The Best Bar Trivia Book Ever: All You Need for Pub Quiz Domination


Michael O'Neill - 2014
    president's daughter?Brimming with answers to popular questions like these, The Best Bar Trivia Book Ever arms you with the knowledge your team needs to annihilate your bar trivia competition. This must-have guide features hundreds of facts, covering everything from sports and pop culture to history and science, so that you're always ready to deliver the ultimate trivia smackdown. You'll also get all the ins and outs of your favorite event with information on important bar trivia rules, assembling a team, and claiming victories week after week.Whether you're new to the scene or want to dominate at your local bar, this book will help your team outsmart the competition every single week!

Stranger from Another Land (erilaR, #1)


Hector Miller - 2019
    The Great Khan, Attila, overlord of the Scythian and Germani hordes is no more.The lands of Rome lie in ruin, razed by the Scourge of God.From the ashes of civilization a new power is destined to emerge. Warriors whose fearsome reputation would remain for more than a thousand years.On the plains of Pannonia a boy is born. A boy destined to shape history.Meet Ragnaris, the son of no man.

Self-Deception : India's China Policies; Origins, Premises, Lessons


Arun Shourie - 2008
    On what assumptions was Pandit Nehru confident that China would not invade India in 1962? Why and on what basis did he scotch all warnings in Tibet and our entire border? What did he do when those assumptions proved wrong? What eventually led to the debacle of 1962? Are the same delusions and mistakes not being repeated now? Why will the consequences be any different? This is a devastating analysis and warning on India's policy and approach regarding China, based on Nehru's notes to his officers, his correspondence, including letters to chief ministers and his speeches in and out of Parliament.

Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse


Shelley Rigger - 2011
    Shelley Rigger explains how Taiwan became such a key global player, highlighting economic and political breakthroughs so impressive they have been called "miracles." She links these accomplishments to Taiwan's determined society, vibrant culture, and unique history. Drawing on arts, economics, politics, and international relations, Rigger explores Taiwan's importance to China, the United States, and the world. Considering where Taiwan may be headed in its wary standoff with China, she traces how the focus of Taiwan's domestic politics has shifted to a Taiwan-centered strategy. All readers interested in Asia and international affairs, as well as travelers to the region, will find this an accessible and entertaining overview, replete with human interest stories and colorful examples of daily life in Taiwan.

For All the Tea in China: Espionage, Empire and the Secret Formula for the World's Favourite Drink


Sarah Rose - 2009
    In 1848, the East India Company engaged him to make a clandestine trip into the interior of China - territory forbidden to foreigners - to steal the closely guarded secrets of tea. For centuries, China had been the world's sole tea manufacturer. Britain purchased this fuel for its Empire by trading opium to the Chinese - a poisonous relationship Britain fought two destructive wars to sustain. The East India Company had profited lavishly as the middleman, but now it was sinking, having lost its monopoly to trade tea. Its salvation, it thought, was to establish its own plantations in the Himalayas of British India. There were just two problems: India had no tea plants worth growing, and the company wouldn't have known what to do with them if it had. Hence Robert Fortune's daring trip. The Chinese interior was off-limits and virtually unknown to the West, but that's where the finest tea was grown - the richest oolongs, soochongs and pekoes. And the Emperor aimed to keep it that way.

Monash


Grantlee Kieza - 2015
    General Sir John Monash attends a glittering banquet to dine with the King of England and the likes of Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill and Rudyard Kipling. Just four months earlier, the commander of the Australian Corps had been knighted in a battlefield, a long way from the streets of Melbourne where this son of a long line of Polish rabbis had grown up. Field Marshal Montgomery would declare decades later that Monash was the best general to serve on the Western Front. How had this notorious ladies' man, who harboured private thoughts about the futility of war and had never fired a shot in anger, come to be feted by the British establishment as well as his countrymen back home? In this essential biography of a most unlikely folk hero, Grantlee Kieza paints a lively portrait of an outsider who shaped modern Australia through his energy, drive and ambition, his military brilliance and his vision.

Empire of the Sun


J.G. Ballard - 1984
    To survive, he must find a deep strength greater than all the events that surround him.Shanghai, 1941 — a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.

