It's not just a game when you're running for your life Every night they tuned in to the nation's favourite prime-time TV game show They all watched from the sprawling slums to the security-obsessed enclaves of the rich They all watched the ultimate live death game as the contestants tried to bet not the clock but annihhilation at the hands of the Hunters Survive thirty days & win the billion dollar jackpot
- that was the promise But the odds were brutal & the game rigged Best score so far was eight days And now there was a new contestant the latest running man staking his life while a nation watched
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The Birds & the Bees series was designed for Vintage Classics by Timorous Beasties the Scottish studio famous for their designs inspired by the natural world Beginning in summer with clouds of breeding seabirds in Shetland & ending with nightjars like giant moths in the heart of England Tim Dee maps his encounters with birds over four decades of tracking them around the world He tells of familiar but near-global birds like sparrows starlings & ravens & exotic species like electrically coloured hummingbirds in California & bee-eaters in Africa Dee restores us to the primacy of looking & takes us outside again & again to marvel at what is flying above us ...

Barley Blair is not a Service man he is a small-time publisher a self-destructive soul whose only loves are whisky & jazz But it was Barley who one drunken night at a dacha in Peredelkino during the Moscow Book Fair was befriended by a high-ranking Soviet scientist who could be the greatest asset to the West since perestroika began & made a promise Nearly a year later his drunken promise returns to haunt him A reluctant Barley is quickly trained by British Intelligence & sent to Moscow to liaise with a go-between the beautiful Katya Both are lonely & disillusioned Each is increasingly certain that if the human race is to have any future all must betray their countries In his first post-glasnost spy novel le Carre captures the effect of a slow & uncertain thaw on ordinary people & on the shadowy puppet-masters who command them ...

The Russian Civil War of 1917-1920 out of which the Soviet Union was born was one of the most significant events of the twentieth century The collapse of the Tsarist regime & the failure of the Kerensky Provisional Government nearly led to the complete disintegration of the Russian state This book however is not simply the story of that collapse & the rebellion that accompanied it but of the painful & costly reconstruction of Russian power under a Soviet regime Evan Mawdsley's lucid account of this vast & complex subject explains in detail the power struggles & political manoeuvres of the war providing a balanced analysis of why the Communists were victors This edition

Includes:: illustrations a new preface & an extensively updated bibliography

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What is the Russian Mafia? This unique book thoroughly researches this question & challenges widely-held views The author charts the emergence of the Russian Mafia in the context of the transition to the market the privatization of protection & pervasive corruption The ability of the Russian state to define property rights & protect contracts is compared to the services offered by fragments of the state apparatus private security firms ethnic crime groups the Cossacks & the Mafia Past criminal traditions rituals & norms have been resuscitated by the Mafia of today to forge a powerful new identity & compete in a crowded market for protection The book draws on reports of undercover police operations; in-depth interviews conducted over several years with the victims of the Mafia criminals & officials; & documents from the Gulag archives It also provides a comparative study making references to other Mafia (the Japanese Yakuza the Sicilian Cosa Nostra the American-Italian Mafia & the Hong Kong Triads) ...

At the turn of the century the Russian economy was growing by about 10 annually & its population had reached 150 million By 1920 the country was in desperate financial straits & more than 20 million Russians had died & by 1950 a third of the globe had embraced communism The triumph of Communism sets a profound puzzle How did the Bolsheviks win power & then cling to it amid the chaos they had created? Traditional histories remain a captive to Marxist ideas about class struggle Analysing never before used files from the Tsarist military archives Mc Meekin argues that war is the answer The revolutionaries were aided at nearly every step by Germany Sweden & Switzerland who sought to benefit
- politically & economically
- from the changes overtaking the country To make sense of Russia's careening path the essential question is not Lenin's "who whom?" but who benefits?

