He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists, and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. He even resorted to hiding most of his stock—almost ten thousand books—in attics all over Kabul.But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and his hatred of censorship, he also has strict views on family life and the role of women. As an outsider, Åsne Seierstad found herself in a unique position, able to move freely between the private, restricted sphere of the women—including Khan’s two wives—and the freer, more public lives of the men.It is an experience that Seierstad finds both fascinating and frustrating. As she steps back from the page and allows the Khans to speak for themselves, we learn of proposals and marriages, hope and fear, crime and punishment. The result is a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history.' to 'This mesmerizing portrait of a proud man who, through three decades and successive repressive regimes, heroically braved persecution to bring books to the people of Kabul has elicited extraordinary praise throughout the world and become a phenomenal international bestseller. The Bookseller of Kabul is startling in its intimacy and its details—a revelation of the plight of Afghan women and a window into the surprising realities of daily life in today’s Afghanistan.'

    A mock elegy for the heady joys of old-time Soho, 'The Song of Lunch' displays the full range of Reid's wit, craft and human sympathy.

    It was built on the twentieth-century magic called 'the planned economy', which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950's, the magic seemed to be working.Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan, and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, it give the tyranny its happy ending. It's history, it's fiction. It's a comedy of ideas, and a novel about the cost of ideas.By award-winning (and famously unpredictable) author of The Child That Books Built and Backroom Boys, Red Plenty is as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant - and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.

    Naturally, that means John Walkenbach returns with a new edition of his bestselling VBA Programming book and covers all the methods and tools you need to know in order to program with Excel. With this comprehensive guide, Mr. Spreadsheet shows you how to maximize your Excel experience using professional spreadsheet application development tips from his own personal bookshelf.Featuring a complete introduction to Visual Basic for Applications and fully updated for the latest features of Excel 2013, this essential reference includes an analysis of Excel application development and is packed with procedures, tips, and ideas for expanding Excel's capabilities with VBA.Offers an analysis of Excel application development and a complete introduction to VBA Features invaluable advice from Mr. Spreadsheet himself, bestselling author John Walkenbach, who demonstrates all the techniques you need to create Excel applications, both large and small Covers navigating the Excel interface, formatting worksheets, interacting with other Office applications, working with collaboration tools, and using sample workbooks and John Walkenbach's award-winning Power Utility Pak to help enhance your Excel skills Provides tips, tricks, and techniques for expanding Excel's capabilities with VBA that you wont find anywhere else Excel 2013 Power Programming with VBA is packed with procedures, tips, and ideas for achieving Excel excellence with VBA.

    "We'll rely on the kindness of strangers." And that's what they did. Mooching their way down the river and staying with strangers every night, Morine and Peard got an inside look at such issues as the demise of farming, the loss of manufacturing, gay rights, and Wal-Mart versus Main Street, and they were able to delve deep into the lives of complete strangers. But Morine soon realized the one life he never dug into was Peard's. After spending a month with him in a canoe, he had no idea that his friend's innermost thoughts had taken a fateful course. Written in the tradition of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, this book will be treasured by conservationists, canoeists, and old friends still seeking a thrill. Everyone else will be delightfully entertained.

    Gill is probably the most widely read columnist in Britain. His books The Angry Island and A.A. Gill is away have found delighted fans in America as well, and sparked a loyal following. His new book of travel essays, Previous Convictions, ranges from Gill's nearby domestic locales of Glastonbury and the English countryside to Haiti, Guatemala, Pakistan and exotic, dangerous, downtown Manhattan. In this collection of notes from the corners of the globe, and sometimes from the edge of sanity, he confesses about his travels far and wide, "The more I see of the world, the less I think I understand. Familiarity breeds even more astonishment. The world just gets wider and deeper and weirder." These pieces are wickedly funny, sometimes pointedly — even purposely — critical of many cultures and traditions, and always edifying and enchanting. As an adventurer and as a writer, Gill never disappoints; while he may take others to task for their customs, habits, idiosyncrasies and plain bad taste, his own indefatigable curiosity keeps him going back again and again for more, and provides us with spectacular entertainment along the way.