An acclaimed historian presents a revelatory look at the greatest statesman of the twentieth century. For eminent historian Paul Johnson, Winston Churchill remains an enigma in need of unraveling. Soldier, parliamentarian, Prime Minister, orator, painter, writer, husband, and leader all of these facets combine to make Churchill one of the most complex and fascinating personalities in history. In Churchill, Johnson applies a wide lens and an unconventional approach to illuminate the various phases of Churchill's career. From his adventures as a young cavalry officer in the service of the Empire to his role as an elder statesman prophesying the advent of the Cold War, Johnson shows how Churchill's immense adaptability combined with his natural pugnacity to make him a formidable leader for the better part of a century. Johnson's narration of Churchill's many triumphs and setbacks, rich with anecdote and quotation, illustrates the man's humor, resilience, courage, and eccentricity as no other biography before. Winston Churchill's hold on contemporary readers has never slackened, and Paul Johnson's lively, concise biography will appeal to historians and general nonfiction readers alike.

#1 New York Times — bestselling author J. D. Robb takes us to the New York City of 2060, where Lieutenant Eve Dallas faces down a cop killer. Amarylis Coltraine may have recently transferred to the New York City police force from Atlanta, but she's been a cop long enough to know how to defend herself against an assailant. When she's taken down just steps away from her apartment, killed with her own weapon, for Eve the victim isn't just one of us. Dallas's friend Chief Medical Examiner Morris and Coltraine had started a serious relationship, and from all accounts the two were headed for a happy future together. But someone has put an end to all that. After breaking the news to Morris, Eve starts questioning everyone from Coltraine's squad, informants, and neighbors, while Eve's husband, Roarke, digs into computer data on Coltraine's life back in Atlanta. To their shock, they discover a connection between this case and their own painful, shadowy pasts. The truth will need to be uncovered one layer at a time, starting with the box that arrives at Cop Central addressed to Eve containing Coltraine's guns, badge, and a note from her killer: You can have them back. Maybe someday soon, I'll be sending yours to somebody else. But Eve Dallas doesn't take too kindly to personal threats, and she is going to break this case, whatever it takes. And that's a promise.

There is no other company, industry or premises more closely aligned — indeed almost synonymous — with its home town than Guinness's St James's Gate brewery and Dublin city. From the company's modest beginnings in 1759 to its heyday in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and its continued strength into the twenty-first century, Guinness has had an enormous influence over the city's economic, social and cultural life. In this extensive illustrated study, Tony Corcoran examines the magnitude of the brewery's operation, and the working lives of the thousands of Dublin people who depended on Guinness for their livelihood, either directly or indirectly. The company's extremely progressive treatment of its workers — in terms of health, training and housing — is revealed in detail, as is the Guinness family's philanthropy and compassion towards the less well-off residents of the city. The book is a labor of love, full of anecdote, humor and historical insights into one of Dublin's most important and best-loved institutions.

In the history of the modern world, there have been few characters more sadistic, sinister, and deeply demented as Baron Ungern-Sternberg. An anti-Semitic fanatic with a penchant for Eastern mysticism and a hatred of communists, Baron Ungern-Sternberg took over Mongolia in 1920 with a ragtag force of White Russians, Siberians, Japanese, and native Mongolians. While tormenting friend and foe alike, he dreamed of assembling a horse-borne army with which he would retake communist controlled Moscow. In this epic saga that ranges from Austria to the Mongolian Steppe, historian and travel writer James Palmer has brought to light the gripping life story of a madman whose actions fore shadowed the most grotesque excesses of the twentieth century.

From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history-and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War is a masterly work about Schriever's quests to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust rather than to be fired in anger. Sheehan melds biography and history, politics and science, to create a sweeping narrative that transports the reader back and forth from individual drama to world stage. The narrative takes us from Schriever's boyhood in Texas as a six-year-old immigrant from Germany in 1917 through his apprenticeship in the open-cockpit biplanes of the Army Air Corps in the 1930s and his participation in battles against the Japanese in the South Pacific during the Second World War. On his return, he finds a new postwar bipolar universe dominated by the antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union. Inspired by his technological vision, Schriever sets out in 1954 to create the one class of weapons that can enforce peace with the Russians-intercontinental ballistic missiles that are unstoppable and can destroy the Soviet Union in thirty minutes. In the course of his crusade, he encounters allies and enemies among some of the most intriguing figures of the century: John von Neumann, the Hungarian-born mathematician and mathematical physicist, who was second in genius only to Einstein; Colonel Edward Hall, who created the ultimate ICBM in the Minuteman missile, and his brother, Theodore Hall, who spied for the Russians at Los Alamos and hastened their acquisition of the atomic bomb; Curtis LeMay, the bomber general who tried to exile Schriever and who lost his grip on reality, amassing enough nuclear weapons in his Strategic Air Command to destroy the entire Northern Hemisphere; and Hitler's former rocket maker, Wernher von Braun, who along with a colorful, riding-crop-wielding Army general named John Medaris tried to steal the ICBM program. The most powerful men on earth are also put into astonishing relief: Joseph Stalin, the cruel, paranoid Soviet dictator who spurred his own scientists to build him the atomic bomb with threats of death; Dwight Eisenhower, who backed the ICBM program just in time to save it from the bureaucrats; Nikita Khrushchev, who brought the world to the edge of nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and John Kennedy, who saved it. Schriever and his comrades endured the heartbreak of watching missiles explode on the launching pads at Cape Canaveral and savored the triumph of seeing them soar into space. In the end, they accomplished more than achieving a fiery peace in a cold war. Their missiles became the vehicles that opened space for America.

