Overy's engrossing book provides extensive details of teh slaughter, brutality, bitterness and destruction on the massive front from the White Sea to the flank of Asia.--Chicago Tribune The Russian war effort to defeat invading Axis powers, an effort that assembled the largest military force in recorded history and that cost the lives of more than 25 million Soviet soldiers and civilians, was the decisive factor for securing an Allied victory. Now with access to the wealth of film archives and interview material from Russia used to produce the ten-hour television documentary Russia's War, Richard Overy tackles the many persuasive questions surrounding this conflict. Was Stalin a military genius? Was the defense of Mother Russia a product of something greater than numbers of tanks and planes--of something deep within the Russian soul?

    Go back in time. Spring into the future. Soar on the wings of magic. Discover Legends of Fate, Destiny, True Mates, and Forever Love that’s written in the Stars. Take flight with fifteen amazingly talented bestselling authors as they bring these special Dragons to life. In each life-changing journey you will see that the heart gets what the heart wants, happily ever after is so much more than simple words at the end of a Fairy Tale, and Dragons prevail no matter the time, place, or obstacle. This is Stoking the Flames II – spread your wings and soar with our Dragons. Once you’ve touched the clouds, felt the wind in your hair, and held the power in your hands, you will forever fly high.

    . . or lead to unlikely redemption.Millions watched the CBS 60 Minutes special on Jack Barsky in 2015. Now, in this fascinating memoir, the Soviet KGB agent tells his story of gut-wrenching choices, appalling betrayals, his turbulent inner world, and the secret life he lived for years without getting caught.On October 8, 1978, a Canadian national by the name of William Dyson stepped off a plane at O'Hare International Airport and proceeded toward Customs and Immigration.Two days later, William Dyson ceased to exist.The identity was a KGB forgery, used to get one of their own--a young, ambitious East German agent--into the United States.The plan succeeded, and the spy's new identity was born: Jack Barsky. He would work undercover for the next decade, carrying out secret operations during the Cold War years . . . until a surprising shift in his allegiance challenged everything he thought he believed.Deep Undercover will reveal the secret life of this man without a country and tell the story no one ever expected him to tell.

     For eleven years, from 1974 to 1985, he acted as a secret agent, reporting to the British Secret Intelligence Service while continuing to work as a KGB officer, first in Copenhagen, then in London. He gave Western security organizations such a clear insight into the mind and methods of the KGB and the whole system of Soviet Government that he has been credited with doing more than any other individual in the West to accelerate the collapse of Communism. Here for the first time his extraordinary, meticulously planned escape from Russia is described. Peopled with bizarre, dangerous and corrupt characters, Gordievsky’s story introduces the reader to the fantastical world of the Soviet Embassy, tells of the British MPs and trade unionists who helped and took money from the KGB, and reveals at last what the author told Margaret Thatcher and other world leaders which made him of such value to the West. Gordievsky’s autobiography gives a fascinating account of life as a secret agent. It also paints the most graphic picture yet of the paranoia and incompetence, intrigues and sheer nastiness of the all-encompassing and sometimes ridiculous KGB. Praise for Oleg Gordievsky 'Gripping.' – Luke Harding, Guardian correspondent and author of Mafia State: How one reporter became an enemy of the brutal new Russia. 'Only Gordievsky could...persuade the powers that mattered.' – The Spectator Oleg Gordievsky was born in Moscow in 1938. He attended the Moscow State Institute of International Relations where he specialized in German. He was sent to East Berlin as a diplomatic trainee in August 1961. Two days after his arrival, the Wall went up. In 1962 he joined the KGB and was posted to Copenhagen and London. He worked as a secret agent for eleven years until his dramatic escape to the West in 1985. He is the author of KGB: The Inside Story.

    The real story, which this book will reveal lies in what Mathilde did not say.

    

    Drawing upon a wealth of untapped resources from Russian, British, and American archives, including unpublished diaries of many of the principal characters and never-before-published photographs, Perry and Pleshakov render an indelible portrait of a family and their time, from the youth of Alexander III in the 1860s to the death, one hundred years later, of his daughter Olga Alexandrovna, the last Grand Duchess.Set against the backdrop of this most cataclysmic century, The Flight of the Romanovs is a must-read for anyone interested in this fascinating dynasty, Russian history, and the history of European royalty.

    Driven by an insatiable hunger for flesh, they attack anyone who dares to go out.Anna is trapped as the zombie apocalypse rages outside her front door. Desperate and alone, she must find a way to get to her children who are with her Ex-partner. As Anna runs from the dead, she finds help from Rob and his fifteen-year-old brother, Jack, despite Rob’s better instincts. Together, they run the nightmare gauntlet that used to be their neighbourhood.Run from the Dead is the first book in a zombie apocalypse series, following ordinary people trying to stay alive no matter what the cost. Battling the dead and humans alike, the people left must become somebody new. Someone prepared to do whatever it takes to live.Anna must learn to survive this cruel new world, where the living can be just as terrifying as the dead.

    Fantastical and wonderfully strange, this political parable has an uncanny resonance with today's Russia under Putin.Oleg Kashin is a famous Russian journalist and activist who, in 2010, was beaten to within an inch of his life by unknown assailants, in an attack most likely politically motivated by his reporting. The events of Fardwor, Russia! (the title is taken from a flag with a slogan—"Forward, Russia!"—gone wrong) could seem grotesque, if they did not so eerily echo the absurd state of affairs in modern Russia. Under Putin's regime, authors dare to criticize the state of affairs and affairs of the state only through veiled satire&—and even then, as Kashin's experience shows, the threat of repercussions is real.A witty, playful, brave, and incisive work that blends science fiction with political satire, Fardwor, Russia! is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary Russia&—or the hilarious and frightening follies of power.

