Modern World Nations

Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 by a United Nations mandate, the Middle East has been a flashpoint of conflict between the world's only Jewish state and the Palestinians, who lost their land because of the UN partition. This ready-reference volume explores the culture, geography, economy, and government of the state of Israel.

Since Fidel Castro staged a coup and assumed power of Cuba in 1959, the United States has been obsessed with this small island nation, only 90 miles south of the Florida Keys. But because of the country's isolation, the island and its people have remained a mystery. This revised edition of Cuba takes listeners through the country's storied history, its people, and what the future holds for this island nation.

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company’s practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today. This expanded edition explores how the four forces of scale, technology, finance and regulation drove its spectacular rise and fall.

Written in the tradition of historians like Stacy Schiff and Amanda Foreman who find modern lessons in ancient history, this provocative narrative explores the lives of five remarkable pharaohs who ruled Egypt with absolute power, shining a new light on the country's 3,000-year empire and its meaning today.

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles, and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company's practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today.

What if the future of America depended not on politicians, but on artists? Tito of Athens is a failed musician and disgraced actor who refuses to accept a broken system. After a haunting encounter with the ghost of Abraham Lincoln, he sets out across America with two fellow musicians, chasing a radical idea: that creativity, not power, can save a nation. In Nashville, they meet Josette Baker, a magnetic singer whose music ignites something extraordinary. Together, they form Musafire, turning concerts into movements and audiences into believers. As their influence spreads, so does the ...

Cecil Rhodes and Shaquille O'Neal; Mozart and Peter Sellers; Duke Ellington and the Duke of Wellington; Benjamin Franklin and Rudyard Kipling. These Masons, and many others, people the pages of The Craft, but even more compelling is the overarching narrative of Freemasonry itself. As a set of...

Bloomsbury presents The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society by Jonathan Sacks, read by Daniel Epstein. Rabbi Sacks' thesis on the future of British society and the dangers facing liberal democracy. With a new foreword by Daniel Finkelstein. Arguing that global communications have...

A forgotten empire reborn in a single generation. In 1853, Japan had no railways, factories, or foreign alliances. By 1877, it had a modern army, telegraphs, steamships, and the will to stand equal among the world’s great powers. The Last Samurai Nation tells the dramatic true story of that transformation — the Meiji Revolution that ended the samurai age and created modern Japan. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, letters, and diaries, we reconstruct the pivotal years between Commodore Perry’s “Black Ships” and Saigō Takamori’s final stand at Shiroyama. Through vivid, cinematic ...

Brought to you by Penguin. ‘The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power.’ This landmark work of reportage exposed how a handful of...

Thomas Jefferson claimed it to be the wisest and most perfect political system ever yet devised by the wit of man. Montesquieu said it was the most beautiful system ever created. That system is the Anglo-Saxon model. It is the only political/economic system that has a 500 year track record of bringing freedom and prosperity to every society that embraces it. More significantly, it ended the 10,000 year cycle that kept the common man in a state of poverty and servitude. It was at the heart of the Dutch Golden Age, made Britain the leader of the largest empire known to man, is at the ...

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY “An undisputed literary event.” —NPR “History—with its construction and its destruction—is at the heart of In the Lateness of the World. . . . In [it] one feels the poet cresting a wave—a new wave that will crash onto new lands and...

Lisa Napoli was in the grip of a crisis, dissatisfied with her life and her work as a radio journalist. When a chance encounter with a handsome stranger presented her with an opportunity to move halfway around the world, Lisa left behind cosmopolitan Los Angeles for a new adventure in the...

This fascinating three-thousand-year history of the census traces the making of the modern survey and explores its political power in the age of big data and surveillance. In April 2020, the United States will embark on what has been called "the largest peacetime mobilization in American...

Bloomsbury presents Dancer by Colum McCann, read by Dion Graham. ‘Spins with virtuosic, charismatic brilliance around a core of wilful mystery’ Guardian ________________________ Russia in the 1940s. A small boy practises spinning on his mother’s wooden floors, entranced by what he can make...

'Glenny does the sort of history I wish I had been taught at school' Jemima Lewis, The Telegraph Former BBC Central European correspondent Misha Glenny investigates the borders, stories and people of nine countries worldwide, and asks how they acquired the shape and character they have today...

Bloomsbury presents Letters to a Young Writer written and read by Colum McCann. From the National Book Award-winning, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Let the Great World Spin and Transatlantic comes a passionate and practical book of advice, as essential for budding writers as Stephen King’s...

Bloomsbury presents TransAtlantic by Colum McCann, read by Geraldine Hughes. SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2015 LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2013 SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2013 'It is, simply, perfect' Irish Examiner 'Majestic' Sunday...

Bloomsbury presents This Side of Brightness by Colum McCann, read by Dion Graham. By the author of Let the Great World Spin, this critically acclaimed novel delves deep into the underbelly of New York ‘Vivid, potent, beautifully measured, and sustained by astonishingly deft description' Maggie...

Bloomsbury presents Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann, read by Richard Poe, Gerard Doyle, Carol Monda, Johanna Parker, Ramón de Ocampo, Chris Sorenson, Patricia R.Floyd, Jim Frangione, Alma Cuervo, Lizan Mitchell and Cherise Boothe. WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD ‘A wow of a novel...