Grove atlantic (Oltre 23.000 risultati)

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. In September 1944, with the Allies eager to break into Nazi Germany after Normandy, thirty-five thousand U.S. and British troops parachuted into Nazi held territory in the Netherlands. The controversial offensive, code named Operation Market Garden, was conceived by British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery to secure the lower Rhine--Germany's last great natural barrier in the west--and passage to Berlin. Allied soldiers outnumbered Germans by two to one, but they were poorly armed against the German Panzer tanks and suffered devastating casualties. After nine days of intense fighting, they were forced to retreat. Several months later, in March 1945, Montgomery orchestrated another airborne attack of the Rhine. This time the Allies prevailed and began their march into the heart of the Third Reich. At once a gripping narrative and a moving testament to the courage and tenacity of ordinary soldiers who are thrust into desperate circumstances, Crossing the Rhine moves at a fast pace, delivers a fresh interpretation of the past, and forces us to ask ourselves just what it takes--in blood spilled, in lives lost--to win in war.…

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. Now in paperback, Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire was acclaimed by The Hartford Courant as a thrilling discovery . a reversal of the letters of] Saul Bellow's Herzog . with] a Nabokovian delight in words and texts. J. is a smuggler living in Russia, making his living fencing the flotsam of communism's collapse. In Istanbul he takes a commission to trap an endangered Russian butterfly and decides to use it as an opportunity to smuggle V., his Russian lover who has no papers, back into her homeland. In the port of Odessa, she disappears, and J. continues alone to a small village on the Black Sea. Letters from V. begin to arrive, and as J. hunts the butterfly, he seeks a way to lure V. back into his life. Equal parts bittersweet love story, international intrigue, and one man's quest to write the perfect love letter, Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire, wrote The Tennessean, is an amazing jewel of a story . that winks with wit and] wears its astonishing craftsmanship lightly. An aesthetically blissful reading experience . Nabokov's spirit, alive and kind, has touched Prieto] with its butterfly wings. -- Aleksandar Hemon, The Village Voice Literary Supplement .Nocturnal Butterflies is an impressive performance by a writer whose gifts are clearly abundant. -- Richard Bernstein, The New York Times A beautiful, lavish, seedy, poetic, and magical book. Pure pleasure for the literary mind. -- Chris Kridler, The Baltimore Sun. …

Paperback. Condizione: Good. Lieve Joris has long been considered "one of the best journalists in the world" (Libération, France) and in The Rebels' Hour she illuminates the dark heart of contemporary Congo through the prism of one lonely, complicated man--a rebel leader named Assani who becomes a high-ranking general in the Congolese army. As we navigate the chaos of his lawless country alongside him, the pathologically evasive Assani stands out in relief as a man who is both monstrous and sympathetic, perpetrator and victim.…

Paperback. Condizione: Fair. Salam Pax has attracted a huge worldwide readership for the Internet diary he kept dyring the buildup, prosecution, and aftermath of the war in Iraq. Bringing his incisive and sharply funny Web postings together in print for the first time, Salam Pax provides one of the most gripping accounts of the Iraq conflict and will be the subject of global media attention. In September 2002, a 29-year old Iraqi architect calling himself 'Salam Pax' began posting daily accounts of everyday life in Baghdad onto the Internet. Written in English, these postings contained everything from descriptions of the hardships of life in Saddam Hussein's paranoid regime, to reviews of the latest (pirate) CDs by Coldplay and Bjork, to gossip about his employers. Salam daily risked retribution from Saddam's regime, as over 200,000 people went missing under Saddam, many for far lesser crimes than the open criticism of the regime that he voiced in his diary. Salam Pax's sharp, candid and often dryly funny articles soon attracted a worldwide readership. In the months that followed, as a huge American-led force gathered to destroy Saddam's hated regime, Salam's internet diary became a unique record of the anticipation, anger, resentment, humor and sheer terror felt by an ordinary man living through the final days of Saddam Hussein's twenty-five year dictatorship, and the aftermath of its destruction. Salam Pax is an astonishing record of the last days of Saddam and the cleandestine diary of an ordinary Iraqi.…