    In The Revolution of Peter the Great, James Cracraft offers a brilliant new interpretation of this pivotal era.Linking together and transcending Peter's many reforms of state and society, Cracraft argues, was nothing less than a cultural revolution. New ways of dress, elite social behavior, navigation, architecture, and image-making emerged along with expansive vocabularies for labeling new objects and activities. Russians learned how to build and sail warships; train, supply, and command a modern army; operate a new-style bureaucracy; conduct diplomacy on a par with the other European states; apply modern science; and conceptualize the new governing system. Throughout, Peter remains the central figure, and Cracraft discusses the shaping events of the tsar's youth, his inner circle, the resistance his reforms engendered, and the founding of the city that would embody his vision--St. Petersburg, which celebrated its tercentenary in 2003.By century's end, Russia was poised to play a critical role in the Napoleonic wars and boasted an elite culture about to burst into its golden age. In this eloquent book, Cracraft illuminates an astonishing transformation that had enormous consequences for both Russia and Europe, indeed the world.

    The photographs, drawings and texts published here are part of a collection of 3,600 tattoos accumulated over a lifetime by prison attendant Danzig Baldayev. Tattoos were his entrance into a secret world, a world in which he acted as an ethnographer, recording the rituals of a closed society. The icons and tribal languages he documented are artful, distasteful, sexually explicit and sometimes just simply strange, reflecting as they do the lives and mores of convicts. Skulls, swastikas, harems of naked women, a smiling Al Capone, assorted demons, medieval knights in armor, daggers sheathed in blood, benign images of Christ, mosques and minarets, sweet-faced mothers and their babies, armies of tanks, and a horned Lenin--these are the signs with which this hidden world of people mark and identify themselves.

    One can understand that men as indispensable as Marx and Engels should be the partisans of a programme which, consecrating and approving political power, opens the door to all ambitions. Since there will be political power there will necessarily be subjects, got up in Republican fashion, as citizens, it is true, but who will none the less be subjects, and who as such will be forced to obey.

    During his journey he learns through example and suffering that in indigenous peoples of all cultures there is dignity that must be recognized and built upon as a foundation for Christian conversion. Includes appendix, 7 line drawings.

    With no hype building announcements, no history of any Alpha, or beta, or even as much as a leaked snapshot they released a first-generation fully immersive virtual reality pod and their bundled game Stellar Survival Quest. Even being 20 years ahead of anything else out, a new entertainment media is not typically world shattering. Especially, when players reported not being able to recall their time playing. The company made claims of not allowing meta-gaming, Thus keeping the game world pure. After every gaming session regardless of length the player could watch a short video of their session. Each video was only three minutes of randomly recorded footage from every hour played. Thus, a nearly impenetrable wall of secret gameplay was maintained.However, when that first generation of gamers left the white-grey egg-shaped gaming pods, they gave the world an even bigger shock! The technology was amazing, true VR with all five senses was outrageous, the stuff of fiction novels! No, what really sent the world reeling was skills learned in game translated to real life skills! Overnight the world was thrown on its heels. A new player could log into the game to be given a job in some way decided by the game and come out an ivy league educated scientist, or special ops level soldier. As the world reels from these first-generation gamers suddenly becoming some of the most highly skilled individuals in the world, more gamers clamor to buy their own expensive pod and hop into space!Nathan Tyrone Rogers or Bubba to his friends and family awoke on a small transport. Freshly landed on an ancient space station. As the first Human to be spawned outside the Sol System, Nathan is vastly unprepared and overwhelmed for the task. With a cryptic message that he needs to claim the solar system of Epsilon Indi before one of the other 12 alien species; whom were also spawned in system can. Some of which will supposedly be hostile to humanity. Nathan attempts to survive in the completely unforgiving environment of space. All the while trying to choose a path for himself, avoid being eaten by monstrous alien women, and growing more and more annoyed with his “real self” still back on Earth.Nathan’s first step to claiming the Solar system is simple to say, hard to do. He must survive!***This is the first Sci-Fi LitRPG in the Stellar Survival Quest series set in Jalf Whitemages Total Expanse Universe. This book contains adult themes, mild harem themes, base building, and real time strategy elements. It is not recommended for those new to the Lit Genre, and definitely not anyone who is easily offended by … well anything. You have been warned 

    Rem, the Foxkin Oracle of the Wildwood, knows this better than most, seeing as he is on his second life. Most people don't get another chance at the whole life thing after a stupidly oversized adventurer's hammer uses their head to paint a tree, but a goddess on the Pantheon of the Divine sees great potential in Rem. Granted salvation by his Patron, Rem becomes a Dungeon Core, a magical entity tasked with creating the trials essential to helping adventurers become the true warriors they were meant to be. In his new existence as a Dungeon Core, Rem can create minions to fight for him; design magical loot of immeasurable power to reward those that overcome his obstacles; craft spells that will affect the entire world; and do more for his clan than he could possibly imagine.Well, just as soon as he passes his classes and ranks up. Welcome to Ansith's Academy for Dungeon Training and Combat. Welcome to Dungeon Core 101.