Sergio Vieira de Mello was born in 1948, just as the post-World War II order was taking shape, and died in a terrorist attack on UN Headquarters in Iraq in 2003, just as the battle lines in the 21st century's great struggle were being drawn.

    An extraordinary compilation of over 24 hours of in-depth interviews and remarkable photographs, it delves deep into Putin's KGB past and explores his meteoric rise to power. No Russian leader has ever subjected himself to this kind of public examination of his life and views. Both as a spy and as a virtual political unknown until selected by Boris Yeltsin to be Prime Minister, Putin has been regarded as a man of mystery. Now, the curtain lifts to reveal a remarkable life of struggles and successes. Putin's life story is of major importance to the world.

    But as track stars like Marion Jones blazed their way to Olympic medals and sluggers such as Mark McGwire brought fans back to baseball with stratospheric home runs, sports officials, the media, and fans looked past the rumors and cheered on the stars to ever-higher levels of performance. Then, in December 2004, after more than fifteen months of relentless reporting, "San Francisco Chronicle" reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams broke the story of the Bay Area Lab Co-operative, a tiny nutritional supplement company that according to sworn testimony was supplying elite athletes, including baseball MVP Jason Giambi, with banned drugs. The stories, exposing rampant cheating at the highest levels of athletics, shocked the nation as sports heroes were brought low and their records were tainted. The exposes led to Congressional hearings on baseball's drug problems, and a revived effort to purge the U.S. Olympic movement of drug cheats. Now, in "Game of Shadows," Fainaru-Wada and Williams tell the complete story of BALCO and the investigation that has shaken the foundations of the sporting world. They reveal how an obscure, self-proclaimed nutritionist, Victor Conte, became a steroid svengali to multi-millionaire athletes desperate for a competitive edge, and how he created superstars with his potent cocktails of miracle drugs. They expose the international web of coaches and trainers who funneled athletes to BALCO, and how the drug cheats stayed a step ahead of the testing agencies and the law. They detail how an aggressive IRS investigator doggedly gathered evidence until Conte and his co-conspirators were brought to justice. And at the center of the story is the biggest star of them all, Barry Bonds, the muscle-bound MVP outfielder of the San Francisco Giants whose suspicious late-career renaissance has him threatening Hank Aaron's all-time home run record.Shocking, revelatory, and page-turning, "Game of Shadows" casts light into the shadows of American sport to reveal the dark truths at the heart of the game today.

    Wodehouse has long stood in the forefront of contemporary writers. His name and characters have become part of the English language. Yet there are few modern authors about whom less is known or more is speculated. A gentle, unassuming man, he has sidestepped personal publicity where he could, preferring to retire to quiet backwaters where he could devote himself to his two life interests- reading and writing. And much of his writing at such moments took the form of personal letters to friends- gay, self revealing documents that disclosed better than the pen of any biographer the true nature of the man. Bill Townend- a friend of his boyhood days- was among the most regular of his correspondents, and this volume comprises a selection of the letters Wodehouse wrote to him over a period of more than thirty years. Beginning in the days when he was still struggling for recognition, the letters bridge the years to the present day. Shrewd and often deliciously funny, they tell of the people he meets, the books he is reading, and reveal the infinite care which goes into writing, rewriting and polishing of each new work that comes from his pen. The war years, life inside a German prison camp, his release from internment and the repercussions to the broadcasts he made from Germany to America form an important side of the book. Then come the post war years which show him working as prodigiously as ever, in his seventieth year.

    His crime: blowing the whistle on the CIA's use of torture on Al Qaeda prisoners. Doing Time Like A Spy is Kiriakou's memoir of his twenty-three months in prison. Using twenty life skills he learned in CIA operational training, he was able to keep himself safe and at the top of the prison social heap. Including his award-winning blog series "Letters from Loretto," Doing Time Like a Spy is at once a searing journal of daily prison life and an alternately funny and heartbreaking commentary on the federal prison system.

    A biography of Stevens, from his early days as a Pennsylvania state legislator and outspoken advocate for black freedom and equality, to his long tenure in the House of Representatives and his involvement in the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment.

    Jon Lee Anderson's biography traces Che's extraordinary life, from his comfortable Argentine upbringing to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution, from the halls of power in Castro's government to his failed campaign in the Congo and assassination in the Bolivian Jungle.Anderson has had unprecedented access to the personal archives maintained by Guevara's window and carefully guarded Cuban government documents. He has conducted extensive interviews with Che's comarades-some of whom speak here for the first time-and with CIA men and Bolivian officers who hunted him down. Anderson broke the story of where Guevara's body was buried, which led to the exhumation and stat burial of the bones. Many of the details of Che's life have long been cloaked in secrecy and intrigue. Meticulously researched and full of exclusive information, Che Guevara illuminates as never before this mythic figure who embodied the high-water mark of revolutionary communism as a force in history."

