This text relates the inside story of the sleaze that pervades the corridors of power in Moscow. The coups, power struggles and gallery of characters surrounding Boris Yeltsin are covered.

John Lahr is America’s most celebrated drama critic, and Honky Tonk Parade is a collection of his work that illuminates some of the most compelling, elusive, and important artists of our time, who talk to Lahr with rare candor. His portraits weave together biography, anecdote, and shrewd interpretation. Included is the hilarious profile on Dame Edna Everage/Barry Humphries; his piece on Bill Hicks, which according to the comedian himself, is what finally found him an American audience; and the first in-depth portrait of Steve Buscemi. In writing "as lively as good conversation" (Robert Brustein), Lahr arrives at truths of uncommon clarity, a claim seconded by Arthur Miller, who said that Lahr’s essay on him is "by far the best thing about my stuff I’ve ever read." These heralded profiles, the product of his impressive work at The New Yorker, deepen our understanding of their subjects and our culture that they so profoundly reflect. Honky Tonk Parade, like the icons whose lives and work it so meticulously chronicles, corrupts an audience with pleasure.

THE STORY: Raymond Shaw is a young American hero, the first Congressional Medal of Honor winner since Vietnam. Decorated for saving his troops in a peacekeeping mission in the Middle East, he has returned to the U.S. and a career as a journalist in

The latest adventure of the classic Enterprise crewcontinues here! When the Enterprise crew embarks on amission of planetary First Contact, Captain Kirk finds apeaceful, idyllic society, one happily linked together by aglobal thought network-or so it appeared. When he discoversa bitter rebellion simmering beneath the surface, will he beable to follow the Prime Directive, or find himselfcompelled to get involved? Star Trek Burden of KnowledgeVolume 2 is the next exciting and intriguing part of the newOriginal Series-era miniseries from the creative team behindSpock: Reflections! The Star Trek adventure continues!

In Destination Past you will embark on a remarkable voyage in time as John Lukacs shares forty years of travels, ranging from his adoptive city of Philadelphia to his native Hungary to darkest Transylvania. With an unerring eye for detail and a keen ability to recreate the mood of a moment or the essence of an era, Lukacs blends travel and history in a sequence of unforgettable essays that will charm and enlighten. History comes alive out of the rubble in East Germany as an evening at the Dresden Opera revives the beauty of an earlier time. Steeped in boyhood memories and infused with the sights and scents of the annual Fete du Porc, "A Winter Feast in Hungary" evokes a powerful sense of tradition and family from an irrecoverable era. Historical figures provide the occasion for several essays. Lukacs's evocative description of Churchill's funeral defines the passing of an era. The commemoration of Franz Jagerstatter - the solitary opponent to National Socialism in the village of St. Radegund - is a perfect counterpoint to Hitler's one-hundredth birthday, an event that passes nearly unobserved in his nearby native city just forty miles away. You will share Lukacs's delight at the inspirations furnished by Cook's Continental Timetable, and you will be entranced by a touching view of Poland under Solidarity. Collected from such publications as the New Yorker, the New Republic, National Review, and the New York Times Magazine, these artful essays meld history and place in remarkable ways. "I am seventy now", writes Lukacs in his preface, "but I hope that God may still allow me a little more traveling, and perhaps even a brush with history, now and then". Readers of Destination Past are sureto hope for just the same thing.

Constructs a philosophy of history and historical interpretation and applies it to various past and present events

When Anna and Sadie discover the diaries of their mother, Rebecca, in the days following her death, they learn that her life was far more complex than either of them knew: a garment worker in early-1900s New York; the reluctant wife in an arranged marriage to an ailing and abusive husband; the improbable friend of a pregnant prostitute.But the diaries reveal more than just surprising details about Rebecca's life: they also point to a family secret - and questions about Sadie's true parentage.The Featherbed is a gripping family saga that moves between the tenements of New York's Lower East Side and the stately homes of Toronto's Annex. Strong in plot, character, setting, and style, it is a fully-realised debut from an assured writer.

