From renowned foreign policy expert Angela Stent comes a must-read dissection of present-day Russian motives on the global stage.How did Russia manage to emerge resurgent on the world stage and play a weak hand so effectively? Is it because Putin is a brilliant strategist? Or has Russia stepped into a vacuum created by the West’s distraction with its own domestic problems and US ambivalence about whether it still wants to act as a superpower? PUTIN’S WORLD examines the country’s turbulent past, how it has influenced Putin, the Russians’ understanding of their position on the global stage and their future ambitions — and their conviction that the West has tried to deny them a seat at the table of great powers since the USSR collapsed.This book looks at Russia’s key relationships — its downward spiral with the United States, Europe, and NATO; its ties to China, Japan, the Middle East; and with its neighbors, particularly the fraught relationship with Ukraine. PUTIN’S WORLD will help Americans understand how and why the post-Cold War era has given way to a new, more dangerous world, one in which Russia poses a challenge to the United States in every corner of the globe — and one in which Russia has become a toxic and divisive subject in US politics.

    Knowing little of the red tape, cultural differences and climate ahead, Matthew sets off alone across the North Sea bound for Shanghai. Trans-Siberian Adventures follows his exploits as he learns the ropes of becoming a long-range train adventurer. This is a captivating insight into the reality of life on the legendary Trans-Siberian and Trans-Mongolian railways.

    The consequences of the popular rebellion and Russian President Putin’s attempt to strangle it remain uncertain. In this book, Andrew Wilson combines a spellbinding, on-the-scene account of the Kiev Uprising with a deeply informed analysis of what precipitated the events, what has developed in subsequent months, and why the story is far from over.   Wilson situates Ukraine’s February insurgence within Russia’s expansionist ambitions throughout the previous decade. He reveals how President Putin’s extravagant spending to develop soft power in all parts of Europe was aided by wishful thinking in the EU and American diplomatic inattention, and how Putin’s agenda continues to be widely misunderstood in the West. The author then examines events in the wake of the Uprising—the military coup in Crimea, the election of President Petro Poroshenko, the Malaysia Airlines tragedy, rising tensions among all of Russia's neighbors, both friend and foe, and more. Ukraine Crisis provides an important, accurate record of events that unfolded in Ukraine in 2014. It also rings a clear warning that the unresolved problems of the region have implications well beyond Ukrainian borders.

     The six novels, published in order of importance, are: • Nineteen Eighty-Four (the most important dystopian novel ever written, together with Huxley's Brave New World, and Zamyatin's "We" • Animal Farm (1945) • Burmese Days (1934) • Coming Up for Air (1939) • A Clergyman's Daughter (1935) • Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) His three non fiction books are: • Homage to Catalonia (1938), about the Spanish Civil War. • Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) The last book of the collection is called "ESSAYS: From Hitler, Franco & the Atomic Bomb; to Tolstoi, Dickens & Twain". Orwell was an acclaimed analyst of his country's reality during World War II and beyond (including the beginning of the cold war), which he reflects in his many articles and pamphlets collected in this book. He also did very deep literary and personal analysis of men like Mark Twain, Adolf Hitler, or even Tolstoi. The following is the list of essays. 1. THE SPIKE 2. A HANGING (1931) 3. BOOKSHOP MEMORIES (1936) 4. SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT (1936) 5. SPILLING THE SPANISH BEANS (1937) 6. MARRAKECH (1939) 7. BOYS' WEEKLIES AND FRANK RICHARDS'S REPLY (1940) 8. CHARLES READE (1940) 9. THE ART OF DONALD MCGILL (1941) 10. WELLS, HITLER AND THE WORLD STATE (1941) 11. RUDYARD KIPLING (1942) 12. MARK TWAIN–THE LICENSED JESTER (1943) 13. POETRY AND THE MICROPHONE (1943) 14. W B YEATS (1943) 15. ARTHUR KOESTLER (1944) 16. BENEFIT OF CLERGY: SOME NOTES ON SALVADOR DALI (1944) 18. ANTISEMITISM IN BRITAIN (1945) 19. FREEDOM OF THE PARK (1945) 20. FUTURE OF A RUINED GERMANY (1945) 21. GOOD BAD BOOKS 22. NONSENSE POETRY 23. NOTES ON NATIONALISM (1945) 24. REVENGE IS SOUR (1945) 25. THE SPORTING SPIRIT 26. YOU AND THE ATOMIC BOMB (1945) 27. A GOOD WORD FOR THE VICAR OF BRAY 28. A NICE CUP OF TEA (1946) 29. BOOKS VS. CIGARETTES 30. CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK REVIEWER 31. DECLINE OF THE ENGLISH MURDER 32. HOW THE POOR DIE 33. PLEASURE SPOTS 34. POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 35. SOME THOUGHTS ON THE COMMON TOAD 36. THE PREVENTION OF LITERATURE 37. WHY I WRITE (1946) 38. LEAR, TOLSTOY AND THE FOOL 39. SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS (1947) 40. WRITERS AND LEVIATHAN (1948)

