Bernal Díaz del Castillo, himself a soldier under Cortes, presents a fascinatingly detailed description of the Spanish landing in Mexico in 1520, their amazement at the city, the exploitation of the natives for gold and other treasures, the expulsion and flight of the Spaniards, their regrouping and eventual capture of the Aztec capital. The Conquest of New Spain has a compelling immediacy that brings the past to life and offers a unique eyewitness view of the conquest of one of the greatest civilizations in the New World.J. M. Cohen’s clear, fluent translation is supplemented by an introduction that illuminates the life and memories of Bernal Díaz and explores changing views of the conquest, and there are also maps of the conquered territory.

    In Senegal, wheelchair-bound Aissatou Cisse produced a comic book to illustrate the injustices faced by disabled women and girls. In Algeria, publisher Omar Belhouchet and his journalists struggled to put out their paper, El Watan (The Nation), the same night that a 1996 jihadist bombing devastated their offices and killed eighteen of their colleagues. In Afghanistan, Young Women for Change took to the streets of Kabul to denounce sexual harassment, undeterred by threats. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, Abdirizak Bihi organized a Ramadan basketball tournament among Somali refugees to counter the influence of Al Shabaab. From Karachi to Tunis, Kabul to Tehran, across the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and beyond, these trailblazers often risked death to combat the rising tide of fundamentalism within their own countries. But this global community of writers, artists, doctors, musicians, museum curators, lawyers, activists, and educators of Muslim heritage remains largely invisible, lost amid the heated coverage of Islamist terror attacks on one side and abuses perpetrated against suspected terrorists on the other.A veteran of twenty years of human rights research and activism, Karima Bennoune draws on extensive fieldwork and interviews to illuminate the inspiring stories of those who represent one of the best hopes for ending fundamentalist oppression worldwide.

    But while he has been widely extolled for his achievements, parts of Churchill's record have gone woefully unexamined. As journalist Madhusree Mukerjee reveals, at the same time that Churchill brilliantly opposed the barbarism of the Nazis, he governed India with a fierce resolve to crush its freedom movement and a profound contempt for native lives. A series of Churchill's decisions between 1940 and 1944 directly and inevitably led to the deaths of some three million Indians. The streets of eastern Indian cities were lined with corpses, yet instead of sending emergency food shipments Churchill used the wheat and ships at his disposal to build stockpiles for feeding postwar Britain and Europe.Combining meticulous research with a vivid narrative, and riveting accounts of personality and policy clashes within and without the British War Cabinet, Churchill's Secret War places this oft-overlooked tragedy into the larger context of World War II, India's fight for freedom, and Churchill's enduring legacy. Winston Churchill may have found victory in Europe, but, as this groundbreaking historical investigation reveals, his mismanagement--facilitated by dubious advice from scientist and eugenicist Lord Cherwell--devastated India and set the stage for the massive bloodletting that accompanied independence.

    Two white house maids, a remarkable mother and her daughter, reveal what it was really like upstairs, downstairs at the white house.

    Signed flat (without inscription) by author; Stated First Edition and first printing. See scans and description. New York: Truman Talley Books (St. Martin 's Press), 2003. 'Boots On The Ground: A Month With The 82nd Airborne In The Battle For Iraq', by Karl Zinsmeister. Octavo, illustrated jacket, black boards with copper spine imprinting, buff endpapers, author-signed on first free endpaper ('flat' signed, i.e. without inscription - see scan), 255 pp. ( x + 213 + 32 pp. color photographic section). New, and immaculate, cover to cover, including jacket. An example for the collector. A first-hand account of the title experience, by the editor-in-chief of American Enterprise magazine, who was, in 2003, a frontline reporter embedded with the 82nd Airborne. Ships in a new, sturdy, protective box, of course - not a bag. L202

    As Bonamy Dobree said, "It releases us into a different and quite complete world. Mr. Ahmed Ali makes us hear and smell Delhi...hear the flutter of pigeons’ wings, the cries of itinerant vendors, the calls to prayer, the howls of mourners, the chants of qawwals, smell jasmine and sewage, frying ghee and burning wood." The detail, as E.M. Forster said, is "new and fascinating," poetic and brutal, delightful and callous. First published by the Hogarth Press in 1940. Twilight in Delhi was widely acclaimed by critics and hailed in India as a major literary event. Long since considered a landmark novel, it is now available in the U.S. as a New Directions Classic. Twilight in Delhi has also been translated into French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Urdu.

    When the battle-worn fighters returned with no enemy or war to fight, they turned their sights on the country that had been their creator and benefactor.From the same battlegrounds that birthed the Mujahideen, a young Kamal Khan emerges as a different breed of warrior. Discarding his wealthy family comforts, Kamal becomes a precision sniper, an invincible commando and a clandestine operative bringing intimidation, dominance and death with him to the battlefield. Ending the plague is his prime directive.Shrouded in political expediency, hampered by internal power struggles, international espionage and doublespeak that makes Washington’s spin doctors proud, Kamal’s mission is a nightmare of rampant militant fundamentalism that threatens to choke and take Pakistan hostage. For him, the fight is not just for freedom, but the survival of a nation.

    This is Kapuscinski's vivid, compelling and personal report on the life and death of the Soviet superpower, from the entrance of Soviet troops into his hometown in Poland in 1939, through his journey across desolate Siberia and the republics of Central Asia in the 1950s and 60s, to his wanderings over the vast Soviet lands - from Poland to the Pacific, the Arctic Circle to Afghanistan - in the years of the USSR's decline and final disintegration in 1991.