    In a compelling narrative, Marlantes weaves riveting accounts of his combat experiences with thoughtful analysis, self-examination and his readings -- from Homer to the Mahabharata to Jung. He talks frankly about how he is haunted by the face of the young North Vietnamese soldier he killed at close quarters and how he finally finds a way to make peace with his past. Marlantes discusses the daily contradictions that warriors face in the grind of war, where each battle requires them to take life or spare life, and where they enter a state he likens to the fervor of religious ecstasy.Just as Matterhorn is already being acclaimed as a classic of war literature, What It Is Like To Go To War is set to become required reading for anyone -- soldier or civilian -- interested in this visceral and all too essential part of the human experience.

    But a day job interviewing Paris, Britney and Co. left her trapped in the Golden Age of Stupid. Then she saw a photograph of John Prendergast in "Vanity Fair." His day job was ending war. He was also extremely attractive. Jane 'may have inferred she was a Foreign Correspondent', because suddenly she found herself on route to Africa on the trail of this modern-day Indiana Jones. There was one problem: when she got to Uganda John had left. Alone in a war-torn country, appalled by 25,000 child abductions, Jane must investigate the war crime of the century - to make John fancy her. Combining a maverick heroine, an idealist hero, comic disasters and moving tragedy, this is brilliant storytelling by a hugely talented writer. 'Jane Bussmann's romantic odyssey from Hollywood to Uganda is the funniest thing we've "ever" read.' "Instyle" Hot List 'a marvellously maverick approach to the investigation of war crimes.' "Marie Claire" Five Stars 'Imagine "The Last King of Scotland" written by Shazzer from "Bridget Jones's Diary," and you'd still only get halfway to appreciating Jane Bussmann's funny, incongruous and artlessly perceptive account... this is one of the funniest books I've read for a long while' "The Sunday Times"" " " " 'hilarious and heart-wrenching' The "Spectator"

    Men and women from every walk of life talk to him, telling him of their likes and dislikes, fears, problems, and happinesses on the job. Once again, Terkel has created a rich and unique document that is as simple as conversation, but as subtle and heartfelt as the meaning of our lives.... In the first trade paperback edition of his national bestseller, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel presents "the real American experience" (Chicago Daily News) -- "a magnificent book . . .. A work of art. To read it is to hear America talking." (Boston Globe)

    When a Nazi death squad raided his village at the outset of World War II, Jewish five-year-old Alex Kurzem escaped. After surviving the Russian winter by foraging for food and stealing clothes off dead soldiers, he was discovered by a Nazi-led Latvian police brigade that later became an SS unit. Not knowing he was Jewish, they made him their mascot, dressing the little ?corporal? in uniform and toting him from massacre to massacre. Terrified, the resourceful Alex charmed the highest echelons of the Latvian Third Reich, eventually starring in a Nazi propaganda film. When the war ended he was sent to Australia with a family of Latvian refugees. Fearful of being discovered?as either a Jew or a Nazi?Alex kept the secret of his childhood, even from his loving wife and children. But he grew increasingly tormented and became determined to uncover his Jewish roots and the story of his past. Shunned by a local Holocaust organization, he reached out to his son Mark for help in reclaiming his identity. A survival story, a grim fairy-tale, and a psychological drama, this remarkable memoir asks provocative questions about identity, complicity, and forgiveness.

    But a breakdown of social boundaries saw nightclub hostesses mixing with aristocrats, and middle-class professionals dabbling in criminality. Meanwhile, Cold War paranoia gripped the public imagination.The Profumo Affair was a perfect storm, and when it broke it rocked the Establishment. In ‘An English Affair’, the author of the critically-acclaimed ‘Titanic Lives’ Richard Davenport-Hines brings Swinging London to life. The cast of players includes the familiar – louche doctor Stephen Ward, good-time girls Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, and Secretary for War John Profumo himself. But we also encounter the tabloid hacks, property developers and hangers-on whose roles have, until now, never been fully revealed.Sex, drugs, class, race, chequebook journalism and the criminal underworld – the Profumo Affair had it all. This is the story of how Sixties England cast off respectability and fell in love with scandal.

    Now Frank's monumental, 2500-page work has been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable volume with a new preface by the author. Carefully preserving the original work's acclaimed narrative style and combination of biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time illuminates the writer's works--from his first novel Poor Folk to Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov--by setting them in their personal, historical, and above all ideological context. More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work.http://press.princeton.edu/titles/897...

    Tucker Carlson, a top-rated TV anchor, discusses the "long slide" in American journalism from a respected profession that tried to focus on accuracy into a partisan forum controlled by a handful of people who make insidious decisions.

    Complete with wickedly delightful anecdotes of major and minor politicians and entertainers over the last 200 years, Gail Collins examines the evolving relationship between politicians and the press and the blurring of the lines between politicians and celebrities. Supported by extensive research and written with an entertaining flair, she speculates on how gossip reflects the current moral compass of the time, noting how a rumor, like an unpredictable summer tornado, can flatten one reputation while a similar story passes over another with hardly a rustle. "Hilariously readable" (The Economist), Scorpion Tongues offers sinful scandals and mild hearsay for every taste.