    As soon as I’m alone in the woods, I can sense his eyes watching me as I get drunk on something else, his animal charge which fills the air between us.The Professor would be mad if I came back empty handed, but damn, if what I discover isn’t more of a distraction than bad weather, missing links or even avalanches.NikolaiThirty years ago, the forest claimed me, it nearly killed me but it claimed me, gave me a new life from the one I thought I knew. I learned to live, to hunt and thrive in the wilderness, at one with nature and within the circle of life, but always missing that one thing all the other creatures had, that one thing they enjoyed at least once every spring season.A mate.As soon as I see her, I know she’s been sent for me, sent for me to claim and to breed.To claim as my own.But she brings something else with her, the memory from a dream.Am I a man, or a monster?I want to be her man, her mate. Together. Forever.*Russian Mountain Man is a SHORT insta-everything standalone instalove romance with an HEA, no cheating, and no cliffhanger.

    Mazzeo, author of The Widow Clicquot“An impressive feat of research, told swiftly and enthusiastically.” —San Francisco ChronicleFrom Vanderbilt and Rockefeller to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, America’s captains of industry are paragons of entrepreneurial success, and books about business history, from The First Tycoon to The Big Short, show exemplars of capitalistic cunning and tenacity…but just as American cocktail connoisseurs can mistake Absolut, Skyy, Grey Goose, or Ketel One for the quintessential clear spirit, so too has America’s vision of business history remained naïve to a truth long recognized in Eastern Europe: since the time of Tsar Nicholas, both vodka and commercial success have been synonymous in Russia with one name—Smirnoff. Linda Himelstein’s critically acclaimed biography of Russian vodka scion Pyotr Smirnov—a finalist for the James Beard Award, winner of the IACP and Saroyan Awards, and a BusinessWeek Best Business Book of 2009—is the sweeping story of entrepreneurship, empire, and epicurean triumph unlike anything the world has ever seen before.

    All she has is a reminder of a note to save the Child in Cabin 13.Inside the island's cult-like hospital, doctors tell her that she survived a plane crash. She is told that, like most sole survivor, she is suffering from an irrational guilt of having got away and outlived the crash. The nurses encourage her to take her medication to heal, and inform her that she is infertile.But deep in her core, Jane can't shake that maternal gut-feeling of having to save that child. Then another note slips from under the door… an insider trying to help?Not only does the note help her remembering her childhood darkest secret, but the possibility that the child in cabin 13 is her own — and that maybe they lied to her: could it be that she never landed on the island, but was actually trying to escape it?* The Child in Cabin 13 is an emotional rollercoaster of a thriller that is inspired by true events of a plane crash in the 70s. Unlike most books that promise a 'twist you don't see coming', this novel has a 'revelation' that will shatter your existence and make you admire the resilience of women in their darkest hour.* The Child in Cabin 13 will return to normal price upon release date.

    So punishing was life in these units that officers in regular formations threatened to send recalcitrant troops to penal battalions. Alexander Pyl'cyn led his penal unit through the Soviets' massive offensive in the summer of 1944, the Vistula-Oder operation into eastern Germany, and the bitter assault on Berlin in 1945. He survived the war, but 80 percent of his men did not.