This is the long-awaited biography of one of the twentieth century's greatest playwrights whose postwar decade of work earned him international critical and popular acclaim. Arthur Miller was a prominent figure in American literature and cinema for over sixty years, writing a wide variety of plays — including The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, All My Sons, and Death of a Salesman — which are still performed, studied and lauded throughout the world. Born in 1915 to moderately affluent Jewish-American parents, Miller wrote during a fascinating time in American history. The Great Depression was a period of deprivation for many that left an indelible mark on the national psyche, and, like many, Miller found hope for the beleaguered common man in Communism. The Second World War elevated the common man to war hero, but when the Cold War subsequently began, the ugly elements of American conservatism freely persecuted writers and artists who had embraced Communism. Miller was among them. His refusal to give evidence against others to the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956 gave him a heroic role to play. In that same year, Arthur Miller momentously married the young actress Marilyn Monroe, a marriage that remains famous to this day. Christopher Bigsby's gripping, meticulously researched biography, based on boxes of papers made available to him before Miller's death, offers new insights into their marriage, and sheds new light on how their relationship informed Miller's subsequent great plays. After his death in 2005, many respected actors, directors and producers paid tribute to Miller, calling him 'the last great practitioner of the American stage'. Christopher Bigsby's supremely authoritative biography does full justice to Miller's life and art.

From military sportswriter to roving correspondent for the National Observer, from quasi Hell's Angel to counterculture author and gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson led a life of legend. Hunter S. Thompson: The Glory Years tells the remarkable insider's story. Jay Cowan, who was caretaker on Thompson's ranch and a trusted friend, paints a sensitive portrait of a man who redefined participatory journalism, who captured the decadence and depravity of an era, and generally consumed more drugs and alcohol than any other living creature on the planet. A self-professed lazy hillbilly, Hunter Thompson would immerse himself researching a story, then write it all in a multi-day frenzy of drugs and sleeplessness. In his role as America's rock star author, he was invited to the White House (where he claimed to have snorted coke with presidential aides) and rubbed elbows with the marquee celebrities of his time. Featuring previously unpublished color photos, this book provides the most compelling and readable portrait to date of one of America's most extraordinary personalities.

Jewelery has made a spectacular comeback on the fashion catwalks and is now to be seen in all the popular high-street stores. This fantastic collection of 25 projects, ranging from necklaces, chokers, bracelets, cuffs, brooches, earrings and rings, shows just how easy it is to make your own individual jewelery pieces using simple techniques and the fabulous range of semi-precious beads and stones that are now readily available: pearls, Swarovski crystals, semi-precious gems and stones, along with silver- or gold-plated findings and wire are all used. The designs are simple and sophisticated, and suitable for both daytime and evening wear. The techniques section at the start of the book works through the basic techniques you need to learn before embarking on the projects. Each project is shown in full step-by-step detail and beautifully modeled.

The whole story of The Rolling Stones is here illustrated with classic, rare and unseen photographs from the extraordinary archive of the Daily Mail.

Khrushchev's 1959 trip across America was one of the strangest exercises in international diplomacy ever conducted — a surreal extravaganza, as historian John Lewis Gaddis called it. Khrushchev told jokes, threw tantrums, sparked a riot in a San Francisco supermarket, wowed the coeds in a home economics class in Iowa, and ogled Shirley MacLaine as she filmed a dance scene in Can-Can. He befriended and offended a cast of characters including Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, Eleanor Roosevelt, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe. Published for the fiftieth anniversary of the trip, K Blows Top is a work of history that reads like a Vonnegut novel. This cantankerous communist's road trip took place against the backdrop of the fifties in capitalist America, with the shadow of the hydrogen bomb hanging over his visit like the Sword of Damocles. As Khrushchev kept reminding people, he was a hot-tempered man who possessed the power to incinerate America.

Just in time for the 40th anniversary of Monty Python comes this book that celebrates the incredibly popular British comedy phenomenon. Color photos throughout.

Among the newest of Barron's fun activity kits for boys and girls holds the ingredients for an imaginary journey to the mysterious land of Transylvania and the spooky castle that is home to Count Dracula! Enclosed with an assortment of creepy vampire accessories is a 32-page illustrated book that retells Draculaas classic story. The box also contains a collection of items to enhance the scary surroundings, including: Vampire-style fanged teeth; Dracula's cloak; A spooky plastic bat; Washable white face paint; Capsules of imitation blood; A punch-out cardboard model of Dracula's castle to assemble. Kids can let their imaginations run wild as they dress up for Halloween or dramatize Dracula's delightfully chilling story at any time of the year.

