Lt. Col. Michael "Zak" Franzak was an AV-8B Marine Corps Harrier pilot who served as executive officer of VMA-513, "The Flying Nightmares," while deployed in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2003. The squadron was the first to base Harriers in Bagram in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. But what should have been a standard six-month deployment soon turned to a yearlong ordeal as the Iraq conflict intensified. And in what appeared to be a forgotten war half a world away from home, Franzak and his colleagues struggled to stay motivated and do their job providing air cover to soldiers patrolling the inhospitable terrain.I wasn’t in a foxhole. I was above it. I was safe and comfortable in my sheltered cocoon 20,000 feet over the Hindu Kush. But I prayed. I prayed when I heard the muted cries of men who at last understood their fate.Franzak’s personal narrative captures the day-by-day details of his deployment, from family good-byes on departure day to the squadron’s return home. He explains the role the Harrier played over the Afghanistan battlefields and chronicles the life of an attack pilot—from the challenges of nighttime, weather, and the austere mountain environment to the frustrations of working under higher command whose micromanagement often exacerbated difficulties. In vivid and poignant passages, he delivers the full impact of enemy ambushes, the violence of combat, and the heartbreaking aftermath.And as the Iraq War unfolded, Franzak became embroiled in another battle: one within himself. Plagued with doubts and wrestling with his ego and his belief in God, he discovered in himself a man he loathed. But the hardest test of his lifetime and career was still to come—one that would change him forever.A stunning true account of service and sacrifice that takes the reader from the harrowing dangers of the cockpit to the secret, interior spiritual struggle facing a man trained for combat, A Nightmare’s Prayer brings to life a Marine’s public and personal trials set against "the fine talcum brown soot of Afghanistan that permeated everything—even one’s soul."

    She was at one time the most powerful woman in the British Empire: a nation builder, the driving force behind the creation of modern-day Iraq. Born in 1868 into a world of privilege, Bell turned her back on Victorian society, choosing to read history at Oxford and going on to become an archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author (of Persian Pictures, The Desert and the Sown, and many other collections), poet, photographer, and legendary mountaineer (she took off her skirt and climbed the Alps in her underclothes).She traveled the globe several times, but her passion was the desert, where she traveled with only her guns and her servants. Her vast knowledge of the region made her indispensable to the Cairo Intelligence Office of the British government during World War I. She advised the Viceroy of India; then, as an army major, she traveled to the front lines in Mesopotamia. There, she supported the creation of an autonomous Arab nation for Iraq, promoting and manipulating the election of King Faisal to the throne and helping to draw the borders of the fledgling state. Gertrude Bell, vividly told and impeccably researched by Georgina Howell, is a richly compelling portrait of a woman who transcended the restrictions of her class and times, and in so doing, created a remarkable and enduring legacy.

    Midnight in Siberia chronicles David Greene's journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway, a 6,000-mile cross-country trip from Moscow to the Pacific port of Vladivostok. In quadruple-bunked cabins and stopover towns sprinkled across the country s snowy landscape, Greene speaks with ordinary Russians about how their lives have changed in the post-Soviet years.These travels offer a glimpse of the new Russia a nation that boasts open elections and newfound prosperity but continues to endure oppression, corruption, a dwindling population, and stark inequality.We follow Greene as he finds opportunity and hardship embodied in his fellow train travelers and in conversations with residents of towns throughout Siberia.We meet Svetlana, an entrepreneur who runs a small hotel in Ishim, fighting through corrupt layers of bureaucracy every day. Greene spends a joyous evening with a group of babushkas who made international headlines as runners-up at the Eurovision singing competition. They sing Beatles covers, alongside their traditional songs, finding that music and companionship can heal wounds from the past. In Novosibirsk, Greene has tea with Alexei, who runs the carpet company his mother began after the Soviet collapse and has mixed feelings about a government in which his family has done quite well. And in Chelyabinsk, a hunt for space debris after a meteorite landing leads Greene to a young man orphaned as a teenager, forced into military service, and now figuring out if any of his dreams are possible.Midnight in Siberia is a lively travel narrative filled with humor, adventure, and insight. It opens a window onto that country s complicated relationship with democracy and offers a rare look into the soul of twenty-first-century Russia."