Paperback. Condizione: Good. Ivan Klima has been called a Czech genius by the Los Angeles Times Book Review. In these stories spanning his long career from the 1960s to the present, he gives us a gallery of people searching, in love, for escape: factory girls on their day off and assembly-line workers lost in Walter-Mittyesque fantasies; a young woman on a honeymoon with the man she did not marry; a divorce-court judge whose mistress cannot understand his affection for the routines of his marriage; a young wife who falls into a passionate affair with an elderly bookbinder crippled by war. Lovers for a Day is a book stamped with Klima's unique wisdom, a personal history of a national evolution and an acute and moving examination of our attempts to find freedom in love. Ivan Klima's view of love is often witty, sometimes playful, and has a convincing sense of the erotic. and] the kindness that can endure between a husband and wife long after the passion has fled. -- Andrew Miller, The New York Times Book Review; Klima has evolved differently from his contemporaries. Rather than become embittered by his country's past, Klima has come to a truce with imperfection -- the imperfection of history and of love. -- Jennie Yabroff, San Francisco Chronicle.…

Paperback. Condizione: Fair. In prose possessed of the radically stripped-down beauty and ferocious wit that characterize his work, this early novel by Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett recounts the grotesque and improbable adventures of a fantastically logical Irish servant and his master. Watt is a beautifully executed black comedy that, at its core, is rooted in the powerful and terrifying vision that made Beckett one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.…

Paperback. Condizione: Good. A 115-year-old man lies on his deathbed as the 2016 election results arrive, and revisits his life in this moving story of love, fatherhood, and the American century from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler. A visionary and poignant novel centered around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early twentieth century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South and his time in the French trenches during World War I to his fledgling newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, snippets of history are brought sharply into focus. Sam grows up in Louisiana, with a harsh father, who he comes to resent both for his physical abuse and for what Sam eventually perceives as his flawed morality. Eager to escape and prove himself, Sam enlists in the army as a sniper while still underage. The hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, but, as he recounts these tales on his deathbed, we come to realize that it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the U.S., Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to all the major historical turns of the twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam's at almost every turn. As he contemplates his relationships--with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son--Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years in this heart-rending novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner.…

Condizione: Good. Internationally acclaimed, prize-winning thriller writer Deon Meyer has been heralded as the King of South African Crime. In Thirteen Hours, morning dawns in Cape Town, and for homicide detective Benny Griessel it promises to be a very trying day. A teenage girl's body has been found on the street, her throat cut. She was an American--a PR nightmare in the #1 tourist destination in South Africa. And she wasn't alone. Somewhere in Cape Town her friend, Rachel Anderson, an innocent American, is hopefully still alive. On the run from the first page of Thirteen Hours, Rachel is terrified, unsure where to turn in the unknown city. Detective Griessel races against the clock, trying to bring her home safe and solve the murder of her friend in a single day. Meanwhile, he gets pulled into a second case, the murder of a South African music executive. Griessel's been sober for nearly six months--156 days. But day 157 is going to be tough. A #1 best seller in South Africa and a finalist for the CWA International Dagger, Thirteen Hours is an atmospheric, intensely gripping novel from a master storyteller.…

Paperback. Condizione: Good. "The most unexpected second book by a writer of note to appear in years.an engrossing story of brotherly division."--John Freeman, Boston Globe The much-anticipated debut novel from National Book Award "5 under 35" author Josh Weil, whom Colum McCann lauded as one of "the most gifted writers of his generation," The Great Glass Sea is an epic tale of brotherly love, swathed in all the magic of Russian folklore and set against the backdrop of an all-too-real alternate present. This is an ambitious novel of love, loss, and light, and a spellbinding vision of an alternative Russia as stirring as it is profound. "Moving and sensitive.evokes the mythic feel of a contemporary classic. There's pathos and tension.breathtaking brilliance. Weil's greatest gift to the reader: a deep understanding of family, personal loss and the abiding love between siblings."--Los Angeles Times.…