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This Very Short Introduction provides an analytical narrative of the main events & developments in Soviet Russia between 1917 & 1936 It examines the impact of the revolution on society as a whole-on different classes ethnic groups the army men & women youth Its central concern is to understand how one structure of domination was replaced by another The book registers the primacy of politics but situates political developments firmly in the context of massive economic social & cultural change Since the fall of Communism there has been much reflection on the significance of the Russian Revolution The book rejects the currently influential liberal interpretation of the revolution in favour of one that sees it as rooted in the contradictions of a backward society which sought modernization & enlightenment & ended in political tyranny ABOUT THE SERIES The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly Our expert authors combine facts analysis perspective new ideas & enthusiasm to make interesting & challenging topics highly readable ...

Please note this is a region 2 DVD & will require a region 2 or region free DVD player in order to play Norman Jewison directs this cold war comedy which was hugely popular on first release in the mid 1960s When a Soviet submarine runs aground on a sandbank just off the coast of New England sub-captain Lt Rozanov (Alan Arkin) & sailor Alexei Kolchin (John Phillip Law) are sent ashore to seek assistance Initially they try to pass themselves off as Norwegians but when this plan fails Rozanov is reluctantly forced to take holidaying playwright Walt Whittaker (Carl Reiner) at gunpoint in order to secure the use of his powerboat Meanwhile the sweet-natured Alexei is left behind to guard Whittaker&s wife Elspeth (Eva Marie Saint) & their attractive friend Alison (Andrea Dromm) Events escalate when the local townspeople become convinced that they have been invaded by the Russian army Brian Keith Jonathan Winters & Theodore Bikel co-star ...

True rye bread-the kind that stands at the centre of northern & eastern European food culture-is much more than a shop-bought bland loaf In The Rye Baker Stanley Ginsberg brings this overlooked grain into the culinary limelight introducing readers to the rich & diverse world of rye bread Readers will find more than 70 classic recipes that span rye's regions & terroir from dark intense Russian Borodinsky & orange-infused Swedish Gotland Rye to near-black Westphalian Pumpernickel (which gets its musky sweetness from baking for twenty-four hours) Spiced Honey Rye from France's Auvergne & the rye breads of America's melting-pot such as Boston Brown Bread & Old Milwaukee Rye ...

Pandemic Studios invites you to experience the ultimate open-world actionadventure-as The Saboteur Fight climb & race your way through a uniquely stylized version of Nazi-occupied France & hunt down your sworn enemies who have taken everything from you Enter the seedy underground world of a saboteur living in 1940s Paris where the women are sexy the missions are epic & the revenge is satisfying Play as Sean Devlin a street-tough Irish racing mechanic seeking personal redemption in the first open-world action game set in Nazi-occupied Europe Now it&s time for payback-with the help of the French Resistance British intelligence an arsenal of weaponry & your own street smarts & brawn you must exact revenge on those who aimed to destroy your life Motivated by retribution & armed with tactics of sabotage blow up zeppelins derail trains implode bridges destroy armoured tanks & level enemy facilities in the name of vengeance Live the resistance in an open-world Paris
- Fight & sabotage your way through a stylized open-world 1940s Paris
- from the top of the Eiffel Tower to the riverbanks of the Seine the cathedral of Notre Dame or the prestigious Champs-elysees Be the Saboteur
- Use a broad range of weapons & explosives to perform your blockbuster sabotage as you single-handedly hunt-down your enemies to dismantle & destroy the Nazi occupation Quiet In Loud Out
- Use gameplay systems like Climbing Sneaking & Stealth Kills to infiltrate the Nazi occupation to perform acts of Sabotage Once you&ve blown your target to pieces leverage the intuitive cover system & assortment of weapons to blast your way to freedom Vertical World
- This version of Paris was designed to leverage the unique abilities of The Saboteur Being a Saboteur is all about surprise attacks & Paris& rooftops are the perfect path for your secret operations Will to Fight
- The Saboteur introduces a innovative new feature that is both an iconic visual style & a compelling gameplay element See & feel Paris change around you as you progress through the game Go from a dark & oppressed black & white policed state to a bright & inspired world where the citizens fight back Hijack any vehicle
- From high performance race cars to military vehicles as the Saboteur you can drive any vehicle that comes along to escape your pursuers






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