The author of such classic works as The Republican Roosevelt, V Was for Victory, and Years of Discord, John Morton Blum is one of a small group of intellectuals who for more than a quarter of a century dominated the writing of American political history. Writing now of his own career, Blum provides a behind-the-scenes look at Ivy League education and political power from the 1940s to the 1980s. Blum insightfully recounts a long and distinguished journey that began at Phillips Academy, where he first realized he could make a career of teaching and writing history. He tells how young men were socialized to the values of the Northeastern establishment in those years before World War II, and how as a non-practicing Jew he learned to overcome bigotry both at Andover and at Harvard, which then had no Jewish professors. In 1957 Blum joined the faculty of Yale University's history department, widely regarded as the nation's best, where he became both influential and popular and where his students included one future U.S. president as well as others who aspired to the office. He reveals much about the inner workings of Ivy League education and tells of controversies over the Vietnam War and the Black Panthers, his role in Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign, and how he searched for common ground between reactionary faculty and radical students. More than a recounting of a singular life, Blum's story explains how political history was researched and written during the second half of the twentieth century, describing how the discipline evolved, gained ascendancy, and was challenged as historical fashions changed. It also offers revealing glimpses of such prominent academics as Kingman Brewster, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., C. Vann Woodward, and William Sloan Coffin. Over a distinguished career, Blum witnessed considerable change in elite educational institutions, where minorities and women were grossly underrepresented when he first entered academia. In a memoir brimming with insight and laced with humor, he looks back at the academy—"not a refuge from reality but an alternative reality"—as he reflects upon his intellectual journey and his contributions to the study and writing of twentieth-century American history.

The Dublin Lockout of 1913 is the most important industrial struggle in Irish history. It was a concerted attempt to crush militant trade unionism once and for all. With incredible courage the Dublin workers, led by Jim Larkin and the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, held out for nearly six months. A century on we can still learn tremendous lessons in the power of the rank and file, solidarity and the kind of revolutionary leadership we need in the labour movement.

What is modern in modern drama? What defines it, unmistakably, as being of our time? This quality if the subject of John Peter's inquiry.For Peter, Beckett's Waiting for Godot makes such a radical break with dramatic tradition that it prompts the question: Is this play the single most important event in the theater since Aeschylus? Or is it the fulfillment of forces at work long before Beckett wrote it? Peter shows how Beckett's work represents a change in the very subject matter of drama, a fundamental revision of concepts of character, plot, and meaning, which in turn requires a new way of responding to drama. Where plays have traditionally engaged audiences in critical and moral dialogue, theater like Beckett's, according to Peter, is closed to questioning; it presents a vision of the world which can only be accepted or rejected. As such, it not only signals a new form of drama, but also posits a fundamentally changed audience.Peter views this change—essentially, a change of mind—in its wider context. The times and the thought that contribute to the modern imagination are represented here by novels, paintings, and music—works by Wagner, Kafka, Proust, Picasso, and Braque—as well as plays. Peter shows how the depiction of the world by these artists echoes—and is echoed by—the work of modern thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud.Vladimir's Carrot will provoke and stimulate readers who find themselves either lost or perfectly at home in "modern" culture.

