Betrayal. Assassination. Rome, 133 b.c. Gaius Marius is back from war in the West. They fought for the peace and prosperity of Rome, but the legions return to find the Eternal City far less peaceful and prosperous than they had hoped. People are starving, homelessness abounds, war after war has overtaxed the legions. And the revolutionary tribune, Tiberius Gracchus, thinks he has a solution for everything. Political parties are developing, the people are up in arms, the senate is enraged. And Tiberius is at the center of it all. Before Marius has a chance to reacclimate to civilian life, he’s thrust into this political upheaval in Rome. His allegiances are put to the test as Rome is almost brought to the brink of civil war. For the first time in the history of the Republic, blood will be shed in the forum.

    In these marvellous essays on history, politics and society, cultural critic Nadeem Farooq Paracha upturns various reductive readings of the country by revealing its multi-layered reality. With wit and insight, he investigates past events and their implications for modern-day society. Thus, one piece explores how and why Mohenjo-daro has been neglected as a historical site, and another examines how Muhammad-bin-Qasim, who briefly invaded Sindh in 713 CE, has come to be lionised as the original founder of Pakistan. There is a story about a Pakistani Jimi Hendrix who plays the guitar like a dream and also one about a medieval emperor who lives on in the swear words of a Punjabi peasant. There are essays on Pakistani pop music, on Afro-Pakistanis and on how Jhuley Lal came to be more than just a folk deity for Sindhi immigrants in India. Points of Entry examines the constant struggle between two distinct tendencies in Pakistani civic-nationalism—one modernist, the other theocratic—and the complex society it has birthed.

    The loss led to an unusual cross- country journey for Farnsworth and her father. En route to San Francisco from her home town of Topeka, Kansas, the heartsick child searches for her mother at train stations along the way. Even more, she searches for answers—answers to her mother’s death, the speed of time, and to a mysteriously locked compartment on the train.Weaving a child’s imaginative adventures with vivid memories from her reporting in danger zones like Cambodia and Iraq, Farnsworth explores how she became involved in covering mass death and disaster. While she never breaks the tone of a curious investigator, she easily moves between her nine-year-old self and the experienced, hard-hitting journalist. Imagination is at play throughout her work, whether it be in her childhood adventures or in her narrative control, always with great purpose. She openly confronts the impact of her childhood on the route her life has taken. And, as she provides one beautifully crafted depiction after another, we share her journey, coming to know the acclaimed reporter as she discovers herself. Farnsworth’s curiosity lingers on every page of A Train Through Time: My Life Real and Imagined, and so does the making of a powerfully driven woman.With Photo Art by Mark Serr.

    Bush is still in the White House. Taking a philosophical view, Trillin has said, “We weren’t going to know whether you could bring down a presidency with iambic pentameter until somebody tried it.”Now Trillin is trying again, back at his pithy and hilarious best to comment on the President’s decision to go to war in Iraq (“Then terrorists could count on what we’d do: / Attack us, we’ll strike back, though not at you”), his religiosity (“He treats his critics in the press / As if they’re yapping Pekineses. / Reporters deal in mundane facts; / This man has got the word from Jesus”), and whether he was wearing a transmitting device in the first presidential debate (“Could this explain his odd expressions? Is there proof he / Was being told, ‘If you can hear me now, look goofy’?”)Trillin deals with the people around Bush, such as Nanny Dick Cheney and Mushroom Cloud Rice and Orange John Ashcroft and Orange John’s successor, Alberto Gonzales (“The A.G.’s to be one Alberto Gonzales– / Dependable, actually loyal über alles”). He tries to predict the behavior of the famously intemperate John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations in poems with titles like “Bolton Chases French Ambassador Up Tree” and “White House Says Bolton Can Do Job Even While in Straitjacket.”Finally, in dealing with whether the entire Bush Administration, like the unfortunate Brownie, has done a heckuva job, he composes a small-government sea chantey for the Republicans:’Cause government’s the problem, lads,Americans would all do well to shun it.Yes, government’s the problem, lads.At least it is when we’re the ones who run it.

