1.

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-day Iraq מאת Fernando Baez A best-seller in Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil: the first-ever world history of the destruction of books.A product of ten years of research and support from leading American and European universities, A Universal History of the Destruction of Books traces a tragic sto...

2.

"Socialism Is Great!": A Worker's Memoir of the New China מאת Lijia Zhang A spirited memoir by a former Chinese factory worker who grew up in Nanjing, participated in the Tiananmen Square protest, and ended up an international journalist.Lijia Zhang worked as a teenager in a factory producing missiles designed to reach North America, queuing every month to give evi...

3.

Madame de Stael: The First Modern Woman מאת Francine du Plessix Gray "A writer of scintillating style and resonant substance," (Publishers Weekly), bestselling author Francine du Plessix Gray chronicles the incandescent life of the most celebrated woman of letters of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era.The daughter of the second most important man in F...

4.

Apples Are from Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared מאת Christopher Robbins A funny and revealing travelogue of Kazakhstan, a country rich with wild tulips, oil, nomads who hunt with golden eagles, and a disappearing landlocked sea.Closed to foreigners under Tsar and Soviet rule, Kazakhstan has remained largely hidden from the world, a remarkable feat for a country t...

5.

Like Eating a Stone: Surviving the Past in Bosnia מאת Wojciech Tochman A portrait of human devastation in the wake of the Bosnian Wars, told through the stories of survivors searching for family members and their remains. During four years of war in Bosnia, over 100,000 people lost their lives. But it was months, even years, before the mass graves started to yie...