Once again, Russia stands at a crossroads getting by on little but faith, vodka & a blithe indifference to the moral & financial bankruptcy looming from all sides. Andrew Meier`s stunning debut explains a state in collapse. It explains how millions of Russians have been displaced by the death of an ideology. It seeks to explain how the Russian government can increase defence spending by 50% whilst the poverty line cuts through a third of its households, & the people face epidemics of AIDS, TB, alcoholism & suicide. Russia`s story is told through the voices of Russians who live at the five corners of the nation. It is a dramatic portrait of Russia at a time when the old regime has given way, but the new has yet to take hold. Meier has travelled to the extremes
- north to Norilsk above the arctic circle; east to Sakhalin, south to Vladikavkaz & west to St. Petersburg. & to Moscow. Andrew Meier`s writing is classic, poised, poignantly observant & richly human. No one has yet captured the historical, cultural & political disintegration of Russia as well as him.
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We have come to see the Holocaust as a factory of death, organised by bureaucrats. Yet by the time the gas chambers became operation more than a million European Jews were already dead: shot at close range over pits & ravines. They had been murdered in the lawless killing zones created by the German colonial war in the East, many on the fertile black earth that the Nazis believed would feed the German people. It comforts us to believe that the Holocaust was a unique event. But as Timothy Snyder shows, we have missed basic lessons of the history of the Holocaust, & some of our beliefs are frighteningly close to the ecological panic that Hitler expressed in the 1920s. As ideological & environmental challenges to the world order mount, our societies might be more vulnerable than we would like to think. Timothy Snyder`s Bloodlands was an acclaimed exploration of what happened in eastern Europe between 1933 & 1945, when Nazi & Soviet policy brought death to some 14 million people. Black Earth is a deep exploration of the ideas & politics that enabled the worst of these policies, the Nazi extermination of the Jews. Its pioneering treatment of this unprecedented crime makes the Holocaust intelligible, & thus all the more terrifying. ...

Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the dramatic history of American piracy`s ” Golden Age”-spanning the late 1600s through to the early 1700s-when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America & beyond. Eric Jay Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the Crown & then violently opposed them. Through engrossing episodes of roguish glamour & extreme brutality, Dolin depicts the star pirates of this period. Also brilliantly detailed are the pirates` manifold enemies. Upending misconceptions & cartoonish stereotypes, Dolin provides this original account of the seafaring outlaws whose raids reflect the precarious nature of American colonial life. ...

WINNER of the PULITZER PRIZE for NON-FICTION 2016. In a thrilling dramatic narrative, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison & spread to become the world`s greatest threat. When the government of Jordan granted amnesty to a group of political prisoners in 1999, it little realized that among them was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist mastermind & soon the architect of an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East. In Black Flags, an unprecedented character-driven account of the rise of ISIS, Joby Warrick shows how the zeal of this one man & the strategic mistakes of Western governments led to the banner of ISIS being raised over huge swathes of Syria & Iraq. Zarqawi began by directing terror attacks from a base in northern Iraq, but it was the allied invasion in 2003 that catapulted him to the head of a vast insurgency. By falsely identifying him as the link between Saddam Hussein & Osama bin Laden, Western officials inadvertently spurred like-minded radicals to rally to his cause. Their wave of brutal beheadings & suicide bombings persisted until American & Jordanian intelligence discovered clues that led to a lethal airstrike on Zarqawi`s hideout in 2006. His movement, however, endured. First calling themselves al-Qaeda in Iraq, then Islamic State of Iraq & Syria, or ISIS, his followers sought refuge in unstable, ungoverned pockets on the Iraq-Syria border. When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, & the rest of the world largely stood by, ISIS seized its chance to pursue Zarqawi`s dream of an ultra-conservative Islamic caliphate. Drawing on unique high-level access to global intelligence sources, Warrick weaves gripping, moment-by-moment operational details with the perspectives of diplomats & spies, generals & heads of state, many of whom foresaw a menace worse than al Qaeda & tried desperately to stop it. Black Flags is a brilliant & definitive history that reveals the long arc of today`s most dangerous extremist threat. ...

MICHELIN zoom map Foret Noire, Alsace, Rhine valley is the ideal travel companion to fully explore this French destination thanks to its easy-to-use format & its scale of 1/200, 000. The Zoom collection are characterized by the high precision of their detailed scale, specially adapted for very touristy areas or with a high density road network, including new developments & industrial areas. In addition to clarity, reliability & up-to-date information, all Michelin cartography features include a wealth of practical information: places & monuments of tourist interest, picturesque tours, areas for sports & leisure activities... Useful plans of cities & a practical index of localities. Also the maps contain places of interest & signposting of tracks for bicycles & greenways. ...

Touring map of the Black Forest & Swabian Jura. Road information

Includes:: suggested detours to avoid blocked

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Black Forest
- Lake Constance region of south-western Germany on a touring map at 1:200, 000 from Kümmerly + Frey, with its index
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Black Forest
- Pforzheim
- Baden-Baden area at 1:35, 000 from Kümmerly+ Frey in a series GPS compatible, double-sided maps

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Black Forest
- Upper Rhine area in a series of cycling maps of Germany at 1:150, 000 from the ADFC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad-Club),
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Black Forest
- Upper Rhine: Baden-Baden
- Strasbourg
- Freiburg
- Basel area of south-western Germany in a series of waterproof



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