The Boer War is finally ending and for three thieves there is the unexpected bonus of stealing an army payroll so large that they have to bury it outside a Free State town until the heat cools off. But the army choose an officer to help track them down. While the thieves wait for an opportunity to return to the stolen bounty, the officer chases them, giving rise to a riotous set of events. Based on a true story, John Harris' adventure entertains and delights in a series of incredulous scenarios brought to glorious life against the backdrop of South Africa's diamond mines.

The sleepy red-roofed Italian island of Anapoli, its lazy, leaning buildings pushed against the jagged harbour, dreams on peaceably by the sea. It is here that Tom Patch, an easy-going British artist, finds himself, discarding his mistress and in love with Cecilia. Even the Mayor of Anapoli basks in the sun, listening to goat bells and the rasp of mandolins. But above the unsuspecting residents hangs a malevolent volcano; a terrible destructive power seething below its crust. And the volcano is about to blow.

As U.S. troops prepare to withdraw, the shocking tale of how the American military had triumph in sight in Afghanistan—and then brought the Taliban back from the deadIn the popular imagination, Afghanistan is often regarded as the site of intractable conflict, the American war against the Taliban a perpetually hopeless quagmire. But as Anand Gopal demonstrates in this stunning chronicle, top Taliban leaders were in fact ready to surrender within months of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, renouncing all political activity and submitting to the new government. Effectively, the Taliban ceased to exist—yet the American forces were not ready to accept such a turnaround. Driven by false intelligence from corrupt warlords and by a misguided conviction that Taliban members could never change sides, the U.S. instead continued to press the conflict, resurrecting the insurgency that persists to this day.Gopal's dramatic narrative, full of vivid personal...

The volume collects together, for the first time ever, Orwell's writings on his experience of the Spanish Civil War - the chaos at the Front, the futile young deaths for what became a confused cause, the antique weapons and the disappointment many British Socialists felt on arriving in Spain to help. ORWELL IN SPAIN includes the complete text of HOMAGE TO CATALONIA.

From Bernhard Schlink, the internationally best-selling author of The Reader, come seven provocative and masterfully calibrated stories. A keen dissection of the ways in which we play with truth and less-than-truth in our lives. Summer Lies brims with the delusions, the passions, the outbursts, and the sometimes irrational justifications people make within a mélange of beautifully rendered relationships. In "After the Season," a man falls quickly in love with a woman he meets on the beach but wrestles with his incongruous feelings of betrayal after he learns she's rich. In "Johann Sebastian Bach on Ruegen," a son tries to put his resentment toward his emotionally distant father behind him by proposing a trip to a Back festival but soon realizes, during his efforts to reconnect, that it wasn't his father who was the distant one. A philandering playwright is accused to infidelity by his wife in "The Night in Baden-Baden," but he sees her accusations as...

Known for his network of conservative websites that draws millions of readers everyday, Andrew Breitbart has one main goal: to make sure the "liberally biased" major news outlets in this country cover all aspects of a story fairly. Breitbart is convinced that too many national stories are slanted by the news media in an unfair way. In Righteous Indignation, Breitbart talks about the key issues that Americans face, how he has aligned himself with the Tea Party, and how one needs to deal with the liberal news world head on. Along the way, he details his early years, working with Matt Drudge, The Huffington Post, and so on, and how Breitbart developed his unique style of launching key websites to help get the word out to conservatives all over. A rollicking and controversial read, Breitbart will certainly raise your blood pressure, one way or another.ReviewRighteous is three books in one, each self-contained. Together, they weave a narrative that will remind many readers of their own lives. Even if you don't share all of Andrew's political beliefs, you will find yourself identifying with at least some of his story and conclusions. The book is part biography, part history lesson, and part manifesto, and it flows with clarity of purpose from one page to the next. It subtly draws you into a narrative, strung through the whole book, where he meticulously makes the case against the media and pop culture, which, he argues, help spread and normalize the liberal agenda. He also explains how to combat that agenda. (The Daily Caller )Right smack in the middle of this volume is where Mr. Breitbart's narrative takes off like a rocket. The chapter "Breakthrough" is in and of itself well worth the price of "Righteous Indignation." (The Washington Times ) About the AuthorAndrew Breitbart is the creator of Breitbart.com, Breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood and Big Government. His new website, Big Journalism, launched in December 2009. His websites get millions of hits everyday.

"Strange things happen when Chinese dynasties near their end. Dams break, earthquakes hit, clouds appear in the shape of weird beasts, rain falls in odd colors, and insects infest the countryside. These are the ill omens of moral turpitude and political collapse. While greed and cynicism poison the society from within, barbarians stir restlessly at the gates. Corrupt officials, whose authority can no longer rely on the assumption of superior virtue, exercise their power with anxious and arbitrary brutality. When people, even those who live far from the centers of power, begin to sense that the Mandate of Heaven is slipping away from their corrupted rulers, rebellious spirits press their claims as the saviors of China, with promises of moral restoration and national unity. Millenarian cults and secret societies proliferate and sometimes explode in massive violence."What does it mean to be Chinese? Few questions in history have been as fateful. Bad Elements is the...

Before there was money, there was debt Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems--to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There's not a shred of evidence to support it.Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods--that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient...

Prose; fiction, Masculine