Follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years, a chaotic period that saw the rise to power of Kim Jong Il and the devastation of a famine that killed one-fifth of the population, illustrating what it means to live under the most repressive totalitarian regime today.

"A smart, thoughtful, and timely exploration of two sisters' lives from the 1950s to the present as they struggle to find their places--and be true to themselves--in a rapidly evolving world. Mrs. Everything is an ambitious, richly textured journey through history--and herstory--as these two sisters navigate a changing America over the course of their lives"--

Overview: A young Gascon gentleman, D' Artagnan, arrives in Paris determined to join the infamous King's guards and is soon befriended by the band of musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis famed for their impressive swordplay and fearless spirit. With the treacherous Cardinal Richelieu and his seductive spy, Milady, weaving a web of deceit and royal intrigue, the friends are soon drawn into an evil plot. To defend the Queen's honor and protect the...

Oliver Twist is one of Dickens's best-known works, the story of a spirited young innocent's recruitment into a scabrous gang of thieves. Masterminded by the loathsome Fagin, the underworld crew features some of Dickens's most memorable characters, including vicious Bill Sikes, gentle Nancy, and the juvenile pickpocket known as the Artful Dodger.

How can a nation that spawned the Renaissance have produced the Mafia? How could people concerned with bella figura (keeping up appearances) have elected Silvio Berlusconi as their leader, not once, but three times? Sublime and maddening, fascinating yet baffling, Italy is a country of seemingly unsolvable riddles. John Hooper's entertaining and perceptive new book is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the...

Author, activist, and TED speaker Ashton Applewhite has written a rousing manifesto calling for an end to discrimination and prejudice on the basis of age. In our youth obsessed culture, we're bombarded by media images and messages about the despairs and declines of our later years. Beauty and pharmaceutical companies work overtime to convince people to purchase products that will retain their youthful appearance and vitality. Wrinkles are embarrassing....

Two essays connect the past with the present, tracing the history of misogyny to its ancient roots and examining the pitfalls of gender.

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis -- that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside.

Midsummer's Eve, 1648, England is in the grip of civil war between renegade King and rebellious Parliament. The struggle reaches to every corner of the kingdom, even the remote Tidelands - the marshy landscape of the south coast. Alinor a descendant of wise women, crushed by poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead, she meets James, a young man on the...