Their attitude towards Einstein is like that of Mark Twain towards the writer of a work on mathematics: here was a man who had written an entire book of which Mark could not understand a single sentence. Einstein, therefore, is great in the public eye partly because he has made revolutionary discoveries which cannot be translated into the common tongue. We stand in proper awe of a man whose thoughts move on heights far beyond our range, whose achievements can be measured only by the few who are able to follow his reasoning and challenge his conclusions. There is, however, another side to his personality. It is revealed in the addresses, letters, and occasional writings brought together in this book. These fragments form a mosaic portrait of Einstein the man. Each one is, in a sense, complete in itself; it presents his views on some aspect of progress, education, peace, war, liberty, or other problems of universal...

    Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education." Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea. Sent to the notorious labor camp Yodok when he was nine years old, Kang observed frequent public executions and endured forced labor and near-starvation rations for ten years. In 1992, he escaped to South Korea, where he found God and now advocates for human rights in North Korea. Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this book brings together unassailable firsthand experience, setting one young man's personal suffering in the wider context of modern history, giving eyewitness proof to the abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime.

    The anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject--the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.

    Yet in 1960, Simon Murray traveled alone to Paris, Marseilles, and ultimately Algeria to fulfill the toughest contract of his life: a five-year stint in the Legion. Along the way, he kept a diary.Legionnaire is a compelling, firsthand account of Murray’s experience with this legendary band of soldiers. This gripping journal offers stark evidence that the Legion’s reputation for pushing men to their breaking points and beyond is well deserved. In the fierce, sun-baked North African desert, strong men cracked under brutal officers, merciless training methods, and barbarous punishments. Yet Murray survived, even thrived. For he shared one trait with these hard men from all nations and backgrounds: a determination never to surrender.

    We all understand what it’s like to live in the light and in the dark. For Lily, it’s about making it through to the other side, where you love what you see in the mirror and where you embrace yourself just as you are. She's learned that all it takes is one person standing up and saying something for everyone else to realize they’re not alone.By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Lily’s honest voice will inspire you to be who you are and say what you feel. It’s time to claim your voice! It’s time to live your life unfiltered.

    In Spies Beneath Berlin, David Stafford-whom the New York Times Book Review calls "a superb researcher who has a feel for when 'secret' meant 'significant' and when it did not,"-tells the fascinating, in-depth account of one of the most audacious and intriguing covert operations of the Cold War: Operation Stopwatch/Gold. Called by CIA chief Allen Dulles, "one of the most valuable and daring projects ever undertaken," Operation Stopwatch/Gold was carried out from a secret tunnel half a mile long under the Russian sector of Cold War Berlin as, for more than a year, the CIA tuned into German Red Army intelligence. This was an almost impossible trick: apart from the technical wizardry needed, any noise or vibration could have given the game away. When snow fell, panic measures were taken to prevent it thawing in a tell-tale line leading to the target building. Added complexity comes from the fact that Stopwatch/Gold was a joint CIA/MI6 project, and after Burgess and Maclean it was clear that truth, even between allies, was dangerous. And indeed, there was a mole in the British secret services, thus the KGB knew about the tunnel even before it was built-yet the Germans couldn't let on that they knew about the tunnel, which would have jeopardized the position of their prized mole. Whether or not Operation Stopwatch/Gold was a success has been a point of contention over the years, as new information about KGB mole George Blake and the Cold War has been uncovered. Now, for the first time, using eyewitness interviews and the full range of source material-from KGB files to CIA documents-Stafford reveals the thrillingly complex story of this operation.

    Rounded up in a group of other anti-apartheid activists under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act, designed for the security police to hold and interrogate people for as long as they wanted, she was taken away. She had no idea where they were taking her or what would happen to her children. For Winnie Mandela this was the start of a 491-day period of detention and two trials. Forty-one years after Winnie’s release on 14 September 1970, Greta Soggot, the widow of David Soggot, one of Winnie Mandela’s advocates during the 1969–70 trials, handed her a stack of papers that included a journal and notes that she had written in detention. Their arrival brought back vivid and horrifying memories and uncovered a unique and personal slice of South Africa’s history. 491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69 shares with the world Winnie Mandela’s moving and compelling journal as well as some of the letters written between affected parties at the time, including Winnie and Nelson Mandela, who by then had been in prison for nearly seven years. Readers gain insight into the brutality she experienced, her depths of despair as well as her resilience and defiance under extreme pressure. This young wife and mother emerged after 491 days in detention unbowed and determined to continue the struggle for freedom.

    Whether writing about the murky world of arms dealers, the shadowy Nazi underground movement, or the intricacies of worldwide drug cartels, every plot has been chillingly plausible because every detail has been minutely researched.But what most people don’t know is that some of his greatest stories of intrigue have been in his own life.He was the RAF’s youngest pilot at the age of nineteen, barely escaped the wrath of an arms dealer in Hamburg, got strafed by a MiG during the Nigerian civil war, landed during a bloody coup in Guinea-Bissau (and was accused of helping fund a 1973 coup in Equatorial Guinea). The Stasi arrested him, the Israelis feted him, the IRA threatened him, and a certain attractive Czech secret police agent—well, her actions were a bit more intimate. And that’s just for starters.It is a memoir like no other—and a book of pure delight.