    Welcomed into a family of nomadic water buffalo herders, he joins them on their annual spring migration into the Himalayas. More than a glimpse into an endangered culture, this superb adventure explores the relationship between humankind and wild lands, and the dubious effect of environmental conservation on peoples whose lives are inseparably intertwined with the natural world.The migration Benanav embarked upon was plagued with problems, as government officials threatened to ban this nomadic family—and others in the Van Gujjar tribe—from the high alpine meadows where they had summered for centuries. Faced with the possibility that their beloved buffaloes would starve to death, and that their age-old way of life was doomed, the family charted a risky new course, which would culminating in an astonishing mountain rescue. And Benanav was arrested for documenting the story of their plight.Intimate and enthralling, Himalaya Bound paints a sublime picture of a rarely-seen world, revealing the hopes and fears, hardships and joys, of a people who wonder if there is still a place for them on this planet.Laced with stories of tribal cultures from India to Yellowstone, from Jordan to Kenya, Benanav deftly wends through the controversial terrain where Western ways of protecting the environment clash with indigenous understandings of nature. Himalaya Bound celebrates and mourns an ancient way of life, while revealing an unlikely battleground in the fight to save the earth.

    Drawn into a netherworld of rituals and celebrations, Davis penetrated the vodoun mystique deeply enough to place zombification in its proper context within vodoun culture. In the course of his investigation, Davis came to realize that the story of vodoun is the history of Haiti—from the African origins of its people to the successful Haitian independence movement, down to the present day, where vodoun culture is, in effect, the government of Haiti’s countryside. The Serpent and the Rainbow combines anthropological investigation with a remarkable personal adventure to illuminate and finally explain a phenomenon that has long fascinated Americans.

    It is simultaneously a travelogue and visual journey. Martijn Doolaard traded the convenience of a car and the distractions of daily life for a cross-continental cycling journey: a biped adventure that would take him from Amsterdam to Singapore. Leaving behind repetitive routines, One Year on a Bike indulges in slow travel, the subtlety of a gradually changing landscape, and the lessons learned through traveling. Venturing through Eastern European fields of yellow rapeseed to the intimate hosting culture and community in Iran, One Year on a Bike is a vivid chronicle of what can happen when the norm is pointedly replaced by exceptional self-discoveries and beautiful scenery. Doolaard shares the gear and knowledge that made his trip possible alongside the passionate curiosities that served as his impetus.

     Following an insatiable appetite to explore the uncivilized West, Larpenteur joined the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in 1833 and traveled west to the mouth of the Yellowstone River. An important part of fur-trade history, chronicling the business in the American West in the nineteenth century, Forty Years a Fur Trader is also an insightful source of Native American history. Larpenteur had daily dealings with the Native American tribes of Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota and his journals reveal that he and many of the other trappers showed great respect to the native people, learning to live among them without attempting to eradicate established Native American life. Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri is the preeminent source for the history of the fur trade in the American West. Drawing upon daily journals recorded by Charles Larpenteur it provides fascinating insight into the history of the Midwest in the nineteenth century. “Its true inwardness is turned inside out by a chronicler whose eyes never opened to see much difference between good and evil, and who so saw nothing to conceal.” — The American Historical Review Charles Larpenteur was an American fur trader, whose memoir and diary frequently have been used as a source to fur trade history. He diligently kept a daily diary during his time in the trade and used it to write this book at the end of his life. He died in 1872.

    As an untried medical student studying the intersection of global health and communicable disease, Donaldson soon found himself in dangerous Sierra Leone, on the border of war-struck Liberia, where he struggled to control the spread of Lassa Fever. The words, “you know Lassa can kill you, don’t you?” haunted him each day. With the country in complete upheaval and working conditions suffering, he is forced to make life-and-death decisions alone as a never-ending onslaught of contagious patients flood the hospital. Soon however, he is not only fighting for others but himself when he becomes afflicted with a life threatening disease. The Lassa Ward is more than just an adventure story about the making of a physician; it is a portrait of the Sierra Leone people and the human struggle of those risking their daily comforts and lives to aid them.

    Her husband served in the Ulster cabinet and was Air Minister in the National Government of 1934-5. Edith founded the Women's Legion during the First World War and was also an early campaigner for women's suffrage. She created the renowned Mount Stewart Gardens in County Down that are now owned by the National Trust.All her life, Edith remained at the heart of politics both in Westminster and Ireland. She is perhaps best known for her role as 'society's queen' - a hostess to the rich and famous. Her close circle of friends included Winston Churchill, Lady Astor, Neville Chamberlain and Harold Macmillan who congregated in her salon, known as 'The Ark'. Other members included artists and writers such as John Buchan, Sean O'Casey. Britain's first Labour prime minister, Ramsey MacDonald, became romantically obsessed by her.

