For those interested in the connection between people and place, the best of the decade long collaboration between literary brat packer Will Self and gonzo illustrator Ralph Steadman.Opening with a dazzling new 20,000-word essay on walking from London to New York, Psychogeography is a collection of 50 short pieces written over the last four years, together with 50 four-color illustrations by Ralph Steadman. In Psychogeography Self and Steadman explore the relationship between psyche and place in the contemporary world. Self thinks most people have a "wind-screen-based virtuality" on long- and short-distance travel. We drive, take buses and trains, fly. To combat this compromised reality, Will Self walks, relating intimately to place, as pedestrians do. Ranging in subject from swimming the Ganges to motorcycling across the Australian outback, shopping in an Iowa mall to surfing a tsunami, Psychogeography is at once a map of our world and the psychoanalysis of the way we inhabit it. The pieces are serious, humorous, facetious, and rambunctious. Psychogeography, the study of the effects of geographical environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals, has captivated other writers including W. G. Sebald and Peter Ackroyd, but Self and Steadman have their own unique spin on how place shapes people and vice versa.

An electrifying and timely book, by leading Russian expert Richard Lourie, that explores Putin’s failures and whether Trump’s election gives Putin extraordinarily dangerous opportunities in our mad new world.“A master chronicler of modern Russia. Drawing on his own expertise, Lourie paints a convincing portrait of a ruthless authoritarian leader headed toward failure. This book serves as an essential primer on Putin and, by extension, Russia.”—Publishers WeeklyFor reasons that are made clear in this book, Putin’s Russia will collapse just as Imperial Russia did in 1917 and as Soviet Russia did in 1991. The only questions are when, how violently, and with how much peril for the world. The U.S. election complicates everything, including:• Putin’s next land grab• Exploitations of the Arctic• Cyber-espionage• Putin and China…and many more crucial topics.Putin: His Downfall and Russia’s Coming Crash is an essential read for everybody bewildered and dismayed by the new world order.

An electrifying and timely book, by leading Russian expert Richard Lourie, that explores Putin’s failures and whether Trump’s election gives Putin extraordinarily dangerous opportunities in our mad new world.“A master chronicler of modern Russia. Drawing on his own expertise, Lourie paints a convincing portrait of a ruthless authoritarian leader headed toward failure. This book serves as an essential primer on Putin and, by extension, Russia.”—Publishers WeeklyFor reasons that are made clear in this book, Putin’s Russia will collapse just as Imperial Russia did in 1917 and as Soviet Russia did in 1991. The only questions are when, how violently, and with how much peril for the world. The U.S. election complicates everything, including:• Putin’s next land grab• Exploitations of the Arctic• Cyber-espionage• Putin and China…and many more crucial topics.Putin: His Downfall and Russia’s Coming Crash is an essential read for everybody bewildered and dismayed by the new world order.

An expert contemporary history of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s resurgent role in world affairs.When the Soviet Union collapsed, the world was left wondering about its destiny. In spite of the losses incurred, Russia is still a power with vast military inventories and an energy giant whose oil reserves will last, at present rates of exploitation, for more than 30 years, and with natural gas for more than 180 years. Questions abound as to what constitutes Russia's national interest, especially now, as a result of the conflict in South Ossetia. With Vladimir Putin no longer president, many Russians fear instability and insecurity. But the outside world, too, keeps wondering what will happen next. It is a defining moment for Russia, with far-reaching implications for the rest of the world.Michael Stuermer has observed at close quarters the former president as he steered his country out of the chaos of the post-Yeltsin years. his authoritative new history of modern Russia considers the future for a country striving to be, once again, a great power with global reach.

A fascinating, bottom-up exploration of contemporary Russian politics that sheds new light on why Putin’s grip on power is more fragile then we think

What do ordinary Russians think of Putin? Who are his supporters? And why might their support now be faltering? Alive with the voices and experiences of ordinary Russians and elites alike, Sam Greene and Graeme Robertson craft a compellingly original account of contemporary Russian politics.

Telling the story of Putin’s rule through pivotal episodes such as the aftermath of the "For Fair Elections" protests, the annexation of Crimea, and the War in Eastern Ukraine, Greene and Robertson draw on interviews, surveys, social media data, and leaked documents to reveal how hard Putin has to work to maintain broad popular support, while exposing the changing tactics that the Kremlin has used to bolster his popularity. Unearthing the ambitions, emotions, and divisions that fuel Russian politics, this book illuminates the crossroads to which Putin has led his country and shows why his rule is more fragile than it appears.