Utterly fascinating, a sad and sinuous study. Richard Schickel, Los Angeles Times For half a century, the case of Isaiah Oggins, a 1920s New York intellectual brutally murdered in 1947 on Stalin's orders, remained hidden in the secret files of the Soviet and American intelligence services-a footnote buried in the rubble of the Cold War. It surfaced briefly in 1992, when Boris Yeltsin handed over a dossier to the White House, but the full story of what happened remained a mystery. After eight years of international sleuthing, Andrew Meier at last reveals the truth in The Lost Spy: Oggins was one of the first Americans to spy for the Soviets.

Berlin 1934. The Nazis have been in power for just eighteen months but already Germany has seen some unpleasant changes. As the city prepares to host the 1936 Olympics, Jews are being expelled from all German sporting organisations — a blatant example of discrimination. Forced to resign as a homicide detective with Berlin's Criminal Police, Bernie is now house detective at the famous Adlon Hotel. The discovery of two bodies — one a businessman and the other a Jewish boxer — involves Bernie in the lives of two hotel guests. One is a beautiful left-wing journalist intent on persuading America to boycott the Berlin Olympiad; the other is a German-Jewish gangster who plans to use the Olympics to enrich himself and the Chicago mob. As events unfold, Bernie uncovers a vast labour and construction racket designed to take advantage of the huge sums the Nazis are prepared to spend to showcase the new Germany to the world. It is a plot that finds its conclusion twenty years later in pre-revolution Cuba, the country to which Bernie flees from Argentina at the end of A Quiet Flame.

Russia is a land of superlatives: By far the world's largest country, it extends across the whole of northern Asia and the eastern third of Europe, spanning eleven time zones. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Russia has undergone a radical change from a communist country to a hyper capitalist market of vast wealth and resources. Offering a panoramic view of Russia, and the history of the nation since 1917 as well as the culture, arts, and literature, particular focus is paid to the contemporary nation since the fall of the Berlin Wall, including the rise of the Oligarchs, the presidency of Putin, and the role of Russia in the new world order.

Dodsworth and his duck have just arrived in London via hot air balloon. There is so much to see. Double-decker buses. Palaces. Fog. But a crowded bus stop leads to a hilarious case of mistaken identity and... a lost duck. Time to call in Scotland Yard?

King Henry VIII remains one of the most controversial figures in our history. Wilson draws together all the most recent discoveries and looks afresh at the fascinating life and times of the Tudor monarch, particularly, looking at the King's childhood which is too often dismissed, and the influences of his father and grandfather. Interwoven with an insightful account of how England became a Protestant nation and Henry VIII's life within the court and, of course, all his wives, this Brief History will bring this enigmatic monarch and the dramatic changes that occurred in Britain during his reign to life.

What happens when a washed-up musician looks for anther chance? And a childless woman looks for a change? Juliet, Naked is a powerfully engrossing, humorous novel about music, love, loneliness, and the struggle to live up to one's promise.

As civil war rages across England, the weak prove their courage and the privileged become traitors In this sweeping, bittersweet saga, spellbinding author Daphne du Maurier recreates a most memorable and true love story. Honor Harris was glorious and vivacious. Sir Richard Grenville was a dashing colonel and a knight. They meet on the evening of her eighteenth birthday at the Duke of Buckingham's great ball and fall deeply in love. Soon afterward tragedy strikes and they are separated by betrayal and war. Decades later, an undaunted Sir Richard, now a general serving King Charles I, finds her. Finally they can share their passion in the ruins of a great estate on the storm-tossed Cornish coastone last time before being torn apart, never to embrace again.

In a drama of love, revolution and war that rivals Pasternak's Dr Zhivago, author and journalist, Pringle, tells the true story of a young Russian scientist, who travelled the world to collect seeds and plants unavailable in Russia in order to transform Soviet, and even world, agriculture and ensure the survival of humanity through adequate food supply. To the leaders of the Soviet state, including Lenin, Vavilov's dream fitted perfectly into their larger scheme for a socialist utopia. But when Lenin died in 1924 and Stalin took over, the handsome and seductive young professor's dream turned into a nightmare. Stalin chose collectivization of farmland, causing chaos and famine, and it soon became impossible for Vavilov to implement his plan. Worse, Stalin's secret police began to build up a file against him, as they systematically suppressed geneticists, which would eventually include false charges of sabotage and espionage, leading to imprisonment, torture and death. This is the intensely human story of a brilliant life cut short by anti-science demagogues, ideology, censorship and political expedience. Pringle's sources include newly opened Soviet archive material, family letters and diaries, official correspondence and eyewitness statements, as this book follows the life, loves and trials of one of the leading geneticists, during the birth of modern genetics. Peter Pringle has been foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times and the Observer and was former Moscow bureau chief for the Independent. He has written The New York Times and The Washington Post amongst others and is the author or co-author of nine previous books.