    William David Cleveland Jr. as a desecrated corpse. In the split-second that Paul Watson had to choose between pressing the shutter release or turning away, the world went quiet and Watson heard Cleveland whisper: “If you do this, I will own you forever.” And he has.Paul Watson was born a rebel with one hand, who grew up thinking it took two to fire an assault rifle, or play jazz piano. So he became a journalist. At first, he loved war. He fed his lust for the bang-bang, by spending vacations with guerilla fighters in Angola, Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia, and writing about conflicts on the frontlines of the Cold War. Soon he graduated to assignments covering some of the world’s most important conflicts, including South Africa, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Iraq.Watson reported on Osama bin Laden’s first battlefield victory in Somalia. Unwittingly, Watson’s Pulitzer Prize—winning photo of Staff Sgt. David Cleveland — whose Black Hawk was shot down over the streets of Mogadishu — helped hand bin Laden one of his earliest propaganda coups, one that proved barbarity is a powerful weapon in a modern media war. Public outrage over the pictures of Cleveland’s corpse forced President Clinton to order the world’s most powerful military into retreat. With each new beheading announced on the news, Watson wonders whether he helped teach the terrorists one of their most valuable lessons. Much more than a journalist’s memoir, Where War Lives connects the dots of the historic continuum from Mogadishu through Rwanda to Afghanistan and Iraq.From the Hardcover edition.

    The truth? In Saudi Arabia, the existence of Christian churches is prohibited, along with the Bible itself; no Christian or Jew can enter Mecca or Medina lest their mere footsteps desecrate Islam’s holiest sites. In Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world, conversion from Islam to Christianity is punishable by death. In Iraq, Syria, Nigeria and even the President’s beloved Indonesia, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and other “infidels” often face acts of religious genocide by fundamentalists who invoke core Islamic texts and teachings to justify their actions.In short, as Robert Spencer shows in this work, the creed of Muhammad, far from being a religion of peace, has revealed itself in the post-9/11 world to be a religion of bigotry.

    Born to working-class Democrats in Virginia, Bannon has barrelled through the Navy, Harvard, Wall Street, and Hollywood; he is fluent in esoteric philosophies and political theories; and he has diagnosed the problem with today's America---the rot that has eaten away at working Americans' hopes, opportunities, and freedoms---and developed a winning strategy for taking America back.With inside information on Bannon's current White House projects and his relationships with other figures in the Trump orbit---and with President Trump himself---Bannon: Trump's Rebel in the White House is not only a three-dimensional guide to one of the most fascinating figures of modern American history; it's also a guide to understanding the Trump administration's plans for our future.

    What if idealistic reform itself is a culprit?In Political Realism, Jonathan Rauch argues that well-meaning efforts to stem corruption and increase participation have stripped political leaders and organizations of the tools they need to forge compromises and make them stick. Fortunately, he argues, much of the damage can be undone by rediscovering political realism. Instead of trying to drive private money away out of politics, how about channeling it to strengthen parties and leaders? Instead of doubling down on direct democracy, how about giving political professionals more influence over candidate nominations? Rauch shows how a new generation of realist thinkers is using time-tested truths about politics and government to build reforms for our time.Rich with contrarian insights and fresh thinking, Political Realism is an eye-opening challenge to today's conventional wisdom about what ails American government and politics.

    His remarkable journey from young union organizer to all-powerful head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is an epic tale worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, jam-packed with intrigue, subterfuge, violence, and corruption. His successes were monumental, his fall truly spectacular, and his bizarre disappearance in the summer of 1975 remains one of the great mysteries in American history. Widely considered to be the definitive volume on the career and crimes of Jimmy Hoffa, The Hoffa Wars, by acclaimed investigative journalist Dan E. Moldea, is an eye-opening, extensively researched account of the steady rise and fall of an ingenious, ambitious man who was instrumental in transforming a small union of seventy-five thousand truckers into the most powerful labor brotherhood in world. Shocking disclosures in Moldea’s no-holds-barred account include the devil’s bargain that put Hoffa and his union in the pockets of the Mob, Hoffa’s role in the joint CIA-Mafia plots to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the deal Hoffa made with US president Richard Nixon that released the disgraced Teamster president from prison eight years early, and the truth behind Hoffa’s eventual disappearance and likely murder. But perhaps the most startling revelation of all concerns the integral part Jimmy Hoffa played, in concert with underworld kingpins Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante, in America’s most terrible twentieth-century crime: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

