Knowledge = Power

"Roberts's populist approach makes  for a rollicking good read and never comes at the expense of accuracy.  His mastery of the huge variety of subjects is truly impressive and his  ability to marshal these subjects into a single compelling narrative  stunning." —The Daily Telegraph Hailed by The Economist as “Britain’s finest military historian” for bestsellers such as Masters and Commanders and Waterloo,  Andrew Roberts offers a magisterial new history of World War II and the  Axis strategy that led the Germans and Japanese to their eventual defeat.  Perfect for reader shopping to gain new insight into WWII’s pivotal  battles and campaigns, from Dunkirk to D-Day, The Storm of War is  a powerful, penetrating, and compulsively readable examination of the  causes, currents, and consequences of the Second World War.

For 18 years, Bruce Bueno de  Mesquita and Alastair Smith have been revolutionizing the study of  politics by turning conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a  single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don't  care about the "national interest" - or even their subjects - unless  they have to. This clever and accessible book shows that the difference between  tyrants and democrats is just a convenient fiction. Governments do not  differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters, or backs  that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost  everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the  quality of life or misery under them. The picture the authors paint is  not pretty. But it just may be the truth, which is a good starting point  for anyone seeking to improve human governance.

A paradigm-shifting book from an acclaimed Harvard Medical School scientist and one of Time’s most influential people. It’s  a seemingly undeniable truth that aging is inevitable. But what if  everything we’ve been taught to believe about aging is wrong? What if we  could choose our lifespan? In this groundbreaking book, Dr.  David Sinclair, leading world authority on genetics and longevity,  reveals a bold new theory for why we age. As he writes: “Aging is a  disease, and that disease is treatable.” This eye-opening and  provocative work takes us to the frontlines of research that is pushing  the boundaries on our perceived scientific limitations, revealing  incredible breakthroughs—many from Dr. David Sinclair’s own lab at  Harvard—that demonstrate how we can slow down, or even reverse, aging.  The key is activating newly discovered vitality genes, the descendants  of an ancient genetic survival circuit that is both the cause of aging  and the key to reversing it. Recent experiments in genetic reprogramming  suggest that in the near future we may not just be able to feel younger, but actually become younger. Through  a page-turning narrative, Dr. Sinclair invites you into the process of  scientific discovery and reveals the emerging technologies and simple  lifestyle changes—such as intermittent fasting, cold exposure,  exercising with the right intensity, and eating less meat—that have been  shown to help us live younger and healthier for longer. At once a  roadmap for taking charge of our own health destiny and a bold new  vision for the future of humankind, Lifespan will forever change the way we think about why we age and what we can do about it.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning  history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the  Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic  bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author's words, "a factual saga of people caught up in the  flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened -  muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox." In weaving together the historical facts and human drama leading up  to and culminating in the war in the Pacific, Toland crafts a riveting  and unbiased narrative history.

An authoritative account of five thousand years of Chinese history Many  nations define themselves in terms of territory or people; China  defines itself in terms of history. Taking into account the country's  unrivaled, voluminous tradition of history writing, John Keay has  composed a vital and illuminating overview of the nation's complex and  vivid past. Keay's authoritative history examines 5,000 years in China,  from the time of the Three Dynasties through Chairman Mao and the  current economic transformation of the country. Crisp, judicious, and  engaging, China is the classic single-volume history for anyone seeking to understand the present and future of this immensely powerful nation

Seveneves

The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the acclaimed author of The Storm of War—winner of the LA Times Book prize, finalist for the Plutarch prize, winner of the Fondation Napoleon prize and a New York Times bestseller “A thrilling tale of military and political genius… Roberts is an uncommonly gifted writer.” – The Washington Post Austerlitz,  Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but  Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader  of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was  one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times. Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is  the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent  publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically  transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we  see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing  to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he  understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his  memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single  bestselling book of the nineteenth century. An award-winning  historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle  sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the  long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of  politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography  worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by  one of our foremost historians.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (1925) - mp3

A 50th-anniversary Deluxe Edition of the incomparable 20th-century  masterpiece of satire and fantasy, in a newly revised version of the  acclaimed Pevear and Volokhonsky translation   Nothing in the whole of literature compares with The Master and Margarita. One  spring afternoon, the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake,  weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow. Mikhail Bulgakov’s  fantastical, funny, and devastating satire of Soviet life combines two  distinct yet interwoven parts, one set in contemporary Moscow, the other  in ancient Jerusalem, each brimming with historical, imaginary,  frightful, and wonderful characters. Written during the darkest days of  Stalin’s reign, and finally published in 1966 and 1967, The Master and Margarita became a literary phenomenon, signaling artistic and spiritual freedom for Russians everywhere. This newly revised translation, by the award-winning team of Pevear and  Volokhonsky, is made from the complete and unabridged Russian text. For  more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of  classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700  titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works  throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the  series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and  notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as  up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

This book is the culmination of  more than three decades of meticulous historiographic research on Nazi  Germany by one of the period's most distinguished historians. The volume  brings together the most important and influential aspects of Ian  Kershaw's research on the Holocaust for the first time. The writings are  arranged in three sections - Hitler and the Final Solution, popular  opinion and the Jews in Nazi Germany, and the Final Solution in  historiography - and Kershaw provides an introduction and a closing  section on the uniqueness of Nazism. Kershaw was a founding historian of the social history of the Third  Reich, and he has throughout his career conducted pioneering research on  the societal causes and consequences of Nazi policy. His work has  brought much to light concerning the ways in which the attitudes of the  German populace shaped and did not shape Nazi policy. This volume  presents a comprehensive, multifaceted picture both of the destructive  dynamic of the Nazi leadership and of the attitudes and behavior of  ordinary Germans as the persecution of the Jews spiraled into total  genocide.