The sun is rising behind Downton Abbey, a great and splendid house in a great and splendid park. So secure does it appear that it seems as if the way it represents will last for another thousand years. It won't.   Millions of American viewers were enthralled by the world of Downton Abbey, the mesmerizing TV drama of the aristocratic Crawley family--and their servants--on the verge of dramatic change. On the eve of Season 2 of the TV presentation, this gorgeous book--illustrated with sketches and research from the production team, as well as on-set photographs from both seasons--takes us even deeper into that world, with fresh insights into the story and characters as well as the social history.

    Kaplan, The Wall Street Journal'A compelling and impressive read.' The Economist'Skillfully crafted and well-argued.' Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Financial Times'An excellent modern history. . . . provides the context needed to make sense of the region's present and future.' Joyce Lau, South China Morning PostThe dramatic story of the relationship between the world's three largest economies, one that is shaping the future of us all, by one of the foremost experts on east AsiaFor more than half a century, American power in the Pacific has successfully kept the peace. But it has also cemented the tensions in the toxic rivalry between China and Japan, consumed with endless history wars and entrenched political dynasties. Now, the combination of these forces with Donald Trump's unpredictable impulses and disdain for America's old alliances threatens to upend the region, and accelerate the unravelling of the postwar order. If the United States helped lay the postwar foundations for modern Asia, now the anchor of the global economy, Asia's Reckoning will reveal how that structure is now crumbling.With unrivalled access to archives in the US and Asia, as well as many of the major players in all three countries, Richard McGregor has written a tale which blends the tectonic shifts in diplomacy with the domestic political trends and personalities driving them. It is a story not only of an overstretched America, but also of the rise and fall and rise of the great powers of Asia. The confrontational course on which China and Japan have increasingly set themselves is no simple spat between neighbors. And the fallout would be a political and economic tsunami, affecting manufacturing centers, trade routes, and political capitals on every continent.

    But on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind: Mrs Pretty, the widowed farmer, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear though that this is no ordinary find ... and soon the discovery leads to all kinds of jealousies and tensions.John Preston's recreation of the Sutton Hoo dig - the greatest Anglo-Saxon discovery ever in Britain - brilliantly and comically dramatizes three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivaly flourished in equal measure.

    As the numbers of infected and dead rose and the nation split dangerously over the crisis, Houston and Irvine found their letters to one another as necessary as breath. Part tribute to wilderness, part indictment against tyranny and greed, Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics, and Place reveals the evolution of a friendship that galvanizes as it chronicles a strange new world.

    The province has become synonymous with conflict, terrorism and tortuous efforts to forge peace. But what is life there really like? In this enchanting and highly original book Martin Fletcher presents a portrait of Northern Ireland utterly at odds with its dire international image. He paints a compelling picture of a place caught in a time warp since the 1960s, of a land of mountains, lakes and rivers where customs, traditions and old-world charm survive, of an incredibly resourceful province that has given the world not just bombs and bullets but the Titanic, the tyre and the tractor, a dozen American presidents, two prime ministers of New Zealand and a Hindu god. He meets an intelligent, fun-loving, God-fearing people who may do terrible things to each other but who could not be more welcoming to outsiders. He describes a land of awful beauty, a battleground of good and evil, a province populated by saints and sinners that has yet to be rendered bland by the forces of modernity.

    Five were shot in the back. A major turning point in the recent history of Northern Ireland, the massacre galvanized Catholics in their struggle against the British presence in Ulster. In Those Are Real Bullets, Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson provide the definitive, full-length narrative account of Bloody Sunday. Using extensive interviews and recently declassified documents unavailable for previous books about the shootings, they vividly re-create the chaos and terror of the day and capture the full human impact of the tragedy. Those Are Real Bullets provides an intimate portrait of a city in revolt and the climax of a failed military response that plunged Northern Ireland into three decades of armed conflict. "A shocking, stomach-turning, enraging narrative history that should be required reading." -- Irish Independent "Written by two veteran, first-rate reporters, this book will remain the standard account of that miserable day." -- Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Daily Mail

    Once married, however, she acquired a persistent pain that led to destructive drugs and patronizing psychiatry, ending in an ineffective but irrevocable surgery. There would be no children; in herself she found instead one novel, and then another.

    Based on years of historical research and cultural investigation, XX turns poetry into an archival inquiry and a choral documentary. Hollywood and Hiroshima, Modernism and propaganda, Bob Dylan and Walter Benjamin—its range of interest encompasses the entire century of art and culture, invention and struggle.Elegiac and celebratory, deeply tragic and wickedly funny, XX is a unique collection from this acknowledged master of historical poetry, and his most ambitious book yet.

