Cut off for most of his life by Cold Wars and Iron Curtains, Europe's eastern lands are now open for business.And it's as much a voyage of discovery as any of Michael's other journeys, as he finds himself in countries he'd barely heard of, many of them new names on the map, many unfamiliar and mysterious, all with tragic histories and much brighter futures.Starting in the snows of the Julian Alps, on the borders of Italy and Slovenia, Michael heads east to discover the half of Europe he never knew.Heading down the ancient trade route of the Adriatic coast he turns north into the Balkans, gingerly picking themselves up after the vicious fighting of the 1990's. Albania takes Michael into a different world of strongly eastern influence which he follows through Bulgaria, Macedonia and into Turkey, where Europe and Asia meet. Turning north to Moldova and Romania, he follows the mighty Danube into Serbia and Hungary, the very heart of Europe, and on to the Ukraine. A final sweep from north to south takes him through the Baltic States into Poland and across the Carpathian mountains into Slovakia, the Czech Republic and what was until recently East Germany.Visiting twenty countries, more than in his Himalaya and Sahara journeys combined, he encounters painful memories and exuberant celebrations. Throwing himself into local life with his usual reckless curiosity, he samples pig fat with a brandy chaser, meets Romanian lumberjacks, drives the 8.58 stopping train from Poznan to Wolsztyn, learns about mine-clearing in Bosnia, treads the catwalk at a Budapest fashion show and watches Turkish gents wrestling in olive oil.It's New Europe, but vintage Palin.

    These fascinating spectacles shock us in their diversity, their complexity, and their epic scale, bringing us the miraculous beauty of our planet. Featuring more than 200 color images, including acclaimed photography from the National Geographic Image Collection, this volume presents a dazzling array of natural and manmade wonders, unusual phenomena, and amusing curiosities. Each page will enlighten and inspire, presenting our world at its best.

    The launch of Dalkey’s Best European Fiction series was nothing short of phenomenal, with wide-ranging coverage in international media such as Time magazine, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, and the Guardian; glowing reviews and interviews in print and online magazines such as the Believer, Bookslut, Paste, and the Huffington Post; radio interviews with editor Aleksandar Hemon on NPR stations in the US and BBC Radio 3 and 4 in the UK; and a terrific response from booksellers, who made Best European Fiction 2010 an “Indie Next” pick and created table displays and special promotions throughout the US and UK.For 2011, Aleksandar Hemon is back as editor, along with a new preface by Colum McCann, and with a whole new cast of authors and stories, including work from countries not included in Best European Fiction 2010.UK, WALES: Wiliam Owen Roberts, The ProfessionalsUK, ENGLAND: Hilary Mantel, The Hearts Fails without WarningTURKEY: Ersan Üldes, Professional BehaviorSWITZERLAND: Verena Stefan, Doe a DeerSPAIN (Catalan): Mercè Ibarz, Nela and the VirginsSPAIN (Castilian): Enrique Vila-Matas, Far From HereSLOVENIA: Drago Jančar, The ProphecySERBIA: Vladimir Arsenijević, One Minute: Dumbo’s DeathRUSSIA: Andrei Gelasimov, The Evil EyeROMANIA: Lucian Dan Teodorovici, Goose ChasePORTUGAL: Gonçalo Manuel Tavares, Six TalesPOLAND: Olga Tokarczuk, The Ugliest Woman in the WorldNORWAY: Frode Grytten, Hotel by a RailroadNETHERLANDS: Manon Uphoff, DesireMONTENEGRO: Ognjen Spahić, Raymond is No Longer with Us—Carver is DeadMOLDOVA: Iulian Ciocan, Auntie FroseaMACEDONIA: Blaže Minevski, Academician Sisoye’s Inaugural SpeechLITHUANIA: Danutė Kalinauskaitė, Just ThingsLIECHTENSTEIN: Stefan Sprenger, DustLATVIA: Nora Ikstena, Elza Kuga’s Old-Age DementiaITALY: Marco Candida, Dream DiaryIRELAND (Irish): Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, TrespassesIRELAND (English): Kevin Barry, Doctor SotICELAND: Kristín Eiríksdóttir, Holes in PeopleHUNGARY: László Krasznahorkai, The BillGERMANY: Ingo Schulze, Oranges and AngelGEORGIA: Zurab Lezhava, Sex for FridgeFRANCE: Eric Laurrent, American DiaryFINLAND: Anita Konkka, The ClownESTONIA: Toomas Vint, Beyond the Window a Park is DimmingDENMARK: Peter Adolphsen, Fourteen Small StoriesCZECH REPULIC: Michal Ajvaz, The Wire BookCYPRUS: Nora Nadjarian, ExhibitionCROATIA: Mimi Simić, My GirlfriendBULGARIA: Alek Popov, PlumbersBOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA: Goran Samardžić, VarneeshBELGIUM: François Emmanuel, Lou DancingBELARUS: Victor Martinovich, TabooAUSTRIA: Dieter Sperl, Random WalkerALBANIA: Arian Leka, Brothers of the Blade

    Stirling bomber goes on a special mission to destroy Goering's residence which is used as operational headquarters for the air defence of Berlin. His aircraft, after the operation has been successfully accomplished, is shot down. Wounded, he is hunted across Holland, joins the Dutch underground and is captured in Leyden waiting to be taken off by a British submarine.The description of the Berlin raid, the last moments of the aircraft and the pursuit across Holland are among the best dramatic passages to come out of the war. But this is only the beginning of the most fantastic tale, which, interspersed with intrigue and violence, with setbacks and recapture, takes Pape across the breadth of German-occupied Europe; to Poland and Czechoslovakia; to Austria and Hungary and almost to the Yugoslav partisans.