    So she headed to Russia looking for some excitement—commencing what would become a four-year, twelve-nation Communist bloc tour that shattered her preconceived notions of the “Evil Empire.” In Around the Bloc, Griest relates her experiences as a volunteer at a children’s shelter in Moscow, a propaganda polisher at the office of the Chinese Communist Party’s English-language mouthpiece in Beijing, and a belly dancer among the rumba queens of Havana. She falls in love with an ex-soldier who narrowly avoided radiation cleanup duties at Chernobyl, hangs out with Cuban hip-hop artists, and comes to difficult realizations about the meaning of democracy. is the absorbing story of a young journalist driven by a desire to witness the effects of Communism. Along the way, she learns the Russian mathematical equation for buying dinner-party vodka (one bottle per guest, plus an extra), stumbles upon Beijing’s underground gay scene, marches with 100,000 mothers demanding Elián González’s return to Cuba, and gains a new appreciation for the Mexican culture she left behind.

    These are the true-life diary entries of a prison officer, working in one of the country’s worst correctional facility. The daily stabbings, rapes and murders are just the beginning of a nightmare ride into the darkness of life behind bars. It’s a raw and ruthless look behind the walls in all its brutal honesty. This is maximum-security.

    As the SS Bremen leaves New York Harbor with Marlies and her family as passengers, Marlies has no idea that what is intended to be a three-month stay will turn into a seven-year struggle to stay alive in a living hell.No one could have predicted the events that are about to unfold as the Bremen docks in Bremerhaven, Germany six days later. As World War II begins, Hitler comes into power, and all borders and ports are closed; the Adams family is prohibited from leaving Germany-now a Nazi-controlled country. In her compelling autobiography, Marlies chronicles a little girl's unforgettable journey through starvation, bone-chilling cold, prejudice, bombings, abuse, homelessness, and fear instigated by an evil dictator.Narrated with candor and many historical details that bring her memoir to life, Marlies shares the tragic yet inspirational story of how she endured a childhood in wartime Germany by relying on her own sheer will, faith, and the unconditional love of a most unusual, yet devoted best friend.

    Driving. Always driving.' Gwenda had always loved the open road, but her home town of Newcastle didn't really offer the sort of adventure she longed for. So, in 1957, with friend and fellow nurse Pat in tow, she left the dismal British winter behind, and embarked on an amazing American adventure.After a year nursing in Cleveland, Gwenda, Pat and three new friends set off on a road trip around North America, driving in a rickety 1949 Ford. What follows is the charming true story of five remarkable young women. Over the course of eighteen months, the girls go to a 4th July rodeo, visit San Francisco and Las Vegas, learn to surf in Hawaii, spot movie stars in Hollywood and celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans.Wherever they go, the travelling nurses cause a sensation. This is a delightfully nostalgic memoir of friendship and the romance of the open road.

    

    There, he befriended a Japanese family, the Takishitas. After musing offhandedly that he would like to one day have his own house in Japan, the familyunbeknownst to Johnset out to grant his wish. They found Roderick a 250-year-old minka, or hand-built farmhouse, with a thatched roof and held together entirely by wooden pegs and joinery. It was about to be washed away by flooding and was being offered for only fourteen dollars. Roderick graciously bought the house, but was privately dismayed at the prospect of living in this enormous old relic lacking heating, bathing, plumbing, and proper kitchenfacilities. So the minka was dismantled and stored, where Roderick secretly hoped it would stay, as it did for several years.But Roderick's reverence for natural materials and his appreciation of traditional Japanese and Shinto craftsmanship eventually got the better of him. Before long a team of experienced carpenters were hoisting massive beams, laying wide wooden floors, and attaching the split-bamboo ceiling. In just forty days they rebuilt the house on a hill overlooking Kamakura, the ancient capital of Japan. Working together, they renovated the farmhouse, adding features such as floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors and a modern kitchen, bath, and toilet. From these humble beginnings, Roderick's minkahas become internationally known and has hosted such luminaries as President George H. W. Bush, and Senator Hillary Clinton. John Roderick's architectural memoir Minka tells the compelling and often poignant story of how one man fell in love with the people, culture, and ancient building traditions of Japan, and reminds us all about the importance of craftsmanship and the meaning of place and home in the process.