<b>#1聽<i>New York Times</i>聽Bestseller 鈥⒙?lt;b>A historian of fascism offers a guide for surviving and resisting America's turn towards authoritarianism.</b><br /></b><br />The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.<br /><br /><i>On Tyranny</i>聽is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.<br /><br /><b>"Mr. Snyder is a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present." 鈥?lt;i>The New York Times</i></b>

<b>A <i>New York Times</i> Best Book of the Year</b><br /> <b>A <i>Time</i> Best Book of the Year</b><br /> <b>A <i>Kirkus</i> <i>Reviews</i> Best Nonfiction Book of the Year</b><br /> <b>2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Winner</b><br /> <b>One of NPR鈥檚 Best Books of 2019</b><br /> <br /><b>Journalist Adam Higginbotham鈥檚 definitive, years-in-the-making account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster鈥攁nd a powerful investigation into how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the twentieth century鈥檚 greatest disasters.</b><br /><br />Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering history鈥檚 worst nuclear disaster. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute.<br /> <br />Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham has written a harrowing and compelling narrative which brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a masterful nonfiction thriller, and the definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth.<br /> <br /><i>Midnight in Chernobyl </i>is an indelible portrait of one of the great disasters of the twentieth century, of human resilience and ingenuity, and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will鈥攍essons which, in the face of climate change and other threats, remain not just vital but necessary.

<b><i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER 鈥⒙?lt;b>The celebrated author of聽<i>Double Cross</i>聽and聽<i>Rogue Heroes</i>聽returns with his greatest spy story yet, a thrilling聽<i>Americans</i>-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War.</b><br /><br />鈥淭he best true spy story I have ever read.鈥濃€擩OHN LE CARR脡<br /></b><br /> If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States's nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky's name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain's obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets.聽<br /><br /> Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky's nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre's latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carr茅, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man's hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.

<p><strong>A multigenerational saga of two families, who rose from immigrant roots to the pinnacle of wealth and power, that tracks the unraveling of American democracy.</strong></p><br /><p>In <em>American Oligarchs</em>, award-winning investigative journalist Andrea Bernstein tells the story of the Trump and Kushner families like never before. Their journey to the White House is a story of survival and loss, crime and betrayal, that stretches from the Klondike Gold Rush, through Nazi-occupied Poland and across the American Century, to our new gilded age. In building and maintaining their dynastic wealth, these families came to embody the rising nationalism and inequality that has pushed the United States to the brink of oligarchy.</p><br /><p>Building on her landmark reporting for the acclaimed podcast <em>Trump, Inc.</em> and <em>The New Yorker</em>, Bernstein鈥檚 painstaking detective work brings to light new information about the families鈥?arrival as immigrants to America, their paths to success, and the business and personal lives of the president and his closest family members.</p><br /><p>Bernstein traces how the two families ruthlessly harnessed New York and New Jersey machine politics to gain valuable tax breaks and grew rich on federal programs that bolstered the middle class. She shows how the Trump Organization, denied credit by American banks, turned to shady international capital. She reveals astonishing new details about Charles Kushner鈥檚 attempts to ensnare his brother-in-law with a prostitute and explores how Jared Kushner and his father used a venerable New York newspaper to bolster their business empire.</p><br /><p>Drawing on more than two hundred interviews and more than one hundred thousand pages of documents, many previously unseen or long forgotten, Bernstein shows how the Trumps and the Kushners repeatedly broke rules and then leveraged secrecy, intimidation, and prosecutorial and judicial power to avoid legal consequences.</p><br /><p>The result is a compelling narrative that details how the Trump and Kushner dynasties encouraged and profited from a system of corruption, dark money, and influence trading, and that reveals the historical turning points and decisions鈥攐n taxation, regulation, white-collar crime, and campaign finance laws鈥攖hat have brought us to where we are today.</p>

<b>#1 <i>NEW YORK TIMES </i>BESTSELLER </b>鈥⒙?lt;b>In<i> Sapiens, </i>he explored our past. In <i>Homo Deus, </i>he looked to our future<i>. </i>Now, one of the most innovative thinkers on the planet turns to the present to make sense of today鈥檚 most pressing issues.</b><br /><br /><b>鈥淔ascinating . . . a crucial global conversation about how to take on the problems of the twenty-first century.鈥濃€擝ill Gates,聽<i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br /><br /><b>NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY <i>FINANCIAL TIMES </i>AND聽<b>PAMELA PAUL, KQED聽</b></b><br /><br /> How do computers and robots change the meaning of being human? How do we deal with the epidemic of fake news? Are nations and religions still relevant? What should we teach our children? <br /><br />Yuval Noah Harari鈥檚 <i>21 Lessons for the 21st Century</i> is a probing and visionary investigation into today鈥檚 most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.<br /><br /> In twenty-one accessible chapters that are both provocative and profound, Harari builds on the ideas explored in his previous books, untangling political, technological, social, and existential issues and offering advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in: How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like, and how should we ready ourselves for it? How should we deal with the threat of terrorism? Why is liberal democracy in crisis?<br /><br /> Harari鈥檚 unique ability to make sense of where we have come from and where we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Here he invites us to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. When we are deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power. Presenting complex contemporary challenges clearly and accessibly, <i>21 Lessons for the 21st Century</i> is essential reading.<br /><b><br />鈥淚f there were such a thing as聽a required instruction manual for politicians and thought leaders, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari鈥檚聽<i>21 Lessons for the 21st Century</i>聽would deserve serious consideration. In this collection of聽provocative聽essays, Harari . . .聽tackles a daunting array of issues, endeavoring to answer a persistent question: 鈥榃hat is happening in the world today, and what is the deep meaning of these events?鈥欌€濃€?lt;i>BookPage聽</i>(top pick)</b>

