to LondonOCothe professional dancer's extraordinaryajourney to the glitzy world of ballroomWith his slick moves, calm demeanor, and brooding good looks, Pasha Kovalev has becomeaa senation as a popular dancer. His talent and determination have taken him around the world, but as he shares here, it was the stark, grey landscape of his Siberian hometown, still reeling from the Communist regime, which provided the unlikely inspiration for his early love of ballroom dancing. With a strongadesire to succeed, he moved to theaU.S. in 2001awith his professional dance partner Anya Garnis and settled in Fort Lee, New Jersey.aHe auditioned for seasonathree of "So You Think You Can Dance "in 2007, amoved to L.A. in 2008, aand heahas since participated in all following seasons as either a choreographer or an All Star. Froma2009-2011ahe joined the cast of Jason Gilkison's production "Burn the Floor," one of the leading ballroom based shows in the world, during its stint on Broadway. In September 2011, Pasha joined the BBC's "Strictly Come Dancing" as the new professional dancer of the ninth season, abeing partnered in the 10th season with Girls Aloud star Kimberley Walsh. He speaks candidly in this heartwarming autobiography, on topics from romance to body image to the illness that nearly killed him. Most of all, he gives readers a glimpse behind the scenes of the flashy world of ballroom, and what really goes on beneath the veneer of sparkles and glamour."

    Living in a remote base and under constant threat of attack from all sides by the Taliban, they were on red alert 24 hours a day, seven days a week for every one of those six months. And through that entire period, the man in sole charge was Maj Lewis. Here is his story, a riveting first-person account of incredible bravery, telling what it is like to have 200 soldiers depending on you constantly, to make decisions which can and do cost lives, to see men under your command killed and injured, and to be under the most intense pressure imaginable for every minute of every day for six long months. Based on the journal Maj Lewis kept during the tour, this book takes the reader from the excitement of the beginning of a tour, to the adrenalin of the first contact, through the devastating losses of his soldiers, and the struggle to keep himself at the highest level of performance for the sake of his men as physical and emotional exhaustion kick in. Readers will experience the highs and lows of a tour through the eyes of a leader of men in as close to real time as possible. At the end of the tour Maj Lewis was awarded the Military Cross for his leadership and gallantry over the tour. His citation read: "Resolute in defense, tenacious and courageous in attack, Lewis has set an outstanding example to B Company at significant personal risk and has been an inspiration to all ranks." He still serves in the Parachute Regiment.

    The result is this beautiful edition titled Rumi: Bridge to the Soul. The "bridge" in the title is a reference to the Khajou Bridge in Isphahan, Iran, which Barks visited with Robert Bly in May of 2006—a trip that in many ways prompted this book. The "soul bridge" also suggests Rumi himself, who crosses cultures and religions and brings us all together to listen to his words, regardless of origin or creed. Open this book and let Rumi's poetry carry you into the interior silence and joy of the spirit, the place that unites conscious knowing with a deeper, more soulful understanding.

    China Star begins in 1920s Paris, where Shanghai Station the 's Russian count, Alexander Karlov, and Viktor Polyak, the Soviet agent who killed Karlov's parents and abducted his twin sister Katerina, hunt each other through grand hotels, sewers, fashion houses, and embassy parties. Soon after, Katerina sets sail with Alexander for China on the China Star.

    Set in the vast windswept Central Asian steppes and the infinite reaches of galactic space, this powerful novel offers a vivid view of the culture and values of the Soviet Union's Central Asian peoples.

    Now Tomsen draws on a rich trove of never-before-published material to shed new light on the American involvement in the long and continuing Afghan war. This book offers a deeply informed perspective on how Afghanistan’s history as a “shatter zone” for foreign invaders and its tribal society have shaped the modern Afghan narrative. It brings to life the appallingly misinformed secret operations by foreign intelligence agencies, including the Soviet NKVD and KGB, the Pakistani ISI, and the CIA.American policy makers, Tomsen argues, still do not understand Afghanistan; nor do they appreciate how the CIA’s covert operations and the Pentagon’s military strategy have strengthened extremism in the country. At this critical time, he shows how the U.S. and the coalition it leads can assist the region back to peace and stability.

    During the Great Caucasus War of 1834-1859, the warring mountain tribes of Daghestan and Chechnya united under the charismatic leadership of the Muslim chieftain Imam Shamyl, the "Lion of Daghestan", and held at bay the invading Russian army for nearly 25 years. Lesley Blanch vividly recounts the epic story of their heroic and bloody struggle for freedom and the life of a man still legendary in the Caucasus.

    Forced to flee Kabul as the Russians, then the Taliban, turn their lives inside out, the children and their parents face the loss of their world and their place in it.Throughout, our storyteller Samar bravely holds onto family and hope, often when all survival seems impossible. With the true strength that comes from love, learning and imagination, Samar reveals her extraordinary resilience and the discovery that anything may be possible - if you can just hold on to hope and love.