The new Russia is marching in an alarming direction. Emboldened by escalating oil wealth and newfound prominence as a world power, Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has veered back toward the authoritarian roots planted in Imperial/Czarist times and firmly established during the Soviet era. Though Russia has a new president, Dmitri Medvedev, Putin remains in control, rendering the democratic reforms of the post-Soviet order irrelevant. Now, in Putin’s Labyrinth, acclaimed journalist Steve LeVine, who lived in and reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade, provides a penetrating account of modern Russia under the repressive rule of an all-powerful autocrat. LeVine portrays the growth of a “culture of death”—from targeted assassinations of the state’s enemies to the Kremlin’s indifference when innocent hostages are slaughtered.Drawing on new interviews with eyewitnesses and the families of victims, LeVine documents the bloodshed that has stained Putin’s two terms as president. Among the incidents chronicled in these pages: The 2002 terrorist takeover of a crowded Moscow theater—which led to the government gassing the building, and the deaths of more than a hundred terrified hostages–seen here from new angles, through the riveting words of those who survived; and the murder of courageous investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, shot in the elevator of her apartment building on Putin’s birthday, purportedly as a malicious “gift” for the president from supporters. Finally, a shocking story that made international headlines–the 2006 death of defector Alexander Litvinenko in London—is dramatized as never before. LeVine traces the steps of this KGB-spy-turned-dissident on his way to being poisoned with polonium-210, a radioactive isotope. And in doing so, LeVine is granted a rare series of interviews with a KGB defector who was nearly killed in strangely similar circumstances fifty years earlier. Through LeVine’s exhaustive research, we come to know the victims as real people, not just names in brief news accounts of how they died.Putin’s Labyrinth is more than an immensely readable exposé. It is highly personal, with the flavor of a memoir. It is a thoughtful book that examines the perplexing question of how Russians manage to negotiate their way around the ever-present danger of violence. It calculates the emotional toll that this lethal maze is exacting on ordinary people, even as they enjoy a dramatically heightened standard of living. Most ominously, it assesses the reopening of hostilities with the West, and the forces that are driving this major new confrontation.

Putin’s Praetorians contains the stories of some of the people involved in a unique movement to debunk those who would demonize Russia in general and Putin in particular. The “confessions” of those labeled as “Kremlin Trolls” reveal the psychology behind one of the most effective social crusading moments in history.

The colorful personalities and passionate stories in the book also reveal a largely unspoken truth about Vladimir Putin — the real reasons why so many admire and support Russia’s leader. The combination of contributions from some of the Internet’s most famous and influential media stars, combined with stories from typical Internet aficionados blows holes in the foundations of Russiagate.

“Today a war against freedom of the press is being waged by the self-described guardians of democracy. Too few grasp the danger of this war. The book of Phil Butler could open your eyes…”— F. William Engdahl, author, Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance

“This book blows up the Russiagate conspiracy and debunks the whole idea that the internet revolution against the demonization of Russia is anything other than a spontaneous popular reaction against what is demonstrably a pack of lies.”— Charles Bausman — Editor and Publisher of Russia Insider

“Why does the Kremlin need trolls when Google, who everybody gives permission to track all of their internet activity, claims to know what you are going to do before you do? Do you really think anyone but an Intelligence agency would have built such a vehicle?”— Jim W. Dean — Managing Editor of Veterans Today

A searing portrait of a country in disarray and of the man at its helm, from “the bravest of Russian journalists” (The New York Times)Hailed as “a lone voice crying out in a moral wilderness” (New Statesman), Anna Politkovskaya made her name with her fearless reporting on the war in Chechnya. Now she turns her steely gaze on the multiple threats to Russian stability, among them Vladimir Putin himself.Rich with characters and poignant accounts, Putin’s Russia depicts a far-reaching state of decay. Politkovskaya describes an army in which soldiers die from malnutrition, parents must pay bribes to recover their dead sons’ bodies, and conscripts are even hired out as slaves. She exposes rampant corruption in business, government, and the judiciary, where everything from store permits to bus routes to court appointments is for sale. And she offers a scathing condemnation of the ongoing war in Chechnya, where kidnappings, extra-judicial killings, rape, and torture are begetting terrorism rather than fighting it. Finally, Politkovskaya denounces both Putin, for stifling civil liberties as he pushes the country back to a Soviet-style dictatorship, and the West, for its unqualified embrace of the Russian leader.Sounding an urgent alarm, Putin’s Russia is a gripping portrayal of a country in crisis and the testament of a great and intrepid reporter.