    Snuffing Out the Moon is a dazzling debut novel that is at once a cry for freedom and a call for resistance.Advance Praise for Snuffing Out the Moon ‘Criss-crossing historical periods and populating its multiple narratives with a diverse set of characters, Snuffing Out the Moon is a daringly original novel charting the past and the future of our civilization, and so illuminating the author’s view of our present. A challenging and thought-provoking read’—Shashi Tharoor, author and MP‘This novel stirred strange feelings in me. Its air is bleak and somehow forbidding. It is vast in scope but comparatively compressed in a space that the novelist uses expertly to draw for us the lineages of the past, the present and the future. It leaves us with the chilling vision that evil—greed or the impulse to destroy—is man’s destiny. Masterfully composed, the novel sums up aeons of history and culture with an assurance of narrative power that makes the picture of the past and the present as compelling as his imaginings of the future. Present fears are no less than the horrible imaginings, the novel seems to say. Learned and sagacious, the narrative pleases while it also awes the reader’—Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, author of The Mirror of Beauty‘Osama Siddique’s ambitious historical novel will be of consequence not only to Pakistan but to the Indian subcontinent’—Bapsi Sidhwa, author of Ice-Candy-Man‘Innovative, introspective and evocative, this remarkable debut novel gives poignant expression to an age-old human dilemma and one of the central challenges of our own troubled times: the choice between stultifying social conformity born of ignorance, intellectual laziness and fear, and the liberating agency that comes from doubt, dissent and defiance. Polyphonic in scope and written in the fragmentary and episodic mode, the intriguingly titled Snuffing Out the Moon deftly weaves together half a dozen different narratives informed by the rich sociopolitical, cultural and literary traditions of South Asia’s six millennia- long history. Beginning in 2084 BCE with the Indus Valley Civilization and ending in 2084 CE when the deadly politics of religious radicalism and water wars have drastically recast the face of South Asia, the novel is a gripping read. It dispenses with linear time by criss-crossing the past, present and the future in a disconnected fashion without becoming random and trivial or devoid of inner meaning and connectedness. A welcome addition to South Asia’s burgeoning trove of English-language literature, it will engage and absorb a cross-section of readers with its sparkling wit, lyrical bursts and welter of insights into human frailties and foibles’—Ayesha Jalal, historian and author of Jinnah: The Sole Spokesman

    Here they are again. It is a queer experience, lying in the dark and listening to the zoom of a hornet, which may at any moment sting you to death. It is a sound that interrupts cool and consecutive thinking about peace.

    The Yellow Wind is essential reading for anyone who seeks a deeper understanding of Israel today.

    But one perspective has been missing up to this point—a 360-degree account of the day told through firsthand.Now, in The Only Plane in the Sky, Garrett Graff tells the story of the day as it was lived—in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, he paints the most vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks yet.Beginning in the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, we meet the ticket agents who unknowingly usher terrorists onto their flights, and the flight attendants inside the hijacked planes. In New York, first responders confront a scene of unimaginable horror at the Twin Towers. From a secret bunker under the White House, officials watch for incoming planes on radar. Aboard unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to fly into a hijacked airliner if necessary to bring it down. In the skies above Pennsylvania, civilians aboard United 93 make the ultimate sacrifice in their place. Then, as the day moves forward and flights are grounded nationwide, Air Force One circles the country alone, its passengers isolated and afraid.More than simply a collection of eyewitness testimonies, The Only Plane in the Sky is the historic narrative of how ordinary people grappled with extraordinary events in real time: the father and son caught on different ends of the impact zone; the firefighter searching for his wife who works at the World Trade Center; the operator of in-flight telephone calls who promises to share a passenger’s last words with his family; the beloved FDNY chaplain who bravely performs last rites for the dying, losing his own life when the Towers collapse; and the generals at the Pentagon who break down and weep when they are barred from trying to rescue their colleagues.At once a powerful tribute to the courage of everyday Americans and an essential addition to the literature of 9/11, The Only Plane in the Sky weaves together the unforgettable personal experiences of the men and women who found themselves caught at the center of an unprecedented human drama. The result is a unique, profound, and searing exploration of humanity on a day that changed the course of history, and all of our lives.

    It is a work of history on a grand scale, at once sweeping and detailed, closely reasoned and passionately argued, that succeeds in painting an unforgettable picture--alive with conspirators and philosophers, utopians and nihilists--of the making of the modern world.

    The most extreme and radical of all Islamic organizations, the Taliban inspires fascination, controversy, and especially fear in both the Muslim world and the West. Correspondent Ahmed Rashid brings the shadowy world of the Taliban into sharp focus in this enormously interesting and revealing book. It is the only authoritative account of the Taliban and modern day Afghanistan available to English language readers.Based on his experiences as a journalist covering the civil war in Afghanistan for twenty years, traveling and living with the Taliban, and interviewing most of the Taliban leaders since their emergence to power in 1994, Rashid offers unparalleled firsthand information. He explains how the growth of Taliban power has already created severe instability in Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and five Central Asian republics. He describes the Taliban' s role as a major player in a new "Great Game"—a competition among Western countries and companies to build oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia to Western and Asian markets. The author also discusses the controversial changes in American attitudes toward the Taliban—from early support to recent bombings of Osama Bin Laden's hideaway and other Taliban-protected terrorist bases—and how they have influenced the stability of the region.