    This is one soldier’s story . . .The bestselling novelist of ancient warfare returns with a riveting historical novel that re-creates Alexander the Great’s invasion of the Afghan kingdoms in 330 b.c.In a story that might have been ripped from today’s combat dispatches, Steven Pressfield brings to life the confrontation between an invading Western army and fierce Eastern warriors determined at all costs to defend their homeland. Narrated by an infantryman in Alexander’s army, The Afghan Campaign explores the challenges, both military and moral, that Alexander and his soldiers face as they embark on a new type of war and are forced to adapt to the methods of a ruthless foe that employs terror and insurgent tactics. An edge-of-your-seat adventure, The Afghan Campaign once again demonstrates Pressfield’s profound understanding of the hopes and desperation of men in battle and of the historical realities that continue to influence our world.

    In recent decades, however, these lost works have reemerged, and the eerie poetry and poignant humanity of Platonov’s vision have become ever more clear. For Nadezhda Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky, Platonov was the writer who most profoundly registered the spiritual shock of revolution. For a new generation of innovative post-Soviet Russian writers he figures as a daring explorer of word and world, the master of what has been called “alternative realism.” Depicting a devastated world that is both terrifying and sublime, Platonov is, without doubt, a universal writer who is as solitary and haunting as Kafka.This volume gathers eight works that show Platonov at his tenderest, warmest, and subtlest. Among them are “The Return,” about an officer’s difficult homecoming at the end of World War II, described by Penelope Fitzgerald as one of “three great works of Russian literature of the millennium”; “The River Potudan,” a moving account of a troubled marriage; and the title novella, the extraordinary tale of a young man unexpectedly transformed by his return to his Asian birthplace, where he finds his people deprived not only of food and dwelling, but of memory and speech.This prizewinning English translation is the first to be based on the newly available uncensored texts of Platonov’s short fiction.

    His goal was the mysterious caravan city of Khiva, closed to all European travelers by the Russians following their seizure of it two years earlier. His aim was to discover whether, as many British strategists feared, this remote and dangerous oasis was about to be used as a springboard for an invasion of India.Captain Frederick Burnaby was already something of a legend. For a start he was reputed to be the strongest man in the British Army, standing six-foot-four and weighting over 200 pounds. He also spoke no fewer than seven languages, including Russian and Turkish, and possessed a most vigorous and colorful prose style.Unknown to his superiors, who would have forbidden the venture, he rode for over a thousand miles across steppe and desert, struggling through blizzards and snowdrifts, to reach forbidden Khiva. Burnaby was ordered home by an alarmed government and there he immediately sat down and wrote this best-selling account of his adventures.

    With The Hidden War he provided the world its first glimpse inside the Soviet military machine, capturing the soldiers' terror, helplessness, and despair at waging war in a foreign land against an unseen enemy for unclear purposes. When first published, Borovik's groundbreaking revelations exposed the weaknesses beneath the Soviet Union's aura of military might, creating an enormous controversy both in Russia and around the world. A vital and fascinating portrait of the Soviet empire at the twilight of its power, this is a book that still resonates today. An honest and graphic account of individual and general disillusionment during the very worst kind of war. -Christopher Hitchens, New York Newsday; Alternately fascinating and horrific.... A fascinating look at the life and death of Soviet soldiers. -- Bill Wallace, San Francisco Chronicle; I have read no other account of the war in Afghanistan equal to this ... this is literature. -- Graham Greene

    Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.Hansen arrived in Istanbul with romantic ideas about a mythical city perched between East and West, and with a naïve sense of the Islamic world beyond. Over the course of her many years of living in Turkey and traveling in Greece, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran, she learned a great deal about these countries and their cultures and histories and politics. But the greatest, most unsettling surprise would be what she learned about her own country—and herself, an American abroad in the era of American decline. It would take leaving her home to discover what she came to think of as the two Americas: the country and its people, and the experience of American power around the world. She came to understand that anti-Americanism is not a violent pathology. It is, Hansen writes, “a broken heart . . . A one-hundred-year-old relationship.”Blending memoir, journalism, and history, and deeply attuned to the voices of those she met on her travels, Notes on a Foreign Country is a moving reflection on America’s place in the world. It is a powerful journey of self-discovery and revelation—a profound reckoning with what it means to be American in a moment of grave national and global turmoil.

    In Facts and Fears Clapper traces his career through his rise in ranks of the military, the history of several decades of national intelligence operations, the growing threat of cyberattacks, his relationships with presidents and Congress, and the truth about Russia's role in the presidential election. He describes, in the wake of Snowden and WikiLeaks, his efforts to make intelligence more transparent and to push back against the suspicion that Americans' private lives are subject to surveillance. Clapper considers such difficult questions as, is intelligence ethical? Is it moral to use human sources to learn secrets, to intercept communications, to take pictures of closed societies from orbit? What are the limits of what we should be allowed to do? What protections should we give to the private citizens of the world, not to mention our fellow Americans? Is there a time that intelligence officers can lose credibility as unbiased reporters of hard truths by asserting themselves into policy decisions?

    The novel begins in the small town in southern Iran where the boys were raised and in their summer home which is surrounded by a lemon grove. Their idyll is shattered by personal and geopolitical events. Both boys fall in love with Shireen, a childhood friend. Behruz goes to America to escape the pain of competing for Shireen's affections. Ruzbeh fights in the Iran/Iraq war and ends up alone and wandering the streets. When Behruz returns to Iran to help his shell-shocked brother, he finds the country devastated by revolution and war. His return sets off a string of events that change all their lives.