<p><strong>鈥淣othing short of a masterpiece.鈥濃€擭PR Books<br /><br />A <em>New York Times</em> and <em>Washington Post</em> Notable Book of the Year<br /><br /><br /><br />In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation.</strong></p><br /><p>Widely hailed for its 鈥渟weeping, sobering account of the American past鈥?(<em>New York Times Book Review</em>), Jill Lepore鈥檚 one-volume history of America places truth itself鈥攁 devotion to facts, proof, and evidence鈥攁t the center of the nation鈥檚 history. The American experiment rests on three ideas鈥斺€渢hese truths,鈥?Jefferson called them鈥攑olitical equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?</p><br /><p><em>These Truths</em> tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation鈥檚 truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. 鈥淎 nation born in contradiction鈥?will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,鈥?Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With <em>These Truths</em>, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.</p>

<b>ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR</b><br /><b><br /></b><b>NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY <i>The Wall Street Journal </i>and NPR</b><br /> <br /><b>鈥淪uperb 鈥?A vivid and richly detailed story 鈥?worth reading by everyone.鈥?</b>-<b><i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br /><b><br /></b><b>From the</b><b> bestselling </b><b>author of <i>Return of a King</i>, the story of how the East India Company took over large swaths of Asia, and the devastating results of the corporation running a country.</b><br /><b><br /></b>In August 1765, the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and set up, in his place, a government run by English traders who collected taxes through means of a private army. <br /><br />The creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Company ceased to be a conventional company and became something much more unusual: an international corporation transformed into an aggressive colonial power. Over the course of the next 47 years, the company's reach grew until almost all of India south of Delhi was effectively ruled from a boardroom in the city of London.<br /><br /><i>The Anarchy</i> tells one of history's most remarkable stories: how the Mughal Empire-which dominated world trade and manufacturing and possessed almost unlimited resources-fell apart and was replaced by a multinational corporation based thousands of miles overseas, and answerable to shareholders, most of whom had never even seen India and no idea about the country whose wealth was providing their dividends. Using previously untapped sources, Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before and provides a portrait of the devastating results from the abuse of corporate power.

Washington, Adams, Henry, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton: their ambitions, intrigues, and jealousies shaped the birth of the nation, but they overcame their foibles and imperfections to throw off the chains of tyranny and form a more perfect union. We think of them now as faces on money or statues on pedestals, and, as Burns illustrates in luminous prose, that鈥檚 exactly what they always wanted to be. They all possessed astonishing brilliance, but many had large egos and more than just a little vanity, especially John Adams, who never felt he received his public due and often complained in his letters about the unjust fame of his peers. History remembers Patrick Henry as the author of the patriotic call to arms, 聯give me liberty, or give me death!鈥?but, at the beginning of his life in the public eye, he shamelessly traded integrity for renown.<br /><br />Interest in the founding fathers has never been greater; <i>Virtue, Valor, and Vanity</i> presents all of these well-known and oft-quoted men with wisdom and candor. In this fresh, informative work, Burns brings the founding fathers down off their pedestals to reveal the flesh-and-blood men聴vain and modest, sensitive and stubborn, brilliant and ambitious聴who attempted to overcome their faults in order to establish a new nation that would be a paragon of governance. For the armchair historian, here is an exciting new look at our country鈥檚 origins.

<p>A superb, authoritatively written insider鈥檚 account of Iran, one of the most mysterious but significant and powerful nations in the world.</p><p>Few historians and journalists writing in English have been able to meaningfully examine post-revolutionary Iranian life. Years after his death, the shadow of Ayatollah Khomeini still looms over Shi'ite Islam and Iranian politics, the state of the nation fought over by conservatives and radicals. They are contending for the soul of a revolutionary Islamic government that terrified the Western establishment and took them to leadership of the Islamic world.</p><p>But times have changed. Khomeini's death and the deficiencies of his successor, the intolerance and corruption that has made the regime increasingly authoritarian and cynical, frustration at Iran's economic isolation and the revolution's failure to deliver the just realm it promised has transformed the spirit of the country.</p><p>In this superbly crafted and deeply thoughtful book Christopher de Bellaigue, who is married to an Iranian and has lived there for many years, gives us the voices and memories of this 'worn-out generation': be they traders or soldiers, film-makers or clerics, writers or taxi-drivers, gangsters or reformists. These are voices that are never heard, but whose lives and concerns are forging the future of one of the most secretive, misunderstood countries in the world. The result is a subtle yet intense revelation of the hearts and minds of the Iranian people.</p>

<p>Louis XIV, the highly-feted 鈥淪un King鈥? was renowned for his political and cultural influence and for raising France to a new level of prominence in seventeenth-century Europe. And yet, as Antonia Fraser keenly describes, he was equally legendary in the domestic sphere. Indeed, a panoply of women鈥攈is mother, Anne; mistresses such as Louise de la Valli貓re, Ath茅na茂s de Montespan, and the puritanical Madame de Maintenon; and an array of courtesans鈥攎oved in and out of the court. The highly visible presence of these women raises many questions about their position in both Louis XIV鈥檚 life and in France at large. With careful research and vivid, engaging prose, Fraser makes the multifaceted life of one of the most famous European monarchs accessible and vibrantly current.</p>