    At twenty-three, after leaving graduate school to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet, Joanna Rakoff moves to New York City and takes a job as assistant to the storied literary agent for J. D. Salinger. She spends her days in a plush, wood-paneled office, where Dictaphones and typewriters still reign and old-time agents doze at their desks after martini lunches. At night she goes home to the tiny, threadbare Williamsburg apartment she shares with her socialist boyfriend. Precariously balanced between glamour and poverty, surrounded by titanic personalities, and struggling to trust her own artistic instinct, Rakoff is tasked with answering Salinger’s voluminous fan mail. But as she reads the candid, heart-wrenching letters from his readers around the world, she finds herself unable to type out the agency’s decades-old form response. Instead, drawn inexorably into the emotional world of Salinger’s devotees, she abandons the template and begins writing back. Over the course of the year, she finds her own voice by acting as Salinger’s, on her own dangerous and liberating terms. Rakoff paints a vibrant portrait of a bright, hungry young woman navigating a heady and longed-for world, trying to square romantic aspirations with burgeoning self-awareness, the idea of a life with life itself. Charming and deeply moving, filled with electrifying glimpses of an American literary icon, My Salinger Year is the coming-of-age story of a talented writer. Above all, it is a testament to the universal power of books to shape our lives and awaken our true selves.

    Given the choice, he'll go on vacation to Devon or Wales or, if pushed, eat English food on a package tour of the Mediterranean. So what happened when he was convinced by Gervais and Merchant to go on an epic adventure to see the Seven Wonders of the World? Does travel truly broaden the mind? Find out in Karl Pilkington's hilarious travel diaries.

    (To date, it has won no fewer than 31 Emmys.) Seriously... I'm Kidding, Degeneres' first book in eight years, brings us up to date about the life of a kindhearted woman who bowed out of American Idol because she didn't want to be mean. Lively; hilarious; often sweetly poignant.

    From spy in the field to the top ranks of the Company's career agents, he experienced it all as well as seven different presidential administrations. While Paseman's account of his long service has enough real-life derring-do to keep the reader engaged, of even greater interest, however, are Paseman's observation on politics and the CIA, especially how change of presidential administrations could bring sweeping, and often negative changes to the agency.- Johnson - declined to run for a second full term, broken by Vietnam- Nixon - resigned in disgrace after ending Vietnam and opening relations with China- Ford - never elected caretaker - Carter - hoist on the petard of fundamentalist Islam in Iran- Reagan - first full, two-term president since Eisenhower and declared war on the evil empire and brought the USSR to its knees with the threat of a still fanciful Star Wars- Bush the father - "won" the Cold War as the Soviet Union collapsed and "coalitioned" Saddam out of Iraq- Clinton - leader of the new world order, peace in our time, and dead Rangers in the streets of Mogadishu- Bush the son - 9/11, Afghanistan, and IraqIn March 1967 author Paseman joined the CIA following successful service as an army armor officer in Germany. Highly trained in the Chinese language, most of his service was in the far east. Paseman served as chief of the East Asia division at Langley and was also station chief Germany, considered the agency's toughest Cold War field posting.About the AuthorFloyd L. Paseman retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in January 2001 after a thirty-five year career in operations. He now lives in southern Virginia outside Williamsburg where he works as an international security consultant.

    Confidential comes My Dark Places, an investigative autobiography by James Ellroy. In 1958, Ellroy's mother, Jean, was raped, killed, and dumped off a road in El Monte, California, a rundown L.A. suburb. The killer was never found, and the case was closed. It was a sordid, back-page homicide that no one remembered. Except her son.James Ellroy was ten years old when his mother died. His bereavement was complex and ambiguous: "I cried. I cranked tears out all the way to L.A. I hated her. I hated El Monte. Some unknown killer just bought me a brand-new beautiful life." He grew up obsessed with murdered women and crime. He ran from his mother's ghost.Ellroy became a writer of radically provocative and bestselling crime novels. "I wear obsession well," he says. "I've turned it into something." He tried to reclaim his mother through fiction. It didn't work. He quit running and wrote this memoir.My Dark Places is Jean and James Ellroy's story—from 1958 to all points past and up to this moment. It is the story of a brilliant homicide detective named Bill Stoner and of the investigation he and Ellroy undertook. It is also an unflinching autobiography with vivid reportage. This is James Ellroy's journey through his most forbidding memories.

    As recounted by Ben Rich, the operation's brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the chronicle of Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works is a drama of cold war confrontations and Gulf War air combat, of extraordinary feats of engineering & achievement against fantastic odds. Here are up-close portraits of the maverick band of scientists & engineers who made the Skunk Works so renowned. Filled with telling personal anecdotes & high adventure, with narratives from the CIA & from Air Force pilots who flew the many classified, risky missions, this book is a portrait of the most spectacular aviation triumphs of the 20th century.

    This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s own experiences. Introduction by Lionel Trilling.