White House meeting memo." It is also a vivid and human account of the reckless way America has reneged on its very founding documents-and a call for us to recognize the role we should be playing to reassert the rule of law, and with it a stable, secure world. BACKCOVER: "In this expert and judicious study, Philippe Sands portrays a frightening image of 'America unbound,' self-exempted from the delicate fabric of international law on which human survival rests." -Noam Chomsky "A penetrating and detailed account of the extent to which those who claim to be spreading global values have ridden roughshod over them." -The Observer (London) "Lawless World goes to the very heart of the nature of the international order and its future." -The Guardian (London)

    And if she can't get that from her parents, then why not from her mother's boyfriend, or her father's muscle-bound neighbor, Mr. Vuoso? Alicia Erian's incandescent debut novel, Towelhead, will ring true for readers who remember the rarely poetic transition from childhood to young adulthood. Jasira is a creature of contradiction: both innocent (reading romantic intentions into the grossest displays of lust) and oddly clear-sighted, especially when it comes to the imbalance of power, and the things we do for love. When her mother exiles her to Houston to live with Jasira's strict, quick-to-anger Lebanese father, she quickly learns what aspects of herself to suppress in front of him. In private, however, she conducts her sexual awakening with all the false confidence that pop culture and her neighbor's Playboy magazines have provided.Jasira tells her story with candor and glimmers of dark, unexpected humor--as when she describes her mother's boyfriend Barry's assistance in her personal grooming: "A week later, Barry broke down and told her the truth. That he had shaved me himself. That he had been shaving me for weeks. That he couldn't seem to stop shaving me." The freshness of her narrative voice sets Towelhead apart from the sentimental or purely harsh treatment of similar subject matter elsewhere, and makes the novel a promising follow-up to Erian's well-regarded short story collection, The Brutal Language of Love. --Regina Marler

    Michael J. Totten's version of events in one of the most volatile countries in the world's most volatile region is one part war correspondence, one part memoir, and one part road movie.He sets up camp in a tent city built in downtown Beirut by anti-Syrian dissidents, is bullied and menaced by Hezbollah's supposedly friendly "media relations" department, crouches under fire on the Lebanese-Israeli border during the six-week war in 2006, witnesses an Israeli ground invasion from behind a line of Merkava tanks, sneaks into Hezbollah's post-war rubblescape without authorization, and is attacked in Beirut by militiamen who enforce obedience to the "resistance" at the point of a gun.From the "Cedar Revolution" that ousted the occupying Syrian military regime in 2005, to the devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, and to Hezbollah's slow-motion but violent assault on Lebanon's elected government and capital, Totten's account is both personal and comprehensive. He simplifies the bewildering complexity of the Middle East, has access to major regional players as well as to the man on the street, and personally witnesses most of the events he describes. The Road to Fatima Gate should be indispensable reading for anyone interested in the Middle East, Iran's expansionist foreign policy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, asymmetric warfare, and terrorism in the aftermath of September 11.

    The instinct to fight may be innate in human nature, but war—organized violence—comes with organized society. War has shaped humanity’s history, its social and political institutions, its values and ideas. Our very language, our public spaces, our private memories, and some of our greatest cultural treasures reflect the glory and the misery of war. War is an uncomfortable and challenging subject not least because it brings out both the vilest and the noblest aspects of humanity. Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. War: How Conflict Shaped Us explores such much-debated and controversial questions as: When did war first start? Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? Is war ever within our control? Drawing on lessons from wars throughout the past, from classical history to the present day, MacMillan reveals the many faces of war—the way it has determined our past, our future, our views of the world, and our very conception of ourselves.

    In fact, it should come just nine days from tonight, the 992nd nightly visit of Scheherazade, the beautiful and immortal storyteller from the epic The Arabian Nights.Just as Scheherazade spun magical stories for 1,001 nights to save her own life, Fatima has spent each night telling Scheherazade her life stories, all the while knowing that on the 1,001st night, her storytelling will end forever. But between tonight and night 1,001, Fatima has a few loose ends to tie up. She must find a wife for her openly gay grandson, teach Arabic (and birth control) to her 17-year-old great-granddaughter, make amends with her estranged husband, and decide which of her troublesome children should inherit her family's home in Lebanon--a house she herself has not seen in nearly 70 years. All this while under the surveillance of two bumbling FBI agents eager to uncover Al Qaeda in Los Angeles.But Fatima’s children are wrapped up in their own chaotic lives and disinterested in their mother or their inheritances. As Fatima weaves the stories of her husband, children, and grandchildren, we meet a visionless psychic, a conflicted U.S. soldier, a gynecologist who has a daughter with a love of shoplifting and a tendency to get unexpectedly pregnant, a Harvard-educated alcoholic cab driver edging towards his fifth marriage, a lovelorn matchmaker, and a Texas homecoming queen. Taken in parts, Fatima’s relations are capricious and steadfast, affectionate and smothering, connected yet terribly alone. Taken all together, they present a striking and surprising tapestry of modern Arab American life.Shifting between the U.S. and Lebanon over the last hundred years, Alia Yunis crafts a bewitching novel imbued with great humanity, imagination, and a touch of magic realism. Be prepared to be utterly charmed.