    Focusing on the urban population, Fitzpatrick depicts a world of privation, overcrowding, endless lines, and broken homes, in which the regime's promises of future socialist abundance rang hollowly. We read of a government bureaucracy that often turned life into a nightmare, and of how ordinary citizens tried to circumvent it. We also read of the secret police, whose constant surveillance was endemic at this time, and the waves of terror, like the Great Purges of 1937, which periodically cast society into turmoil.

    This volume contains the short stories, The Brigadier, The Story of Lieutenant Ergunoff, A Hapless Girl, A Strange Story, and Punin and Baburin, and the novel On the Eve.

    "His stories, which deluge us with feeling, make feeling more intelligent; more magnanimous. He is an artist of our moral maturity." This volume presents forty-two of Chekhov's later short stories, written between 1888 and 1903, in acclaimed translations by Constance Garnett and chosen by Shelby Foote. Among the most outstanding are "A Dreary Story," a dispassionate tale that reflects Chekhov's doubts about his role as an artist. Thomas Mann deemed it "a truly extraordinary, fascinating story . . . unlike anything else in world literature." "The Darling," a delightful work highly admired by Tolstoy, offers comic proof that life has no meaning without love. And in "The Lady with the Dog," which Vladimir Nabokov called "one of the greatest stories ever written," a chance affair takes possession of a bored young woman and a cynical roué, changing their lives forever. Also included in this collection are the famous trilogy, "The Man in a Case," "Gooseberries," and "About Love," as well as "Sleepy," "The Horse-Stealers," and "Betrothed." "The greatest of Chekhov's stories are, no matter how many times reread, always an experience that strikes deep into the soul and produces an alteration there," wrote William Maxwell. "As for those masterpieces 'The Lady with the Dog,' 'The Horse-Stealers,' 'Sleepy,' 'Gooseberries,' 'About Love'—where else do you see so clearly the difference between light and dark, or how dark darkness can be?" Shelby Foote has provided an Introduction for this edition.

    But she might just have met her match when she encounters Jess, a woman who is not used to losing at anything.Jess is very much like Lucy when it comes to a fondness for competition, only a more extreme version, and as the pair become friends, it's clear that a rivalry is developing between them in the fields of business, love and beyond.But as the lives of both women become more intertwined, that rivalry becomes more intense, and by the time it reaches the point of their friendship breaking down, it seems that there is nothing either woman won't do to come out on top.Two women. Only one winner.

    It made him one of the most recognized personalities of the Twentieth Century, a global icon of radical change. Yet just months earlier, this same Lev Trotsky was a nobody, a refugee expelled from Europe, writing obscure pamphlets and speeches, barely noticed outside a small circle of fellow travelers. Where had he come from to topple Russia and change the world? Where else? New York City. Between January and March 1917, Trotsky found refuge in the United States. America had kept itself out of the European Great War, leaving New York the freest city on earth. During his time there—just over ten weeks—Trotsky immersed himself in the local scene. He settled his family in the Bronx, edited a radical left wing tabloid in Greenwich Village, sampled the lifestyle, and plunged headlong into local politics. His clashes with leading New York socialists over the question of US entry into World War I would reshape the American left for the next fifty years.

    An analysis of Vladimir Putin and the key role a resurgent Russia has to play in world affairs.

    Music for Silenced Voices looks at Shostakovich through the back door, as it were, of his fifteen quartets, the works which his widow characterized as a "diary, the story of his soul." The silences and the voices were of many kinds, including the political silencing of adventurous writers, artists, and musicians during the Stalin era; the lost voices of Shostakovich's operas (a form he abandoned just before turning to string quartets); and the death-silenced voices of his close friends, to whom he dedicated many of these chamber works.Wendy Lesser has constructed a fascinating narrative in which the fifteen quartets, considered one at a time in chronological order, lead the reader through the personal, political, and professional events that shaped Shostakovich's singular, emblematic twentieth-century life. Weaving together interviews with the composer's friends, family, and colleagues, as well as conversations with present-day musicians who have played the quartets, Lesser sheds new light on the man and the musician. One of the very few books about Shostakovich that is aimed at a general rather than an academic audience, Music for Silenced Voices is a pleasure to read; at the same time, it is rigorously faithful to the known facts in this notoriously complicated life. It will fill readers with the desire to hear the quartets, which are among the most compelling and emotionally powerful monuments of the past century's music.