Higher Worlds

On a visit to the British National Archive in 2001, Sonke Neitzel made a remarkable discovery: reams of meticulously transcribed conversations among German POWs that had been covertly recorded and recently declassified. Neitzel would later find another collection of transcriptions, twice as extensive, in the National Archive in Washington, D.C. These were discoveries that would provide a unique and profoundly important window into the true mentality of the soldiers in the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the German navy, and the military in general - almost all of whom had insisted on their own honorable behavior during the war.

Have you ever considered where you go when you dream? What if it is really true that when we dream, we could live another life? What price would you pay to go through the gate of dreams into that other life? Two teens travel to a dream world of awesome beauty and deadly peril. For Lamont Corazon, a 15-year-old novice dreamer, going through the gate is a chance to discover his true destiny. He is the opener of the gate and the obstacle to be overcome. Lamont witnessed how a young man went through the gate of dreams leaving behind a distraught young lady. But is it really true to fulfill that...

The imperial, globe-spanning pursuit of profit, joined with new forms of energy and new possibilities of freedom from hunger and discomfort, freedom to move and explore, has brought change to every inch of the Earth. Amrith relates in gorgeous prose, and on the largest canvas, a mind-altering epic in which humanity might find the collective wisdom to save itself.

Drawing on an unprecedented range and variety of original research, Hitler's Empire sheds new light on how the Nazis designed, maintained, and lost their European dominion - and offers a chilling vision of what the world would have become had they won the war. Mark Mazower forces us to set aside timeworn opinions of the Third Reich, and instead shows how the party drew inspiration for its imperial expansion from America and Great Britain.

As President Barack Obama's adviser on Russian affairs, Michael McFaul helped craft the United States' policy known as "reset" that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. And then, as US ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, he had a front-row seat when this fleeting, hopeful moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. This riveting inside account combines history and memoir to tell the full story of US-Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of the hostile, paranoid Russian president.

With Muse of Fire, Michael Korda, the bestselling author of Alone and Hero, takes a novel approach to World War I by telling its history through the lives of the soldier-poets whose verses memorialize the war's unimaginable horrors. He begins with Rupert Brooke and the halcyon days before violence engulfed his generation—destroying the self-contented world of Edwardian England—and ends with the tragic death of Wilfred Owen, killed only days before the armistice brought an end to a war that took over 25,000,000 lives.

Servant to the God of Death, now a prisoner of war. Keres' chains are in the hands of her enemy and he’s bringing her to heel. As twists of fate entangle her, she must learn to play the strings or become the spell-bound puppet. The bargain for freedom, a bond forged in darkness. The deadly game between Gods and mortals has only just begun. ADVANCE PRAISE: "Anastasia King has a wicked and creative mind and I was beside myself for numerous parts of this read. Looking forward to more installments of this series and I cannot recommend this enough. The writing is immaculate. The plot is very ...

University sophomore Miwako Sumida has hanged herself, leaving those closest to her reeling. In the months before her suicide, she was hiding away in a remote mountainside village, but what, or whom, was she running from? To Ryusei, a fellow student at Waseda; Chie, Miwako's best friend; and Fumi, Ryusei's older sister, Miwako was more than the blunt, no-nonsense person she projected to the world. Heartbroken, Ryusei begs Chie to take him to the village where Miwako spent her final days.

A professor shows a colleague a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer - but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of stories that trace ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration.

In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.

In 1992 Vasili Mitrokhin defected to England and brought along an extensive archive of military intelligence from the Soviet Union. A career KGB officer who served as chief archivist for its foreign operations, Vasili Mitrokhin became disillusioned with the Soviet system and its constant repression of dissidents at home and abroad. Determined to preserve the truth, he secretly compiled a detailed record of the agency's worldwide espionage network...

April 1916, Germany: Anna Zeller, whose fiancé, Bruno, is fighting on the western front, works as a nurse at an overcrowded hospital in Oldenburg, trying to comfort men broken in body and spirit. But during a visit from Dr. Stalling, the director of the Red Cross Ambulance Dogs Association, she witnesses a rare spark of optimism: as a German shepherd guides a battle-blinded soldier over a garden path, Dr. Stalling is inspired with an idea-to train dogs as companions for sightless veterans.

Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian Stefanos Geroulanos demonstrates how claims about the earliest humans not only shaped Western intellectual culture, but gave rise to our modern world.

By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear the Allies would win the Second World War. Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic thought the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. These Christian intellectuals - Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others - sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world.

Norfolk, December, 1943. A group of US fighter pilots is camped at an air base; their job is to escort bombers over Germany. Each mission could be their last. Goodbye Mickey Mouse is a vivid evocation of wartime England and a brilliant, multi-dimensional picture of what it is to be at war. At the center of the novel are two young men—Captain Jamie Farebrother, estranged son of a colonel, and cocky Lieutenant Mickey Morse (nicknamed "Mickey Mouse"), well on his way to becoming America's Number One Flying Ace.

Survival was only the beginning. Alec West and his team have finally found sanctuary within the arcane-protected city of Bastion. But peace never lasts. When a scout patrol vanishes near a mysterious Obelisk-born structure, Bastion’s council calls on Alec’s battle-hardened squad to investigate. What starts as a rescue turns into a desperate race against time. Buried in the ruins lies a Progenitor-class artifact—a Trial Key capable of rewriting fate itself. And when one of their own is mortally wounded, Alec must lead his team into an otherworldly dungeon known as the Tower of Teeth ...

Written by Daniel Nettle - author of the popular book Happiness - this brief volume takes the listener on an exhilarating tour of what modern science can tell us about human personality. Revealing that our personalities stem from our biological makeup, Nettle looks at the latest findings from genetics and brain science, and considers the evolutionary origins and consequences of different personalities. The heart of the book sheds light on the "big five": Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientious, Agreeableness, and Openness.

Irreverently juggling magical realism, film noir, hip hop, and chicanismo, Tropic of Orange takes place in a Los Angeles where the homeless, gangsters, infant organ entrepreneurs, and Hollywood collide on a stretch of the Harbor Freeway. Hemmed in by wildfires, it's a symphony conducted from an overpass, grandiose, comic, and as diverse as the city itself - from an author who has received the California Book Award and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award, among other literary honors.

The Future of War - which covers civil wars to as yet unknown nuclear conflicts, proxy wars (real) to the Cold War (not), fashionably small wars to the War to End All Wars (it didn't) - is filled with insight and fascinating nuggets of military history and culture from one of the most brilliant military and strategic historians of his generation.

Imagine you’ve just been invited to a high-level event. The room is filled with fascinating people, and you know you want to be in their orbit. The problem is, you have no idea how to get there. So instead, you find the nearest chair and stay put for the next two hours.