This book offers the first systematic analysis of Putin’s two wars, placing the Second Chechen War and the War with Georgia of 2008 in their broader historical contexts. Drawing on extensive original Russian sources, Marcel H. Van Herpen analyzes in detail how Putin’s wars were prepared and conducted and why they led to allegations of war crimes and genocide. He shows how the conflicts functioned to consolidate and legitimate Putin’s regime and explores how they were connected to a third, hidden, “internal war” waged by the Kremlin against the opposition. The author convincingly argues that the Kremlin—relying on the secret services, the Orthodox Church, the Kremlin youth “Nashi,” and the rehabilitated Cossacks—is preparing for an imperial revival, most recently in the form of a “Eurasian Union.” An essential book for understanding the dynamics of Putin’s regime, this study digs deep into the Kremlin’s secret long-term strategies. Readable and clearly argued, it makes a compelling case that Putin’s regime emulates an established Russian paradigm in which empire building and despotic rule are mutually reinforcing. As the first comprehensive exploration of the historical antecedents and political continuity of the Kremlin’s contemporary policies, Van Herpen’s work will make a valuable contribution to the literature on post–Soviet Russia, and his arguments will stimulate vigorous debate.

We all now live in a paranoid and polarized world of Putin’s making, and the Russian leader, through guile and disruption, has resurrected Russia’s status as a force to be reckoned with. From renowned foreign policy expert Angela Stent comes a must-read dissection of present-day Russian motives on the global stage.

How did Russia manage to emerge resurgent on the world stage and play a weak hand so effectively? Is it because Putin is a brilliant strategist? Or has Russia stepped into a vacuum created by the West’s distraction with its own domestic problems and US ambivalence about whether it still wants to act as a superpower? PUTIN’S WORLD examines the country’s turbulent past, how it has influenced Putin, the Russians’ understanding of their position on the global stage and their future ambitions—and their conviction that the West has tried to deny them a seat at the table of great powers since the USSR collapsed.

This book looks at Russia’s key relationships—its downward spiral with the United States, Europe, and NATO; its ties to China, Japan, the Middle East; and with its neighbors, particularly the fraught relationship with Ukraine. PUTIN’S WORLD will help Americans understand how and why the post-Cold War era has given way to a new, more dangerous world, one in which Russia poses a challenge to the United States in every corner of the globe—and one in which Russia has become a toxic and divisive subject in US politics.

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Is it truth or fiction? Memoir or essay? Narrative or associative? To a writer like Michael Martone, questions like these are high praise. Martone’s studied disregard of form and his unruffled embrace of the prospect that nothing-no story, no life-is ever quite finished have yielded some of today’s most splendidly unconventional writing. Add to that an utter weakness for pop Americana and what Louise Erdrich has called a “deep affection for the ordinary,” and you have one of the few writers who could pull off something like Racing in Place. Up the steps of the Washington Monument, down the home stretch at the Indy Speedway, and across the parking lot of the Moon Winx Lodge in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Martone chases, and is chased by, memories-and memories of memories. He writes about his grandfather’s job as a meter reader, those seventies-era hotels with atrium lobbies and open glass elevators, and the legendary temper of basketball coach Bob Knight.Martone, as Peter Turchi has said, looks “under stones the rest of us leave unturned.” So, what is he really up to when he dwells on the make of Malcolm X’s eyeglasses or the runner-up names for Snow White’s seven dwarfs? In “My Mother Invents a Tradition,” Martone tells how his mom, as the dean of girls at a brand-new high school in Fort Wayne, Indiana, “constructed a nostalgic past out of nothing.” Sitting at their dining room table, she came up with everything from the school colors (orange and brown) to the yearbook title (Bear Tracks). Look, and then look again, Martone is saying. “You never know. I never know.”

Walter Benjamin was fascinated by the impact of new technology on culture, an interest that extended beyond his renowned critical essays. From 1927 to ’33, he wrote and presented something in the region of eighty broadcasts using the new medium of radio. Radio Benjamin gathers the surviving transcripts, which appear here for the first time in English. This eclectic collection demonstrates the range of Benjamin’s thinking and his enthusiasm for popular sensibilities. His celebrated “Enlightenment for Children” youth programs, his plays, readings, book reviews, and fiction reveal Benjamin in a creative, rather than critical, mode. They flesh out ideas elucidated in his essays, some of which are also represented here, where they cover topics as varied as getting a raise and the history of natural disasters, subjects chosen for broad appeal and examined with passion and acuity.Delightful and incisive, this is Walter Benjamin channeling his sophisticated thinking to a wide audience, allowing us to benefit from a new voice for one of the twentieth century’s most respected thinkers.

