The second edition, Inside the Circus, pulls back the curtain on the pursuit of the Republican nomination, as operatives jockey for position and strategists vie to fashion a message that can win over all factions of the fractious GOP.   Over the course of a long winter and into the spring, the contest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination gathered steam and bubbled over with drama. At times it seemed more like a soap opera or reality show than a political campaign. Inside the Circus, the latest real-time digital dispatch from acclaimed political correspondent Mike Allen and award-winning journalist and author Evan Thomas, chronicles each turn in this endlessly surprising race with reporting straight from the campaign war rooms of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and the other GOP contenders.   What was the thinking inside the Romney brain trust as what was once expected to be an easy ride to the nomination turned into what some have called a “long slog”? How did Newt Gingrich throw the preternaturally poised Romney off his game in South Carolina—and who convinced the former Massachusetts governor it was time to start punching back? Why were the other campaigns caught flat-footed by the rise of Rick Santorum and what does his unlikely ascent mean for the prospect of a brokered convention? From the Iowa caucuses to Super Tuesday and beyond, Allen and Thomas answer all the questions the headlines, polls, and delegate counts can’t address. The stakes are high, the plotlines are still unfolding, and Inside the Circus is your fly-on-the-wall guide to the most fascinating Republican presidential race in recent memory.

    Rujuta Diwekar—India’s top health expert, and advisor to celebrities like Kareena Kapoor Khan, Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan, amongst others—demystifies strength training, and explains how you can make the most of your visit to the gym. This ebook, an educative extract from her bestselling book Don’t Lose Out, Work Out!, has sample training plans to set aside the doubts and get moving.

    With irrepressible humor he recounts the history of the waterways and stories of his encounters with characters along the way, and attempts to define the magic that makes England’s waterways so appealing.

    Building on the concepts taught in the best-selling book Running With Curves, Why You're Not Too Fat to Run and the Skinny on How to Start Today, Jill Angie gives you everything you need to finish your first race—and feel great about it—including a step-by-step training plan that takes into account all the challenges of being an overweight athlete in a size-six world.Where other training plans fail you, this book steps in and gets you to the finish line with ease, bringing out your inner runner girl and showing you that you're capable of so much more than you ever thought possible.This book is for anyone who wants to complete their first 5K. That means you don’t even have to be a runner right now. As long as you can walk for 3 miles, you will be able to do a 5K in two months. I promise. Also, this book is designed to train you to finish that 5K in a way that feels good to you, both mentally and physically. That means you can walk, run, skip, or even disco dance your way across the finish line. Now, if you’ve already done a 5K (or two… or five), this doesn’t mean you won’t get anything out of this book. Just the opposite, in fact. There is a truckload of helpful information here that will help you take your 5K performance to the next level.Praise for Not Your Average 5KJill Angie has created a 5K training plan that not only gets you to the finish line but addresses the #1 reason that many new (and experienced) runners face when taking on new challenges. Mindset. In this easy to follow program, Jill walks you through exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to get rid of self doubt, fear and anxiety known as your "inner mean girl" so that you finish strong, confident, and proud. Whether you struggle with the physical aspects, mental aspects, both or neither, this guide will have you totally prepared on race day. —Steve Carmichael, running coach and host of The RunBuzz podcast, www.RunBuzz.com"Not Your Average 5K is a highly readable and engaging book that will have you BELIEVING you can do a 5K in eight weeks and provides a roadmap with plans to accomplish it. It is authentic, thorough, and motivational from start to finish! We highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to do their first 5K." —Adam Goucher and Tim Catalano of Run The Edge, www.RunTheEdge.com

    Still essential and still timely ten years after its original publication, The Shia Revival provides a unique and objective understanding of the 1,400-year bitter struggle between Shias and Sunnis and sheds crucial light on its modern-day consequences. A new epilogue elucidates the rise of ISIS and ongoing tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

    Soufan was handed a secret file. Had he received it months earlier—when it was requested—the attacks on New York and Washington could have been prevented. During his time on the front lines, Soufan helped thwart plots around the world and elicited some of the most important confessions from terrorists in the war against al-Qaeda—without laying so much as a hand on them. Most of these stories have never been reported before, and never by anyone with such intimate firsthand knowledge.This narrative account of America's successes and failures against al-Qaeda is essential to an understanding of the terrorist group. We are taken into hideouts and interrogation rooms. We have a ringside seat at bin Laden's personal celebration of the 9/11 bombings. Such riveting details show us not only how terrorists think and operate but also how they can be beaten and brought to justice.

    Longtime USA TODAY baseball editor and columnist Hal Bodley explores just how essential baseball is to understanding the American experience. He takes readers into the Oval Office with George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton as the former presidents share their thoughts on the game, he looks at the changes that America's Greatest Generation ushered in, as well as examining baseball's struggle with performance enhancing drugs alongside America's war on drugs.An unabashedly celebratory explanation of America's love affair with baseball and the men who make it possible, this work sheds light on topics such as the role Jackie Robinson's signing with the Dodgers played in the civil rights movement, how baseball's westward expansion mirrored the growth of our national economy, labor strife, baseball families, the international explosion of the game, and even the myriad ways in which movies, music, and baseball are intrinsically tied. It is a must read for anyone interested in more fully understanding not only the game but also the nation in which it thrives.