    The American Dream champions individualism.  But at what price?  In this timely revision of The Wilding of America, Charles Derber chronicles the latest incidents of "wilding" - extreme acts of self-interested violence and greed - that signal an eroding of the moral landscape of American society.  Despite this ever-increasing emphasis on individualism in America, Derber offers a communitarian alternative that is as inspiring as it is instructive.

    It identified, for the first time, the perilous position of Britain’s young adults and, with a title brandished by everyone from Ed Miliband to student protesters, the book’s thesis has formed a controversial but essential part of Britain’s political debate.With significant additional material, this edition updates the argument and explains the real effects of austerity policies and the recession. And, crucially, it explains what must be done to protect a vital and underestimated national asset – Britain’s newest adults.

    People have the right to be bigots. I'm a fixer. Team Australia. Shirtfonting. Choppergate. Stop the boats. Coal is good for humanity. No cuts to health. Sir Prince Philip. The flags. It's all the fault of the febrile media. And that whole onion thing.In August 2013, Australia welcomed Tony Abbott as its new prime minister. This promised to be a marriage between responsible government and a nation tired of the endless drama of the Gillard-Rudd years. But then well Andrew P Street details the litany of gaffes, goofs and questionable captain's calls that characterised the subsequent reign of the Abbott government, following the trail from bold promises to questionable realities, unlikely recoveries to inexplicable own goals, Malcolm Turnbull's assurances of support to the day he pushed the Captain off his bike once and for all. And all this comes with a colourful cast of supporting characters and dangerous loons that only a nation unfamiliar with the concept of below- the-line voting could elect. Here is a unique take on a modern politics Australian style.If Game of Thrones was a deeply irreverent book about politics, then the TV series would probably not rate nearly as well. It would, however, look something like this.

    The author analyzes both historical and contemporary trends, as well as the major theories used to explain the dynamics underlying international relations--helping you to think critically about these topics by presenting rival views. From global development, the practice of terrorism, and the war in Iraq to peacekeeping operations and the transformations evident since 9/11, this thought-provoking textbook briefs you on the most recent indicators of global trends. An extensive map, figure, and photo program helps you visualize the significance of statistical data and the implications of global rivalries.

    Stan Powers finds himself at a crossroads. Poised to take the last step in his unlikely ascent to the top of conservative talk radio, his conscience may not let him. Set amid the backdrop of "the most important presidential election of our lifetime," Powers - as the most influential voice in Tampa's hotly contested I-4 Corridor - holds the key to Florida, and therefore the Oval Office. His on-air attacks singlehandedly put an abrupt end to the top candidates' main competitors in the primaries, and now he is in the singular position to influence who wins the highest elected office in the world. Will he continue playing the game according to his cynical advisors, or listen to his own conscience and drop an even bigger bomb than expected? With a story that could have been ripped from the headlines, deeply developed characters and interconnected plotlines, and one of the most shocking and rewarding denouements you'll ever experience, this is the perfect political thriller for today's America.

    No understanding of Western civilization is possible without it. Inevitably, Left-wing academics want to introduce gender studies and race theory to the field—and punish those who refuse to conform. When one University of Chicago professor dared to publicly celebrate the Christian identity of the Middle Ages, she was branded a ‘violent fascist’ and ‘white supremacist’ by her colleagues. Now Medieval Studies scholars are tearing their own discipline apart with witch-hunts, name-calling, boycotts and intimidation. The damage done to academia could be incalculable. In this influential essay, originally published to widespread online acclaim, New York Times-bestselling author and award-winning journalist Milo Yiannopoulos explains why we should all care about the newest front in the cultural war, the academic battle for the Middle Ages.