Paperback. Condizione: Good. Throughout his life, playwright and political activist Harold Pinter has consistently cast light on the hypocrisy of conformist truths in pure and simple terms. Awarded the Wilfred Owen Prize in 2004 for his poetry condemning U.S. military intervention in Iraq, Mr. Pinter has succeeded as no other of his generation in combining his artistry with his political activism. Death etc. brings together Pinter's most poignant and especially relevant writings in this time of war. From chilling psychological portraits of those who commit atrocities in the name of a higher power, to essays on the state-sponsored terrorism of present-day regimes, to solemn hymns commemorating the faceless masses that perish unrecognized, Mr. Pinter's writings are as essential to the preservation of open debate as to our awareness of personal involvement in the fate of our global community. …

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. "The most unexpected second book by a writer of note to appear in years.an engrossing story of brotherly division."--John Freeman, Boston Globe The much-anticipated debut novel from National Book Award "5 under 35" author Josh Weil, whom Colum McCann lauded as one of "the most gifted writers of his generation," The Great Glass Sea is an epic tale of brotherly love, swathed in all the magic of Russian folklore and set against the backdrop of an all-too-real alternate present. This is an ambitious novel of love, loss, and light, and a spellbinding vision of an alternative Russia as stirring as it is profound. "Moving and sensitive.evokes the mythic feel of a contemporary classic. There's pathos and tension.breathtaking brilliance. Weil's greatest gift to the reader: a deep understanding of family, personal loss and the abiding love between siblings."--Los Angeles Times.…

Paperback. Condizione: Good. A Lambda Award Finalist: a black gay man struggles with his marriage, faith, and desires in this "tender, funny tour of a mind struggling to do the right thing" (Steve Martin).Gary Gray marries his first girlfriend, a fellow student from Central Florida Christian College who loves Disney World as much as he does. They are nineteen, God-fearing, and eager to start a family. But a week before their wedding Gary goes into a rest-stop bathroom and lets something happen.God Says No is his testimony?the story of a young black Christian struggling with desire and belief, with his love for his wife and his appetite for other men, told in a singular, emotional voice. Driven by desperation and religious visions, the path that Gary takes?from revival meetings to out life in Atlanta to a pray-away-the-gay ministry in Memphis, Tennessee?gives a riveting picture of how a life like his can be lived, and how it can't.A Stonewall Book Award Pick 2010Finalist for the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Debut Fiction"A revelatory and sympathetic guide to a misunderstood world." ?Steve Martin, author of Shopgirl and Born Standing Up.…

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. Written by a direct descendant of the union between Nell Gwyn and King Charles II, Nell Gwyn tells the story of one of England's great folk heroines, a woman who rose from an impoverished, abusive childhood to become King Charles II's most cherished mistress, and the star of one of the great love stories of royal history. Born during a tumultuous period in England's past, Nell Gwyn caught the eye of King Charles II, the newly restored, pleasure-seeking "merry monarch" of a nation in full hedonistic reaction to Puritan rule. Their seventeen-year love affair played out against the backdrop of the Great Fire of London, the Great Plague, court scandals, and the constant threat of political revolution. Despite his other lovers' Machiavellian efforts to win the king's favor and humiliate Nell, the self-proclaimed "Protestant whore" earned the devotion of her king and the love of her nation, becoming England's first "people's princess." Magnificently recreating the heady and licentious, yet politically charged atmosphere of Restoration England, Nell Gwyn tells the true-life Cinderella story of a common orange salesgirl who became mistress to a king.…

