Every season, dozens of African American basketball players pack up their sneakers to play and live in Israel. They eat Israeli food, navigate Israeli hustle and bustle, experience cultural and religious customs in the world’s only Jewish country, and voluntarily expose themselves to the omnipresent threat of violence in the volatile Middle East. Some players are both Black and Jewish by birth. Others choose to convert to Judaism while residing in Israel. Some go so far as to obtain Israeli citizenship, enlist in the Israeli Army, marry Israeli women, and stay long after their playing ...

In this volume, which reaffirms the uncompromising brilliance of his mind, Cioran strips the human condition down to its most basic components, birth and death, suggesting that disaster lies not in the prospect of death but in the fact of birth, that laughable accident. In the lucid, aphoristic style that characterizes his work, Cioran writes of time and death, God and religion, suicide and suffering, and the temptation to silence. Through sharp observation and patient contemplation, Cioran cuts to the heart of the human experience. A love of Cioran creates an urge to press his writing into...

From A is for Aardvark—“We’re not allowed to tell you anything about Winston cigarettes, so here’s a stuffed aardvark”—to Z is for Zippo, the iconic American lighter, The Cigarette Book is the ultimate souvenir and celebration of the dying art of smoking. Encyclopedic in both layout and range, this is an ideal consolation gift for those who have stopped, an ideal aide de memoire for those who might, and a defiant puff of libertarian brilliance for those who won’t. Celebrate the Hollywood age of smoking when film stars lit up with glamorous abandon. Witty, illustrated, collectib...

In 1941, Russian-born British journalist Alexander Werth observed the unfolding of the Soviet-German conflict with his own eyes. What followed was the widely acclaimed book, Russia at War, first printed in 1964. At once a history of facts, a collection of interviews, and a document of the human condition, Russia at War is a stunning, modern classic that chronicles the savagery and struggles on Russian soil during the most incredible military conflict in modern history. As a behind-the-scenes eyewitness to the pivotal, shattering events as they occurred, Werth chronicles with vivid detail th...