Творческая биография одной из самых радикальных, экспериментаторских, необычных групп в мире – Radiohead, составленная из десятков статей, отзывов, рецензий от ведущих музыкальных журналистов и фрагментов интервью, прямой речи самих участников. Вместе с этой книгой для вас откроются уникальные творческие лабиринты Radiohead, где вы сможете лучше узнать своих кумиров, а также то, как создавались главные хиты, визуальное оформление и имидж легендарного коллектива.

Фракция Красной Армии (RAF) — известнейшая леворадикальная организация 1970—1990-х годов. На протяжении многих лет она наводила ужас на правящие круги ФРГ. В числе её жертв бывшие коменданты концлагерей, скрывавшиеся от правосудия нацисты, натовские военные и чиновники.Члены RAF прославились несгибаемой волей, беспощадностью к своим врагам, стойкостью к пыткам и любым, самым тяжёлым условиям содержания.Эта книга — уникальное не только для русского читателя, но и в принципе исследование истории RAF, её идеологии, практики и психологии отдельных участников. Книга написана человеком последовательных левых убеждений.

Эта неофициальная биография рассказывает всю историю Rammstein – с создания до их последнего альбома Liebe ist für alle da. Подробно, непредвзято, взвешенно. Эпатажные тексты их песен нарушают все мыслимые табу, а специфический ритм, фирменный стиль и сценические выступления узнаваемы во всем мире. Где бы они ни выступали, их везде встречают на ура. Культовая и одна из самых успешных немецкоязычных групп, покоряющая чарты по всему миру на протяжении более 20 лет.

Biografinis abato Ransė romanas tarsi praskleidžia užmaršties šydą ir pažeria daug senų laikų istorijų, susijusių su tikromis asmenybėmis. Čia veikia karaliai ir karalienės, kunigaikščiai ir hercogienės, žymūs filosofai ir rašytojai, politikai ir bažnyčios tėvai, jų vaikai ir pavainikiai, draugai ir priešai, žmonos ir meilužės. Autorius pamažu atskleidžia paslaptis ir parodo tikrąjį Prancūzijos visuomenės veidą.

В 2004 году компания Rockstar Games выпустила Red Dead Revolver – приключенческий вестерн от третьего лица с открытым миром – и положила начало новой серии, перевернувшей игровую индустрию.Автор книги Ромен Даснуа, очарованный таинственным Диким Западом, поведает вам полную историю успеха трилогии Red Dead, которая стала одной из выдающихся серий современности как в техническом, так и в повествовательном смысле. Вас ждет не только история создания и анализ игровой саги, но и исследование самого жанра вестерн. Погрузитесь в атмосферу захолустных городков и палящего солнца, опасных перестрелок и путешествий по бескрайним просторам.Вы узнаете:• как изменялась мораль Дикого Запада и на чем базировался жанр вестерн;• что происходило за кулисами разработки и как сага Red Dead развивалась параллельно серии GTA;• как шла подготовка к созданию сценария, какие повествовательные приемы применяли разработчики и чем вдохновлялись из кинематографа;• как серия раскрывает темы мести, чести и искупления и вплетает их в игровой опыт.Понравилась книга? Поставь бумагу на полку!Покупатели электронной книги найдут внутри скидку на бумажную версию.В формате PDF A4 сохранен издательский макет книги.

An essay printed in March 1958 issue of Saturn magazine, a few months after the Soviet Union had launched the Sputnik causing public outcry in the USA over the effectiveness of the American space program.

Россия, ноябрь 2009 года. Молодой московский юрист-аудитор Сергей Магнитский, прикованный наручниками к койке в камере следственного изолятора «Матросская тишина» 16 ноября был до смерти избит восемью сотрудниками милиции. Его вина состояла лишь в том что он согласился дать показания в суде против всех высокопоставленных милицейских функционеров и коррумпированных чиновников администрации режима Владимира Путина в деле о краже 230 млн. долларов собранных государством налогов из хедж-фондов. Жестокое убийство Магнитского остаётся безнаказанным по сей день…В своей книге «Красный бюллетень» Билл Браудер доказывает, что президент РФ Путин, по сути, действует как глава мафиозной организации. «Является фактом, что некоторые люди из его окружения и членов администрации, причастны к воровству $230 миллионов. И этот факт предал огласке Сергей Магнитский. И практически все сотрудники президентского аппарата, в том числе и сам В.В. Путин, по сути, принимают участие в заговоре с целью покрыть убийство человека, который погиб, разоблачая преступление против государства».Книгу Браудера «Красный бюллетень» отказались публиковать все российские издательства и в конце 2014 года на русском языке её издадут в Украине.