Hardback. Condizione: Very Good. "This is an extraordinary book of stories. Many of the characters are anchored to coastal Maine, but a particular quality of wildness animates nearly all of them. The stories are energetic, often mysterious, and beautifully written, and they will stay in your memory long after you finish the book."--Charles Baxter Moving along the Maine Coast and beyond, the interconnected stories in Goodnight, Beautiful Women bring us into the sultry, mysterious inner lives of New England women and girls as they navigate the dangers and struggles of their outer worlds. With novelistic breadth and a quicksilver emotional intelligence, Noyes explores the ruptures and vicissitudes of growing up and growing old, and shines a light on our most uncomfortable impulses while masterfully charting the depths of our murky desires. A woman watches her husband throw one by one their earthly possessions into the local quarry, before vanishing himself; two girls from very different social classes find themselves deep in the throes of a punishing affair; a motherless teenager is sexually awakened in the aftermath of a local trauma; and a woman's guilt from a childhood lie about her intellectually disabled cousin reverberates into her married years. Dark and brilliant, rhythmic and lucid, Goodnight, Beautiful Women marks the arrival of a fearless and unique new young voice in American fiction.…

Hardback. Condizione: Good. A hilarious look at the aging baby boomer generation from the author the Spectator labelled 'what happens when America does Grumpy Old Men'.

Paperback. Condizione: Good. Salam Pax has attracted a huge worldwide readership for the Internet diary he kept dyring the buildup, prosecution, and aftermath of the war in Iraq. Bringing his incisive and sharply funny Web postings together in print for the first time, Salam Pax provides one of the most gripping accounts of the Iraq conflict and will be the subject of global media attention. In September 2002, a 29-year old Iraqi architect calling himself 'Salam Pax' began posting daily accounts of everyday life in Baghdad onto the Internet. Written in English, these postings contained everything from descriptions of the hardships of life in Saddam Hussein's paranoid regime, to reviews of the latest (pirate) CDs by Coldplay and Bjork, to gossip about his employers. Salam daily risked retribution from Saddam's regime, as over 200,000 people went missing under Saddam, many for far lesser crimes than the open criticism of the regime that he voiced in his diary. Salam Pax's sharp, candid and often dryly funny articles soon attracted a worldwide readership. In the months that followed, as a huge American-led force gathered to destroy Saddam's hated regime, Salam's internet diary became a unique record of the anticipation, anger, resentment, humor and sheer terror felt by an ordinary man living through the final days of Saddam Hussein's twenty-five year dictatorship, and the aftermath of its destruction. Salam Pax is an astonishing record of the last days of Saddam and the cleandestine diary of an ordinary Iraqi.…

Paperback. Condizione: Good. From Mark Bowden, a 'master of narrative journalism' (New York Times), comes a true-crime collection both deeply chilling and impossible to put down.

Paperback. Condizione: Fair. Tim Flannery is one of the world's most influential scientists, credited with discovering more species than Darwin. In Among the Islands Flannery recounts a series of expeditions he made at the dawn of his career to the strange tropical islands of the South Pacific, a great arc stretching nearly 4,000 miles from the postcard perfection of Polynesia to some of the largest, highest, ancient, and most rugged islands on earth. Flannery was traveling in search of rare and undiscovered mammal species, but he found much more: wild, weird places where local taboos, foul weather, dense jungle, and sheer remoteness made for difficult and dramatic exploration. Among the Islands is full of fascinating creatures--monkey faced bats, giant rats, gazelle-faced black wallabies, and more--and the adventure of discovery. This is an idea read for anyone who has ever imagined voyaging to the ends of the earth to uncover and study the rare and the wonderful.…