Dragon Seed


Pearl S. Buck - 1941
    Centering her story around the fictional family of Ling Tan, Buck recreates the heart wrenching devastation that war inflicted on these gentle innocent people. Ling Tan and his family were simple farmers living in peaceful isolation. Western technology, and likewise the machinery of war, were unknown in these outlying regions of China. And even though literacy was on the rise among the younger generations, the alarming reports of foreign aggression went largely ignored. For the peasants, the transition from one political ruler to another was virtually inconsequential; life revolved around their farms and their villages. Patriotism was not the concept of loving and defending a country; their land was their country. But as the invasion moves inland and the roads are jammed with survivors fleeing west, Ling Tan and his neighbors are forced to face the harsh realities of war. "Days passed and with the rulers gone the people held themselves the more steadfast knowing that they and they alone were left to stand against the enemy and upon each man himself now depended what would happen. So it had happened again and again in other times, for rulers anywhere are always the first to fly, and the people must stay behind to be steadfast.

The Avenue


R.F. Delderfield - 1964
    And all the hopes, dreams and lives of the people on the Avenue are forged to a fighting force to defend all that they hold dear."

The Black Orchestra


J.J. Toner - 2013
    The German war machine has invaded Poland and is advancing west toward France. In Berlin Kurt Muller, an Abwehr signalman, discovers a colleague lying dead at his radio receiver. The criminal police dismiss the death as suicide, but Kurt is not convinced. Kurt follows a trail of mysteries, witnessing several atrocities that expose the Nazi regime for what it truly is. When the trail leads him to the German resistance, he faces the most difficult choices of his life. He must choose between his duty and his conscience, between his country and his family, between love and death.

Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats


Matthew Yglesias - 2008
    He knows a lot about politics, a lot about foreign policy, and, crucially, is unusually shrewd in understanding how they interact. Here's hoping that his new book will introduce him to an even wider audience. Once you discover him, you'll be hooked.""--E. J. Dionne, author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right and Why Americans Hate Politics""Matthew Yglesias is one of a handful of bloggers that I make a point of reading every day. Heads in the Sand is a smart, vital book that urges Democrats to stop evading the foreign-policy debate and to embrace the old principles of international liberalism--to be right and also to win.""--Fred Kaplan, author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power""Reading foreign policy tomes is seldom included among life's pleasures, but Yglesias has concocted a startling exception. Heads in the Sand is not just a razor-sharp analysis cum narrative of the politics of national security in general and the Iraq war in particular, it's also an enthralling and often very funny piece of writing. Though he administers strong antidotes to the haplessness of his fellow Democrats and liberals, there's more than a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.""--Hendrik Hertzberg, Senior Editor, The New Yorker, and author of Politics: Observations and ArgumentsFast-rising political commentator Matthew Yglesias reveals the wrong-headed foreign policy stance of conservatives, neocons, and the Republican Party for what it is--aggressive nationalism. Writing with wit, passion, and keen insight, Yglesias reminds us of the rich tradition of liberal internationalism that, developed by Democrats, was used with great success by both Democratic and Republican administrations for more than fifty years. He provides a starting point for politicians, policymakers, pundits, and citizens alike to return America to its role as leader of a peace-loving and cooperative international community.

The Gift of Rain


Tan Twan Eng - 2007
    Set during the tumult of World War II, on the lush Malayan island of Penang, The Gift of Rain tells a riveting and poignant tale about a young man caught in the tangle of wartime loyalties and deceits.

The Opium War


Brian Inglis - 1979
    

Castilian Knight


Griff Hosker - 2019
    This is the story of a time when brother fought brother and Christian fought Christian. Power was all and Spain was riven by strife which was political, religious and familial! One man came from the harsh land of Castile to make one land and one state. Spain truly began with Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, El Campeador, El Cid. His story is told through the eyes of the warrior who spent his life at his side. William Redbeard came from humble origins but he was destined for greatness too as he walked in the seemingly endless shadow of El Cid. This first instalment in the Chronicles tells of Rodrigo’s rise to prominence when he became the champion of Prince Sancho of Castile. This is but the beginning of a tale which still stirs the blood a millennium after it began.

The Second Korean War


Ted Halstead - 2018
    Another nuclear weapon nears Seoul in a tunnel built by North Koreans. And North Korea's new military dictator launches an all-out invasion. Will Seoul or Pyongyang be the new capital of a united Korea?