    On every page, the glint of hope for dignity and a better life is heartbreakingly alive.’ Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite RunnerMost novels are written by professional writers using second hand material. Not this one. Peirene commissioned nine refugees to tell their ‘Shatila Stories’. The result is a piece of collaborative fiction unlike any other. If you want to understand the chaos of the Middle East – or you just want to follow the course of a beautiful love story – start here.Adam and his family flee Syria and arrive at the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut. Conditions in this overcrowded Palestinian camp are tough, and violence defines many of the relationships: a father fights to save his daughter, a gang leader plots to expand his influence, and drugs break up a family. Adam struggles to make sense of his refugee experience, but then he meets Shatha and starts to view the camp through her eyes.Why Peirene chose to commission this book:‘I want to hear their stories and see if their imaginations can open up a new path of understanding between us. Collaborative works of literature can achieve what no other literature can do. By pooling our imaginations we are able to access something totally different and new that goes beyond boundaries – that of the individual, of nations, of cultures. It connects us to our common human essence: our creativity. Let’s make stories, not more war.’ Meike Ziervogel

    Otis Brawley is the chief medical and scientific officer of The American Cancer Society, an oncologist with a dazzling clinical, research, and policy career. How We Do Harm pulls back the curtain on how medicine is really practiced in America. Brawley tells of doctors who select treatment based on payment they will receive, rather than on demonstrated scientific results; hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that seek out patients to treat even if they are not actually ill (but as long as their insurance will pay); a public primed to swallow the latest pill, no matter the cost; and rising healthcare costs for unnecessary—and often unproven—treatments that we all pay for. Brawley calls for rational healthcare, healthcare drawn from results-based, scientifically justifiable treatments, and not just the peddling of hot new drugs.Brawley's personal history – from a childhood in the gang-ridden streets of black Detroit, to the green hallways of Grady Memorial Hospital, the largest public hospital in the U.S., to the boardrooms of The American Cancer Society—results in a passionate view of medicine and the politics of illness in America - and a deep understanding of healthcare today. How We Do Harm is his well-reasoned manifesto for change.

    

    A B-17 bomber drones high over the Pacific Ocean, sending a desperate SOS into the air. The crew is carrying America's greatest living war hero on a secret mission deep into the battle zone. But the plane is lost, burning through its final gallons of fuel.At 1:30 p.m., there is only one choice left: an emergency landing at sea. If the crew survives the impact, they will be left stranded without food or water hundreds of miles from civilization. Eight men. Three inflatable rafts. Sixty-eight million square miles of ocean. What will it take to make it back alive?

    Join Linus as he awaits the Great Pumpkin, Peppermint Patty as she faces off against an entire hockey team, and Snoopy as he attempts to eat the largest sandwich he's ever seen. Sally befriends the new girl at school, Eudora, only to find a rival for the affection of her Sweet Babboo. And Charlie Brown searches for a home for Snoopy's mysterious brother, Spike. So put on your top hat, fancy tie and dancing shoes, and join Snoopy and the rest of the gang in this boogielicious new collection of classic Peanuts comics.

    If he can show moral improvement within one month, he can return to Asgard. If he can’t? Eternity in a pit of angry snakes. Rude! To keep track of Loki’s progress, King Odin (a bossy poo-poo head) gives him this magical diary in which Loki is forced to confess the truth, even when that truth is as ugly as a naked mole rat. To make matters worse, Loki has to put up with an eleven-year-old Thor tagging along and making him look bad. Loki is not even allowed to use his awesome godly powers! As Loki suffers the misery of school lunch, discovers the magic of internet videos, and keeps watch for frost giant spies, will he finally learn to tell good from bad, trust from tricks, and friends from enemies? Louie Stowell’s witty text and hysterical drawings will keep readers in stitches from start to finish.

    During the conflict, a thousand people died for each and every hour it lasted. With eighty-one of the world’s nations involved and affected in some way, this was war on a truly global scale.Offering a wide overview of the major figures, politics and action on all sides, World War Two: History in an Hour provides a concise picture of the world upturned. How the conflicts began, the violence involved and how they affected a century: this is the story of the events that ended over sixty million lives and challenged our understanding of humanity.Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour…

    He reveals the problems inherent in the entertainment-based postmodern church and shows how a return to biblical teaching will restore its strength and impact. Now being replaced by a feel-good message instead of what Christians need to know to stand strong in a world that's lost its way--Swindoll exposes the problems of--and solutions for--the postmodern evangelical church. Just as he opened readers' eyes with his bold statements in The Grace Awakening, now he offers a straightforward volume revealing how to reestablish a life-altering church with Christ as Lord and Master. Illuminating and empowering, THE CHURCH AWAKENING will ignite a revolution in the way Christians "do church" for years to come.