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. Salam Pax has attracted a huge worldwide readership for the Internet diary he kept dyring the buildup, prosecution, and aftermath of the war in Iraq. Bringing his incisive and sharply funny Web postings together in print for the first time, Salam Pax provides one of the most gripping accounts of the Iraq conflict and will be the subject of global media attention. In September 2002, a 29-year old Iraqi architect calling himself 'Salam Pax' began posting daily accounts of everyday life in Baghdad onto the Internet. Written in English, these postings contained everything from descriptions of the hardships of life in Saddam Hussein's paranoid regime, to reviews of the latest (pirate) CDs by Coldplay and Bjork, to gossip about his employers. Salam daily risked retribution from Saddam's regime, as over 200,000 people went missing under Saddam, many for far lesser crimes than the open criticism of the regime that he voiced in his diary. Salam Pax's sharp, candid and often dryly funny articles soon attracted a worldwide readership. In the months that followed, as a huge American-led force gathered to destroy Saddam's hated regime, Salam's internet diary became a unique record of the anticipation, anger, resentment, humor and sheer terror felt by an ordinary man living through the final days of Saddam Hussein's twenty-five year dictatorship, and the aftermath of its destruction. Salam Pax is an astonishing record of the last days of Saddam and the cleandestine diary of an ordinary Iraqi.…

Hardback. Condizione: Fair. By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the great practitioners of the American short story, a writer who had not only found his own voice but imprinted it in the imaginations of thousands of readers. Where I'm Calling From, his last collection, encompasses classic stories from Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and earlier Carver volumes, along with seven new works previously unpublished in book form. Together, these 37 stories give us a superb overview of Carver's life work and show us why he was so widely imitated but never equaled.…

Hardback. Condizione: Good. The riotous, raucous and deeply resonant debut novel from "one of the best story writers in the English language today" (Financial Times) Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry With his acclaimed and award-winning collections Young Skins and Homesickness Colin Barrett cemented his reputation as one of contemporary Irish literature's most daring stylists. Praised by the Oprah Daily as "a doyen of the sentence," and by the Los Angeles Times as a writer of "unique genius," Barrett now expands his canvas with a debut novel that contains as much grit, plot, and linguistic energy as any of his celebrated short stories. As Ballina prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, introspective loner Dev answers his door on Friday night to find Doll English-- younger brother of small-time local dealer Cillian English--bruised and in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, County Mayo's fraternal enforcers and Dev's cousins. Dev's quiet homelife is upturned as he is quickly and unwillingly drawn headlong into the Ferdias' frenetic revenge plot against Cillian. Meanwhile, Doll's girlfriend, seventeen-year-old Nicky, reeling from a fractious Friday and plagued by ghosts and tragedy of her own, sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina. Set against Barrett's trademark depictions of small town Irish life, Wild Houses is thrillingly-told story of two outsiders striving to find themselves as their worlds collapse in chaos and violence.…

Paperback. Condizione: Good. Edited by one of Japan s leading and internationally acclaimed writers, this collection of short stories was compiled to mark the fortieth anniversary of the August 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here some of Japan s best and most representative writers chronicle and re-create the impact of this tragedy on the daily lives of peasants, city professionals, artists, children, and families. From the crazy iris that grows out of season to the artist who no longer paints in color, the simple details described in these superbly crafted stories testify to the enormity of change in Japanese life, as well as in the future of our civilization. Included are The Crazy Iris by Masuji Ibuse, Summer Flower by Tamiki Hara, The Land of Heart s Desire by Tamiki Hara, Human Ashes by Katsuzo Oda, Fireflies by Yoka Ota, The Colorless Paintings by Ineko Sata, The Empty Can by Kyoko Hayashi, The House of Hands by Mitsuharu Inoue, and The Rite by Hiroko Takenishi.…

