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Charlie Wilson's War is the untold story behind the last battle of the Cold War and how it fueled the rise of militant Islam. George Crile tells how Charlie Wilson, a maverick congressman from east Texas, conspired with a rogue CIA operative to launch the biggest, meanest, and most successful covert operation in the agency's history.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of A Kim Jong-Il Production, by Paul Fischer, read by Stephen Park. Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's film industry. He directed every film made in the country but knew they were...

Ho Chi Minh was more than a revolutionary leader—he was the symbol of an entire people’s struggle for independence. Known affectionately as “Uncle Ho,” he became the face of Vietnam’s resistance against colonialism, imperialism, and foreign domination. His life was a journey that spanned continents, ideologies, and decades of conflict, culminating in the creation of a unified Vietnam and a legacy that still shapes the nation today. This book explores Ho Chi Minh’s life, tracing his evolution from a young man in colonial Vietnam to one of the most influential leaders of the twentieth century.

Dotted across homes in Britain are people who were witnesses to one of the most tumultuous events of the 20th century. Yet their memory of India’s partition has been shrouded in silence. Kavita Puri’s father was 12 when he found himself one of the millions of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims caught up in the devastating aftermath of a hastily drawn border. For 70 years he remained silent - like so many - about the horrors he had seen.

The first ever comprehensive history in English of China's Warring States period, an era that saw epic battles, the birth of profound philosophies, groundbreaking innovations, and shaped much of East Asian culture as we know it today. The Warring States period saw the emergence of Confucianism...

A haunting account of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without...

‘People often say that non-fiction books read like fast-moving thrillers, but this one genuinely does… This is a splendid book – and highly recommended.’ Daily Mail A remarkable piece of investigative journalism into one of the most pervasive and troubling mysteries of recent memory. 01...

A naive young man, a railway enthusiast and radio buff, was caught up in the fall of the British Empire at Singapore in 1942. He was put to work on the 'Railway of Death' - the Japanese line from Thailand to Burma. Exhaustively and brutally tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio...

Long overshadowed by Japan and China, South Korea is a small country that happens to be one of the great national success stories of the postwar period. From a failed state with no democratic tradition, ruined and partitioned by war, and sapped by a half-century of colonial rule, South Korea transformed itself in just 50 years into an economic powerhouse and a democracy that serves as a model for other countries. With no natural resources and a tradition of authoritarian rule, Korea managed to accomplish a second Asian miracle.

Delhi, 1946. Ma and Bappu teach at the local university. Their fourteen-year-old daughter—precocious, headstrong Alma—is soon to be married: Alma is mostly interested in the wedding shoes and spinning wild stories for her little sister Roop. Times are bad for girls in India: the long-awaited independence from British rule brings unrest that threatens to unravel the rich tapestry of Delhi. And when Partition happens overnight, Ma, Bappu, Alma and Roop are forced to find new and increasingly desperate ways to survive. 

From the award-winning historian and filmmakers of The Civil War, Baseball, The War, The Roosevelts, and others: a vivid, uniquely powerful history of the conflict that tore America apart--the companion volume to the major, multipart PBS film to be aired in September 2017. More than forty years...

LRPs were all volunteers. They were in the spine-tingling, brain-twisting, nerve-wracking business of Long Range Patrolling. They varied in age from eighteen to thirty. These men operated in precision movements, like walking through a jungle quietly and being able to tell whether a man or an animal is moving through the brush without seeing the cause of movement. They could sit in an ambush for hours without moving a muscle except to ease the safety off the automatic weapon in their hand at the first sign of trouble. These men were good because they had to be to survive.

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles, and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company's practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Paul French's Midnight in Peking, a gripping, true murder mystery story read by the actor Crawford Logan. Who killed Pamela Werner? On a frozen night in January 1937, in the dying days of colonial Peking, a body was found under the haunted...

We discover why appreciating the beauty of sakura, cherry blossom, allows for a moment to deeply experience a season through a single entity (Cherish). In the traditional tea ceremony, we see the importance of kiwameru, the Japanese word for achieving mastery or perfection (Perfect). In umami, we taste how something simple and delicious can nourish the heart (Savour). We explore why the things left unsaid, ma, are just as important as the words we say (Harmonise).

'Michael Sheridan is one of the best informed and wisest writers on China' - Chris Patten, last governor of Hong Kong The Red Emperor presents an eye-opening portrait of Xi Jinping, the man who presides over 1.4 billion people and the second largest economy on earth. Born a 'princeling' to one...

This Pulitzer Prize-winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author’s words, "a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened - muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox."

The Last Stand of Fox Company is a fast-paced and gripping account of heroism and self-sacrifice in the face of impossible odds. The authors have conducted dozens of firsthand interviews with the battle's survivors, and they narrate the story with the immediacy of such classic accounts of single battles as Guadalcanal Diary, Pork Chop Hill, and Black Hawk Down.

On May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could fight a mighty colonial power and win. After nearly a decade of struggle, a nation forged in the crucible of war had achieved a victory undreamed of by any other national liberation movement. The Road to Dien Bien Phu tells the story of how Ho Chi Minh turned a ragtag guerrilla army into a modern fighting force capable of bringing down the formidable French army.

Gandhi's nonviolent struggles against racism, violence and colonialism in South Africa and India had brought him to such a level of notoriety and adulation that when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, he took it as an opportunity to explain himself. He feared the enthusiasm for his ideas tended to exceed a deeper understanding of his quest for truth rooted in devotion to God.