Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia Added to Course Syllabi at the University of Colorado

According to acclaimed journalist Steve LeVine, the new Russia is marching in an alarming direction under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. Emboldened by escalating oil wealth as well as newfound prominence as a world power, Russia 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, endangering the democratic reforms of the post-Soviet order. Now, in Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia , LeVine provides a penetrating account of modern Russia under the repressive rule of an all-powerful autocrat. LeVine, who lived in and reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade, 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. 

Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia will be used in a Political Science course at the University of Colorado this Fall.  Get an inside look at the Russian leader’s autocratic regime and his turn away from the West.  Click here to read an article from BusinessWeek.

For more information on the book or author, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

Three Modern Library Books Get Taught at The College of Saint Rose

Three books from Random House’s Modern Library acclaimed collection has been selected for English courses at The College of Saint Rose–The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: or, Gustavus Vassa, the African (Olaudah Equiano), The Algerine Captive: or, The Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill (Royall Tyler), and Charlotte Temple (Susanna Rowson).

For Modern Library’s Website, click here.

Order an examination copy here.

Author and Yale Professor Akhil Reed Amar’s America’s Constitution: A Biography Teaches His Book at Yale University

“…[T]he best biography ever written about the U.S. Constitution….”

So said Harvard University professor Laurence H. Tribe of Akhil Reed Amar’s America’s Constitution: A Biography.  

We have just learned that Professor Amar will be teaching his book this Fall in his large Constitutional Law course at Yale University.  Lucky students!

“I was about to describe America’s Constitution as the best biography ever written about the U.S. Constitution  — until it occurred to me that it’s the only real biography of that remarkable document. As with the gaggle of myopic elephant attendants each of whom sees and strokes only one small part of the whole, many have written about some part of the Constitution or its history, or about the Constitution as seen from the perspective of one branch (usually, the judiciary), but only Yale Law School’s justly legendary Akhil Amar has undertaken to tell the story of the Constitution as a whole. And what a story he tells!  What David McCullough is to John Adams, what Walter Isaacson is to Benjamin Franklin, Akhil Amar is to the Constitution of the United States. Marvelously readable and breathtakingly informative, Amar’s biography of our nation’s founding document fills a huge void  — and fills it brilliantly.”
–Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor Harvard University

For more information on the book or author, click here.

Order an examination copy here.

Sam Walton’s Made in America Book of Choice at California State University Chico

Sam Walton’s book Made in America has been selected for California State University Chico’s Management course, Understanding Global Business.

For more information on the book, click here.

Order an exam copy here.

Reza Aslan’s No god but God on the Curriculum at the University of Georgia

An authoritative study of the Islamic faith in relation to the other world religions, Reza Aslan’s No god but God: Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam sheds new light on its origins and history, from the social reformation role of Muhammad to the impact of fundamentalism and terrorism on Islam.

This Fall, the University of Georgia will be teaching Reza Aslan’s No god but God: Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. No god but God, has been translated into thirteen languages and was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. Aslan is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror.

“An eloquent, erudite paean to Islam in all of its complicated glory.”–Los Angeles Times Book Review

Official Website: www.rezaaslan.com/

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

To read an excerpt, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

Vanderbilt University’s Political Science Department Takes Up The Strongest Tribe

From a universally respected combat journalist, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq is a gripping history based on five years of front-line reporting about how the war was turned around–and the choice now facing America.

The Strongest Tribe by Bing West will be the book taught by Vanderbilt University’s Political Science Department for their course: War in Iraq.

“A brilliant exposition. Based on extensive experience in the war zone, Bing West recounts how Soldiers and Marines showed the President and the Pentagon the way to solve the Iraq insurgency problem. Echoing the admonition that “all politics are local”, The Strongest Tribe  convincingly argues that it was a grass roots strategy developed by on-scene officers who forged ties at the tribal level that brought stability to Iraq’s turbulent Anbar Province and provided hope for all Iraq.”
– Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor USMC (Ret.) Co-author of The Generals’ War
and COBRA II: The Inside Story of the Invation and Occupation of Iraq

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

To read an excerpt, click here.

To view related video, click here.

Order an examination copy here.

Inventing Japan Adopted at University of Southern California

Notable author Ian Buruma, who has written widely on Japan, here offers an admirably succinct, tightly constructed history of Japan’s transformation from feudal state to host of the 1964 Olympics, with special focus on World War II.

Inventing Japan: 1853-1964 by Ian Buruma has been selected by the  University of Southern California’s East Asian Studies Center for a course on East Asian Societies.

“Buruma makes intriguing comparisons between Japan’s development and that of European states, particularly Germany… [The book] will help students make sense of the world within which [Japan's political] traditions emerged. Highly recommended.”—Choice (American Library Association)

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

To read an excerpt, click here.

Order an exam copy here.

University of Minnesota -Twin Cities Students are Reading Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion

Alan Segal’s Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion is a masterful exploration of how Western civilizations have defined the afterlife. Here he weaves together biblical and literary scholarship, sociology, history, and philosophy to examine the maps of the afterlife found in Western religious texts and reveals not only what various cultures believed but how their notions reflected their societies’ realities and ideals, and why those beliefs changed over time.

Life After Death has been chosen at University of Minnesota -Twin Cities’s Classical and Near Eastern Studies Dept. Course will be on the Death and the Afterlife in the Ancient World.

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

Order an exam copy here.

The Acclaimed Bill Bryson Book,A Short History of Nearly Everything, Winner, 2004 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine, Now Adopted at SUNY Cobleskill

Shortlisted, by Britain’s Royal Society, for the prestigious “Aventis Prize for Science Books.”
Winner, 2004 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine Winner, 2004 Aventis General Prize, which celebrates the very best in popular science writing for adult readers.

Bill Bryson is one of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, he takes his ultimate journey–into the most intriguing and consequential questions that science seeks to answer. It’s a dazzling quest, the intellectual odyssey of a lifetime, as this insatiably curious writer attempts to understand everything that has transpired from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. Or, as the author puts it, “…how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since.”

A Short History of Nearly Everything will be used at SUNY Cobleskill this Fall in their course PSCI 105 Environmental Science and Technology.

 For more information on the book and the author, click here.

For official Website, click here.

To read an excerpt, click here.

To order an examination copy, click here.

The Naked Olympics Selected for University of Arizona’s Classics Course

In The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games, Tony Perrottet delves into the ancient world and brings erudition and insight to the fascinating story of the original Olympic festival, tracking the event day by day to re-create the experience in all its compelling spectacle.

“This is the book to read if you want to know what it felt like to be a spectator or a contestant at the ancient Olympic Games. Perrottet brings the scene to life in all its pageantry and squalor, with its beautiful bodies, rotting meat, flies, and broiling heat. Then, as now, the Games brought out the best and the worst of human potential, and blood, sweat, tears, sex, and money were all part of the Olympic experience, along with religion, bribery and politics.”
–Mary Lefkowitz, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Wellesley College and author of Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn from Myths

The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games will be the University of Arizona’s book in their Ancient Drama/Classics 240 course this fall.

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

Order an examination copy here.