Hardback. Condizione: Very Good. From internationally-bestselling author and journalist Andrew Smith, an immersive, alarming, sharp-eyed journey into the bizarre world of computer code, told through his sometimes painful, often amusing attempt to become a coder himself Throughout history, technological revolutions have been driven by the invention of machines. But today, the power of the technology transforming our world lies in an intangible and impenetrable cosmos of software: algorithmic code. So symbiotic has our relationship with this code become that we barely notice it anymore. We can't see it, are not even sure how to think about it, and yet we do almost nothing that doesn't depend on it. In a world increasingly governed by technologies that so few can comprehend, who--or what--controls the future? Devil in the Stack follows Andrew Smith on his immersive trip into the world of coding, passing through the stories of logic, machine-learning and early computing, from Ada Lovelace to Alan Turing, and up to the present moment, behind the scenes into the lives--and minds--of the new frontiers people of the 21st century: those who write code. Smith embarks on a quest to understand this sect in what he believes to be the only waypossible: by learning to code himself. Expansive and effervescent, Devil in the Stack delivers a portrait of code as both a vivid culture and an impending threat. How do we control a technology that most people can't understand? And are we programming ourselves out of existence? Perhaps most terrifying of all: Is there something about the way we compute - the way code works - that is innately at odds with the way humans have evolved? By turns revelatory, unsettling, and joyously funny, Devil in the Stack is an essential book for our times, of vital interest to anyone hoping to participate in the future-defining technological debates to come. …

Hardback. Condizione: Very Good. From the far left to the far right, on talk radio and the op-ed page, more and more Americans believe that the social fabric is unraveling. Celebrity worship and media frenzy, suicidal cultists and heavily armed secessionists: modern life seems to have become a pyrotechnic insanitarium, Mark Dery says, borrowing a turn-of-the-century name for Coney Island. Dery elucidates the meaning to our madness, deconstructing American culture from mainstream forces like Disney and Nike to fringe phenomena like the Unabomber and alien invaders. Our millennial angst, he argues, is a product of a pervasive cultural anxiety-a combination of the social and economic upheaval wrought by global capitalism and the paranoia fanned by media sensationalism. The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium is a theme-park ride through the extremes of American culture of which The Atlantic Monthly has written, Mark Dery confirms once again what writers and thinkers as disparate as Nathanael West, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Sigmund Freud, and Oliver Sacks have already shown us: the best place to explore the human condition is at its outer margins, its pathological extremes.…

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. ?If you haven?t read Stewart O?Nan, you have some catching up to do.??Stephen King?Scathing and intelligent . . . Makes the skin crawl.? ?Los Angeles TimesIn Stewart O?Nan?s cult classic crime novel, a death-row inmate gives her confession?a hair-raising tale of sex, drugs and murder across Oklahoma?in this ?sexy, breathless, and pitch-perfect tale.? (Detour).I bet everyone asks you about Jack in ?The Shining? and whether that?s supposed to be you. You say no, I bet, or maybe he?s just a little part of you. This?ll be more like ?Dolores Claiborne? meets ?The Green Mile,? but still?Marjorie Standiford sits on Oklahoma's death row, hours away from execution, speaking into a tape recorder, telling her life story. She's answering questions about how she became the Speed Queen, one of the Mach 6 Killers--how mainlining speed with her husband Lamont and her lover Natalie grew into dealing, how dealing grew into robbery, and robbery into mass murder. She's telling her story because she wants to set the record straight, to correct the lies in Natalie's book, which became a bestseller.Marjorie's book will be better. It will be written by a bestselling novelist.Told in Marjorie's dreamy, bemused, unforgettable voice,?set against a uniquely American landscape of fast-food joints and endless highways, and scored by the blare of the dashboard radio, The Speed Queen is a taut, violent, darkly comic story into the dark soul of America?s Heartland.…

Hardback. Condizione: Good. A mystifying climatic incongruity begins the award-winning novel Lenin's Kisses--an absurdist, tragicomic masterpiece set in modern day China. Nestled deep within the Balou mountains, spared from the government's watchful eye, the harmonious people of Liven had enough food and leisure to be fully content. But when their crops and livelihood are obliterated by a seven-day snowstorm in the middle of a sweltering summer, a county official arrives with a lucrative scheme both to raise money for the district and boost his career. The majority of the 197 villagers are disabled, and he convinces them to start a traveling performance troupe highlighting such acts as One-Eye's one-eyed needle threading. With the profits from this extraordinary show, he intends to buy Lenin's embalmed corpse from Russia and install it in a grand mausoleum to attract tourism, in the ultimate marriage of capitalism and communism. However, the success of the Shuanghuai County Special-Skills Performance Troupe comes at a serious price. Yan Lianke, one of China's most distinguished writers--whose works often push the envelope of his country's censorship system--delivers a humorous, daring, and riveting portrait of the trappings and consequences of greed and corruption at the heart of humanity.…