    In this deeply personal biography, Zinovieff explores the turbulent, often scandalous life of her grandmother.

    As always, he has a plan to help you have a meaningful cultural experience while you're there—even with just a few hours in port.Inside you'll find one-day itineraries for sightseeing at or near the major Northern Europe ports of call, including:Southampton and Dover (London)Le Havre (Paris and Normandy)Zeebrugge (Bruges and Brussels)AmsterdamOsloCopenhagenWarnemünde/Rostock (Berlin)StockholmHelsinkiTallinnSt. PetersburgRick Steves' Northern Europe Cruise Ports explains how to get into town from the cruise terminal, shares sightseeing tips, and includes self-guided walks and tours. You'll learn which destinations are best for an excursion—and which you can confidently visit on your own. You'll also get tips on booking a cruise, plus hints for saving time and money on the ship and in port.You can count on Rick Steves to tell you what you really need to know when cruising through Northern Europe.

    Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.This new edition includes six opinion pieces written by Robert Kaplan about the Balkans between l996 and 2000 beginning just after the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords and ending after the conclusion of the Kosovo war, with the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power.

    Sleeping in bank vaults, imperial palaces and unreconstructed Soviet youth hostels, battling vodka-breathed Russian hostility, Romanian landslides and a diet of dumplings, Moore and his ‘so-small bicycle’ are sustained by the kindness of reindeer farmers and Serbian rock gods, plus a shameful addiction to Magic Man energy drink. Haunted throughout by the border detritus of watchtowers and rusted razor wire, Moore reflects on the curdling of the Communist dream, and the memories of a Cold War generation reared on the fear of apocalypse—at a time of renewed East-West tension. After three months, twenty countries and a fifty-eight degree jaunt up the thermostat, man and bike finally wobble up to a Black Sea beach in Bulgaria, older and wiser, but mainly older.

    In this landmark book, a gifted Harvard historian puts you in the room with Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt as they meet at a climactic turning point in the war to hash out the terms of the peace. The ink wasn't dry when the recriminations began. The conservatives who hated Roosevelt's New Deal accused him of selling out. Was he too sick? Did he give too much in exchange for Stalin's promise to join the war against Japan? Could he have done better in Eastern Europe? Both Left and Right would blame Yalta for beginning the Cold War. Plokhy's conclusions, based on unprecedented archival research, are surprising. He goes against conventional wisdom-cemented during the Cold War- and argues that an ailing Roosevelt did better than we think. Much has been made of FDR's handling of the Depression; here we see him as wartime chief. "Yalta" is authoritative, original, vividly- written narrative history, and is sure to appeal to fans of Margaret MacMillan's bestseller "Paris 1919."

    It has now been rewritten, drawing on a wide range of new research, and updated to take account of the period following the end of the cold war, taking the story to contemporary arguments about missile defense.

    The implications and challenges associated with this fact are enormous. But how did we get here?From the origins of urbanization in Mesopotamia to the global metropolises of today, great cities have marked the development of human civilization. The Great Cities in History tells their stories, starting with the earliest, from Uruk and Memphis to Jerusalem and Alexandria. Next come the fabulous cities of the first millennium: Damascus and Baghdad, Teotihuacan and Tikal, and Chang’an, capital of Tang Dynasty China. The medieval world saw the rise of powerful cities such as Palermo and Paris in Europe, Benin in Africa, and Angkor in southeast Asia. The last two sections bring us from the early modern world, with Isfahan, Agra, and Amsterdam, to the contemporary city: London and New York, Tokyo and Barcelona, Los Angeles and Sao Paulo.The distinguished contributors, including Jan Morris, Michael D. Coe, Simon Schama, Orlando Figes, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Misha Glenny, Susan Toby Evans, and A. N. Wilson, evoke the character of each place—people, art and architecture, government—and explain the reasons for its success.

    Donald Trump’s surprise electoral victory shattered the fragile understanding between Washington and Beijing, putting the most important relationship of the twenty-first century in the hands of a novice who had bitterly attacked China from the campaign trail. Almost as soon as he entered office, Trump brought to a boil the long-simmering rivalry between the two countries, while also striking up a “friendship” with Chinese president Xi Jinping — whose manipulations of his American counterpart would undermine the White House’s already disjointed response to the historic challenge of a rising China. All the while, Trump’s own officials fought to steer U.S. policy from within. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in Wuhan, Trump’s love-hate relationship with Xi had sparked a trade war, while Xi’s aggression had pushed the world to the brink of a new Cold War. But their quarrel had also forced a long-overdue reckoning within the United States over China’s audacious foreign-influence operations, horrific human rights abuses, and creeping digital despotism. Ironically, this awakening was one of the biggest foreign-policy victories of Trump’s fractious term in office. ​Filled with shocking revelations drawn from Josh Rogin’s unparalleled access to top U.S. officials from the White House and deep within the country’s foreign policy machine, Chaos Under Heaven reveals an administration at war with itself during perhaps our most urgent hour.

    It would be one of the longest of all overland journeys - half-way round the world, from the English Channel to Singapore. They knew that several expeditions had already tried it.Some had got as far as the deserts of Persia; a few had even reached the plains of India. But no-one had managed to go on from there: over the jungle-clad mountains of Assam and across northern Burma to Thailand and Malaya. Over the last 3,000 miles it seemed like there were 'just too many rivers and too few roads'. But no-one really knew...

    What makes the Back Sea cultures distinctive, Ascherson agrues, is the way their comonent parts came together over the millennia to shape unique communities, languages, religions, and trade. As he shows with skill and persuasiveness, Black Sea patterns in the Caucasus, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, and Greece have linked the peoples of Europe and Asia together for centuries.

    The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it?Central and Eastern European states, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading.How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.