    But what if our foods were doing more harm than good, and fad diets made matters worse? Deadly Harvest examines how the foods we eat today have little in common with those of our ancestors, and why this fact is important to our health. It also offers a proven program to enhance health and improve longevity.Using the latest scientific research and studies of primitive lifestyles, the author first explains the diet that our ancestors followed—one in harmony with the human species. He then describes how our present diets affect our health, leading to disorders such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and more. Most important, he details measures we can take to improve our diet, our health, and our quality of life.

    However, the iconic women of the 1990s—such as Hillary Clinton, Courtney Love, Roseanne Barr, Marcia Clark, and Anita Hill—earned their places in history not as trailblazers, but as whipping girls of the media. During this decade, American society grew increasingly hostile to women who dared to speak up, challenge power, or defy rigid expectations for female behavior.Deeply researched yet thoroughly engaging, 90s Bitch untangles the complex history of women in the 1990s, exploring how they were maligned by the media, vilified by popular culture, and objectified in the marketplace. In an age where even a presidential nominee can be derided as a “nasty woman,” it’s clear that the epidemic of casting women as bitches persists. To understand why we must take a long, hard look back at the 1990s—a decade in which female empowerment was twisted into bitchification and exploitation.Yarrow’s thoughtful, clear-eyed, and timely examination is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand gender politics and how we might end the “bitch epidemic” for the next generation.

    Madame President is the inspiring, often heartbreaking story of Sirleaf’s evolution from an ordinary Liberian mother of four boys to international banking executive, from a victim of domestic violence to a political icon, from a post-war president to a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Helene Cooper deftly weaves Sirleaf’s personal story into the larger narrative of the coming of age of Liberian women. The highs and lows of Sirleaf’s life are filled with indelible images; from imprisonment in a jail cell for standing up to Liberia’s military government to addressing the United States Congress, from reeling under the onslaught of the Ebola pandemic to signing a deal with Hillary Clinton when she was still Secretary of State that enshrined American support for Liberia’s future. Sirleaf’s personality shines throughout this riveting biography. Ultimately, Madame President is the story of Liberia’s greatest daughter, and the universal lessons we can all learn from this “Oracle” of African women.

    It seems to be the end of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe. But it is just the beginning. Over the next three decades, the reservation grows to nearly 2,000 acres, home to more than 600 people claiming to be tribal members.  It has also become home to Foxwoods, the largest casino in the world, grossing more than $1 billion a year.Without Reservation reveals the mysterious roots of today's Pequot tribe, the racial tension that divides its members, and the Machiavellian internal power struggle over who will control the tribe's funds. Author Jeff Benedict brings to us the deal makers, the courtroom machinations, the trusts and betrayals.Now, with remarkable new information, the paperback brings us up-to-date on these revelations, which lead to state and federal investigations and calls for congressional hearings.

    The rebels had come at night—wielding weapons, torches, machetes. She watched as her mother and six-year-old sister were gunned down in a refugee camp, far from their home in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The rebels were killing people who weren’t from the same community, the same tribe. In other words, they were killing people simply for looking different.“Goodbye, life,” she said to the man ready to shoot her. Remarkably, the rebel didn’t pull the trigger, and Sandra escaped into the night. Thus began a new life for her and her surviving family members. With no home and no money, they struggled to stay alive. Eventually, through a United Nations refugee program, they moved to America, only to face yet another ethnic disconnect. Sandra may have crossed an ocean, but there was now a much wider divide she had to overcome. And it started with middle school in New York. In this profoundly moving memoir, Sandra tells the story of her survival, of finding her place in a new country, and of her hope for the future.

    Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United StatesIn Wade in the Water, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America’s contemporary moment both to our nation’s fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith’s signature voice—inquisitive, lyrical, and wry—turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence. Here, private utterance becomes part of a larger choral arrangement as the collection widens to include erasures of The Declaration of Independence and the correspondence between slave owners, a found poem comprised of evidence of corporate pollution and accounts of near-death experiences, a sequence of letters written by African Americans enlisted in the Civil War, and the survivors’ reports of recent immigrants and refugees. Wade in the Water is a potent and luminous book by one of America’s essential poets.

    He was Alexander Litvinenko, Sasha to his friends, a boy from the deep Russian provinces who rose through the ranks of the world's most feared security service. Litvinenko was the man who denounced murder and corruption in the Russian government, fled from the wrath of the Kremlin, came to London and took the shilling of Moscow's avowed enemy... Now he was a martyr, condemned by foes unknown to an agonised death in a hospital bed thousands of miles from home.Martin Sixsmith draws on his long experience as the BBC's Moscow correspondent, and contact with the key London-based Russians, to dissect Alexander Litvinenko's murder. Myriad theories have been put forward since he died, but the story goes back to 2000 when hostilities were declared between the Kremlin and its political opponents. This is a war that has blown hot and cold for over six years; a war that has pitted some of Russia's strongest, richest men against the most powerful president Russia has had since Josef Stalin.The Litvinenko File is a gripping, powerful inside account of a shocking act of murder, when Russia's war with itself spilled over onto the streets of London and made the world take notice.