Paperback. Condizione: Fair. In the nearly 20 years he has lived in Bangkok, Christopher G. Moore has written nine novels starring Vincent Calvino, a disbarred American lawyer working as a PI in the dark and steamy Thai capital. Internationally acclaimed, the prizewinning novels have been translated into 10 languages. Now Spirit House, the first novel in the series, is finally available in North America. A farang is dead and the Bangkok police have a confession the next morning from a young paint-thinner addict. He claims he killed Ben Hoadly, an expat Brit, but Calvino has his doubts when he sees heavy bruises on the kid's face. In no time, Calvino is working both sides, out to find the killer for Hoadly's wealthy father, and eager to clear the addict's name for a beautiful friend who runs a charity in the slums. With the help of his best friend, Pratt, a Shakespeare quoting Thai police colonel, and his loyal assistant, Ratana, Calvino plunges into the dangerous world of addicts, dealers, fortune tellers, inexpensive hit men, oversexed foreigners, and professional bar girls. Spirit House is a thrilling introduction to Vincent Calvino and Christopher G. Moore's Bangkok.…

Hardback. Condizione: Good.

Paperback. Condizione: Fair. It''s common knowledge that the U.S. armed the Afghans in their fight against the Soviet Union, but until now, the fact that this was possibly the biggest, meanest covert operation in history has been absent from press reports. In one of the most detailed descriptions of a CIA operation every written, the bizarre twists and turns of the full story are told in CHARLIE WILSON''S WAR. Veteran 60 Minutes producer George Crile explains how one Congressman was able to provide the CIA with hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the Afghan program, dwarfing the price tag for arming the Nicaraguan Contras that occurred at virtually the same time. "The scope and nature of this campaign has still not registered in the consciousness of most Americans," Crile writes in the book''s Epilogue. "Nor is it understood that such secret undertakings inevitably have unforeseen and unintended consequences which, in this case, remain largely ignored." When Crile produced his first story about Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson for 60 Minutes in 1989, he too underestimated the vastness of the program and its consequences. It was a later trip to the Arab world with Wilson, the Wilson''s "princely" reception, and the events of 9/11 that opened his eyes to the far bigger picture of CHARLIE WILSON''S WAR. Among the book''s more startling revelations: * By the latter years of the 1980s the CIA was not just providing arms to a half million Afghans, it had taken 150,000 of them and transformed them into what it called a force of "techno holy warriors." "From today''s perspective," Crile observes, "that may seem more than a bit ill advised-particularly when you factor in the specialized training in urban warfare that the Agency sponsored to include the use of pipe bombs, bicycle bombs, car bombs, camel bombs, along with a host of other tactics to wreak havoc with the army of a modern superpower." * The United States continued to fund the Afghan rebels long after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. Incredibly, the subsidies continued despite the fact that one of the most important mujahid leaders sided with Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. * In addition to $200 million in aid from the U.S. and $200 million from Saudi Arabia, in 1991 and 1992 the rebels received Iraqi weapons captured by U.S. forces during the Gulf War. At the same time, the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The Cold War was effectively over but what began as a war against Communism was continuing to be funded. "The question that has puzzled so many Americans: ''Why do they hate us?'' is not so difficult to understand if you put yourself into the shoes of the Afghan veterans in the aftermath of the Soviet departure," Crile says. To them, the real superpower in their struggle was Allah. The United States eventually cut off its support in the 1990s. In the Afghan''s minds, Allah did not. CHARLIE WILSON''S WAR is nothing short of a critical missing chapter in our political consciousness. Without a clear understanding of its impact, it may be impossible to comprehend the two world changing events that shook the United States on either side of the millennium: the sudden and mysterious collapse of the Soviet Union and the equally inexplicable appearance of a new global foe in the form of militant Islam. At its core, it tells of an unorthodox alliance-of a scandal-prone Texas Congressman named Charlie Wilson and an out-of-favor CIA operative named Gust Avrakotos-that armed and sustained the Afghan jihad and turned Afghanistan into the Soviet Union''s Vietnam. "The origins of this book go back to a time when the Afghans were viewed by most everyone in the U.S. government as freedom fighters and allies against a common foe," Crile writes in the Epilogue. In 1988, Crile produced a 60 Minutes profile of Wilson that he now realizes barely scratched the surface of this fascinating story. Later, while, accompanying Wilson on a trip to Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanist.…