'This is an impressive work of deconstruction with many crucial new insights. . . . [It is] written in an accessible way, despite the very complicated issues with which Rose deals: such as the cultural and ideological sources of the Zionist narrative.' Illan Pappe, Professor of Middle East History, University of Haifa, Israel 'In a highly charged environment, Jewish authors played an immense role in elevating the debate about Zionism and the birth of the Israeli State. . . . John Rose's book is a welcome addition that will defy the pro-Israeli inquisition that seeks, through intimidation, to silence legitimate criticism.' Afif Safieh, Palestinian General Delegate to the UK This is a controversial book. It is a critical account of the historical, political and cultural roots of Zionism. John Rose shows how this powerful political force is based in mythology; ancient, medieval and modern. Many of these stories, as with other mythologies, have no basis in fact. However, because Zionism is a living political force, these myths have been used to justify very real and political ends -- namely, the expulsion and continuing persecution of the Palestinians. Chapter-by-chapter, John Rose scrutinises the roots of the myths of Zionism. Mobilising recent scholarship, he separates fact from fiction presenting a detailed analysis of their origins and development. This includes a challenge to Zionism's biblical claims using very recent and very startling Israeli archaeological conclusions. He provides a detailed exploration of Judaism's links to the Middle East. He shows clearly that Zionism makes many false claims on Jewish religion and history. He questions its rationale as a response to European anti-Semitism, and shows that, if there is ever to be peace and reconciliation in the land of Palestine, this intellectual dishonesty must be addressed.

This authoritative and innovative book tells the story of Beethoven's life and works, highlighting some of the most important events by the inclusion of facsimile memorabilia, much of it only available for viewing in museums around Europe.

Two friends grow up in a North London Jewish suburb. David is bright, parent-pleasing and obviously destined for great things. But somehow he ends up earning peanuts in a Suffolk bookshop while his devious and wayward friend Jack, becomes rich and famous as a TV chat-show host. When Jack dies, his widow and publisher commission David to write his biography; after all, dependable David can be relied upon not to dish the dirt about the sex, the drugs and the women. David however soon realises that it's finally time he stopped doing what is expected of him. Instead he must write the true story of the forty year friendship that has dominated his life and then maybe he'll get Jack out of his system. But what David soon finds is that he can never be completely free of Jack...

An examination of the human price of economic colonialism. In three monologues delivered by a rapacious baby-formula marketer and his regretful wife, Baitz equates the disintegration of their marriage with the death toll exacted by the businessman's work: he employed saleswomen disguised as nurses to persuade third-world mothers to abandon breast feeding. As a result they poisoned their babies by diluting the expensive formula with lethal tap water.

In a wide-ranging and compelling account of the life of metrical and free verse in the twentieth century, poet and critic Jon Silkin deepens our understanding of the way poetry works on us. He begins from the premiss that two modes of verse, free and metrical, engage the creative energies of poetry now, creating a rich, fertile environment capable of yielding work valuable to poetry itself and to the society which has given it life. With a practitioner's empathy Silkin reads the poetry of Whitman, Hopkins, Eliot, Pound, Lawrence, Dylan Thomas, Bunting and eight British poets from the post-second World War period to illustrate how free and metrical verse create, separately or together, a poetic harmony. Additionally, he includes crucial statements on modern poetry from poets themselves, concluding with a fine memoir of Basil Bunting by Connie Pickard, published in book-form for the first time.

"We, the readers and students of literature, have been hijacked. The literary critics, our teachers, those assassins of culture, have put us up against the wall and held us captive." So begins Jonah Raskin's The Mythology of Imperialism. When first published in 1971, this book was nothing short of a call to arms, an open revolt against the literary establishment. In his critique of five well-known British writers--Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and Joyce Cary--Raskin not only developed the model for a revolutionary anti-imperialist criticism, but, through this book's influence on Edward Said, helped usher in the field of postcolonial studies. Nearly four decades later, The Mythology of Imperialism is all the more relevant. Its readings of British literature still offer bold and original insight into the relationship between text, artist, and historical context. But, perhaps more crucially, this book sends a revolutionary message to all readers and students of literature. Against much of today's postcolonialism--diluted by postmodern obfuscation and largely detached from its historical roots--Raskin locates the center of his anti-imperialist criticism in the anti-imperialist struggle itself and takes his cues not from "the assassins of culture" in the academy but from the national liberation movements of his time. Written with absorbing passion and machete-sharp analysis, this new edition of The Mythology of Imperialism includes the original text, a new introduction and afterword by the author, and a preface by Bruce Robbins.