    The more we interact online, the more we crave intimacy. The more filtered our lives become, the harder it is to be real.It’s time to refresh and rediscover what it means to be “like Jesus” and find true authenticity, a healthy self-image, and compassion for others in an age when we relate to each other so differently than ever before. Groeschel taps into some of the most leading-edge studies on the effects of social media on our emotions and friendships. He offers real-life examples of how we struggle with screens and likes, how these things mask our struggles with who we really are, and how we can reclaim a Christ-centered life.Packed with helpful topics like the “10 Commandments of Using Social Media to Strengthen Your Faith” and “Creating Safeguards for Your Digital Devices,” readers from ages sixteen to sixty will find Liking Jesus to be just the guide to bring balance and real-world engagement to everyday life.

    Strategically located in the heart of Central Asia, sandwiched between Vladimir Putin's Russia, its former colonial ruler, and Xi Jinping's China, this vast oil-rich state is carving out its place in the world as it contends with its own complex past and present. Journalist Joanna Lillis paints a vibrant picture of this emerging nation through vivid reportage based on 13 years of on-the-ground coverage, and travels across the length and breadth of this enigmatic country that lies along the ancient Silk Road and at the geopolitical and cultural crossroads where East meets West.Featuring tales of murder and abduction, intrigue and betrayal, extortion and corruption, this book explores how a president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, transformed himself into a potentate and the economically-struggling state he inherited at the fall of the USSR into a swaggering 21st-century monocracy. A colourful cast of characters brings the politics to life: from strutting oligarch to sleeping villagers, from principled politicians to striking oilmen, from crusading journalists to courageous campaigners.Traversing dust-blown deserts and majestic mountains, taking in glitzy cities and dystopian landscapes, Dark Shadows conjures up Kazakhstan as a living, breathing place, full of extraordinary people living extraordinary lives.

    The United States went to Afghanistan on a simple mission: avenge the September 11 attacks and drive the Taliban from power. This took less than two months. Over the course of the next decade, the ensuing fight for power and money supplied to one of the poorest nations on earth, in ever-greater amounts left the region even more dangerous than before the first troops arrived.At the center of this story is the Karzai family. President Hamid Karzai and his brothers began the war as symbols of a new Afghanistan: moderate, educated, fluent in the cultures of East and West, and the antithesis of the brutish and backward Taliban regime. The siblings, from a prominent political family close to Afghanistan's former king, had been thrust into exile by the Soviet war. While Hamid Karzai lived in Pakistan and worked with the resistance, others moved to the United States, finding work as waiters and managers before opening their own restaurants. After September 11, the brothers returned home to help rebuild Afghanistan and reshape their homeland with ambitious plans.Today, with the country in shambles, they are in open conflict with one another and their Western allies. Joshua Partlow's clear-eyed analysis reveals the mistakes, squandered hopes, and wasted chances behind the scenes of a would-be political dynasty. Nothing illustrates the arc of the war and America's relationship with Afghanistan from optimism to despair, friendship to enmity as neatly as the story of the Karzai family itself, told here in its entirety for the first time.

    In the fight for health and happiness, New York Times bestselling author and talk show host Williams shares his battle plan for better living.

    One by one the militants crossed the border into Pakistan and settled in its tribal areas, building alliances with locals and terrorizing or bribing their way to power. This place - Pakistan's lawless frontier - is now the epicenter of global terrorism. It is where young American and British jihadists go to be trained, where the kidnapped are stowed away, and where plots are hatched for deadly attacks all over the world. It has become, in President Obama's words, "the most dangerous place" - a hornet's nest of violent extremists, many of whom now target their own state in vicious suicide- bombing campaigns. Imtiaz Gul, who knows the ins and outs of these groups and their leaders, tackles the toughest questions about the current situation: What can be done to bring the Pakistani Taliban under control? Who funds these militants and what are their links to Al Qaeda? Are they still supported by the ISI, Pakistan's all-powerful intelligence agency? Based on dozens of exclusive interviews with high-ranking Pakistani intelligence, government and military officers and extensive first-hand reporting, The Most Dangerous Place is a gripping and definitive exposé of a region that Americans need urgently to understand.

    ISIS), a group so brutal and hardline that even al-Qaida deemed them too extreme. Baghdadi, an introverted religious scholar, with a passion for soccer, now controls large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria. McCants shows how Baghdadi became radicalized in the Saddam Hussein era and found his path to power after connecting with other radicals in an American prison during the Iraq War, culminating in his declaration of a reborn Islamic empire bent on world conquest.

     Frequently the two groups resorted to violence assert their rights to the lands. J. W. Wilbarger’s remarkable book Indian Depredations in Texas contains more than 250 separate narratives of attacks and counterattacks that occurred from the 1820s to the 1870s. Wilbarger, a pioneer who had emigrated to Texas in 1837, was fully aware of the dangers that he faced by living on the frontier of the American West as his own brother had miraculously survived being scalped and left for dead in 1833. Over the course of the next fifty years Wilbarger compiled accounts of Native American attacks that formed the basis of his book. Yet, rather than simply relying on hearsay and rumors of attacks, he sought out the victims and as he states in his Preface, many of the articles had been “written by others, who were either cognizant of the facts themselves or had obtained them from reliable sources." This book is fascinating work that remains an importance source covering the early settlement of the region by Americans, based on stories told by surviving pioneers. "unique among pioneer chronicles." — J. Frank Dobie J. B. Wilbarger was a Methodist minister, author and pioneer. He first moved West to Texas in 1837 at the urging of his brother Josiah Pugh Wilbarger. His book Indian Depredations in Texas was first published in 1889 and he passed away in 1892.