Paperback. Condizione: Good. It''s common knowledge that the U.S. armed the Afghans in their fight against the Soviet Union, but until now, the fact that this was possibly the biggest, meanest covert operation in history has been absent from press reports. In one of the most detailed descriptions of a CIA operation every written, the bizarre twists and turns of the full story are told in CHARLIE WILSON''S WAR. Veteran 60 Minutes producer George Crile explains how one Congressman was able to provide the CIA with hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the Afghan program, dwarfing the price tag for arming the Nicaraguan Contras that occurred at virtually the same time. "The scope and nature of this campaign has still not registered in the consciousness of most Americans," Crile writes in the book''s Epilogue. "Nor is it understood that such secret undertakings inevitably have unforeseen and unintended consequences which, in this case, remain largely ignored." When Crile produced his first story about Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson for 60 Minutes in 1989, he too underestimated the vastness of the program and its consequences. It was a later trip to the Arab world with Wilson, the Wilson''s "princely" reception, and the events of 9/11 that opened his eyes to the far bigger picture of CHARLIE WILSON''S WAR. Among the book''s more startling revelations: * By the latter years of the 1980s the CIA was not just providing arms to a half million Afghans, it had taken 150,000 of them and transformed them into what it called a force of "techno holy warriors." "From today''s perspective," Crile observes, "that may seem more than a bit ill advised-particularly when you factor in the specialized training in urban warfare that the Agency sponsored to include the use of pipe bombs, bicycle bombs, car bombs, camel bombs, along with a host of other tactics to wreak havoc with the army of a modern superpower." * The United States continued to fund the Afghan rebels long after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. Incredibly, the subsidies continued despite the fact that one of the most important mujahid leaders sided with Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. * In addition to $200 million in aid from the U.S. and $200 million from Saudi Arabia, in 1991 and 1992 the rebels received Iraqi weapons captured by U.S. forces during the Gulf War. At the same time, the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The Cold War was effectively over but what began as a war against Communism was continuing to be funded. "The question that has puzzled so many Americans: ''Why do they hate us?'' is not so difficult to understand if you put yourself into the shoes of the Afghan veterans in the aftermath of the Soviet departure," Crile says. To them, the real superpower in their struggle was Allah. The United States eventually cut off its support in the 1990s. In the Afghan''s minds, Allah did not. CHARLIE WILSON''S WAR is nothing short of a critical missing chapter in our political consciousness. Without a clear understanding of its impact, it may be impossible to comprehend the two world changing events that shook the United States on either side of the millennium: the sudden and mysterious collapse of the Soviet Union and the equally inexplicable appearance of a new global foe in the form of militant Islam. At its core, it tells of an unorthodox alliance-of a scandal-prone Texas Congressman named Charlie Wilson and an out-of-favor CIA operative named Gust Avrakotos-that armed and sustained the Afghan jihad and turned Afghanistan into the Soviet Union''s Vietnam. "The origins of this book go back to a time when the Afghans were viewed by most everyone in the U.S. government as freedom fighters and allies against a common foe," Crile writes in the Epilogue. In 1988, Crile produced a 60 Minutes profile of Wilson that he now realizes barely scratched the surface of this fascinating story. Later, while, accompanying Wilson on a trip to Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanist.…