Interesting Times

'There is a curse. They say: may you live in interesting times . . .' This is the worst thing you can wish on a citizen of Discworld. Especially for the magically challenged Rincewind, who has already had far too much excitement in his life. Unfortunately, the unlucky wizard always seems to end up in the middle of, well, absolutely everything. So when a request for a 'Great Wizzard' arrives from the faraway Counterweight Continent, it's obviously Rincewind who's sent. For one thing, he's the only one who spells wizard that way. Once again Rincewind is thrown headfirst into a dangerous adventure. For the oldest empire on the Disc is in turmoil and Chaos is building. And, for some reason, someone believes Rincewind will have a vital role in the coming war . . . 'Pratchett is a comic genius' Daily Express 'Funny, delightfully inventive, and refuses to lie down in its genre' Observer Interesting Times is the fifth book in the Wizards series, but you can read the Discworld novels in any order.

Eric Hobsbawm is considered by many to be our greatest living historian. Robert Heilbroner, writing about Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes 1914-1991 said, “I know of no other account that sheds as much light on what is now behind us, and thereby casts so much illumination on our possible futures.” Skeptical, endlessly curious, and almost contemporary with the terrible “short century” which is the subject of Age of Extremes, his most widely read book, Hobsbawm has, for eighty-five years, been committed to understanding the “interesting times” through which he has lived. Hitler came to power as Hobsbawm was on his way home from school in Berlin, and the Soviet Union fell while he was giving a seminar in New York. He was a member of the Apostles at King’s College, Cambridge, took E.M. Forster to hear Lenny Bruce, and demonstrated with Bertrand Russell against nuclear arms in Trafalgar Square. He translated for Che Guevara in Havana, had Christmas dinner with a Soviet master spy in Budapest and an evening at home with Mahalia Jackson in Chicago. He saw the body of Stalin, started the modern history of banditry and is probably the only Marxist asked to collaborate with the inventor of the Mars bar. Hobsbawm takes us from Britain to the countries and cultures of Europe, to America (which he appreciated first through movies and jazz), to Latin America, Chile, India and the Far East. With Interesting Times, we see the history of the twentieth century through the unforgiving eye of one of its most intensely engaged participants, the incisiveness of whose views we cannot afford to ignore in a world in which history has come to be increasingly forgotten.

“This debut novel about an Irish expat millennial teaching English and finding romance in Hong Kong is half Sally Rooney love triangle, half glitzy Crazy Rich Asians high living—and guaranteed to please.” —Vogue A RECOMMENDED BOOK FROM: The New York Times Book Review * Vogue * TIME * Marie Claire * Elle * O, the Oprah Magazine * The Washington Post * Esquire * Harper's Bazaar * Bustle * PopSugar * Refinery 29 * LitHub * Debutiful An intimate, bracingly intelligent debut novel about a millennial Irish expat who becomes entangled in a love triangle with a male banker and a female lawyer Ava, newly arrived in Hong Kong from Dublin, spends her days teaching English to rich children. Julian is a banker. A banker who likes to spend money on Ava, to have sex and discuss fluctuating currencies with her. But when she asks whether he loves her, he cannot say more than "I like you a great deal." Enter Edith. A Hong Kong–born lawyer, striking and ambitious, Edith takes Ava to the theater and leaves her tulips in the hallway. Ava wants to be her—and wants her. And then Julian writes to tell Ava he is coming back to Hong Kong... Should Ava return to the easy compatibility of her life with Julian or take a leap into the unknown with Edith? Politically alert, heartbreakingly raw, and dryly funny, Exciting Times is thrillingly attuned to the great freedoms and greater uncertainties of modern love. In stylish, uncluttered prose, Naoise Dolan dissects the personal and financial transactions that make up a life—and announces herself as a singular new voice.

A new stage adaptation of one of Pratchett's best-selling novels The Discworld's most inept wizard has been sent from Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork to the oppressive Agatean Empire to help some well-intentioned rebels overthrow the Emperor. He's assisted by toy-rabbit-wielding rebels, an army of terracotta warriors, a tax gatherer and a group of seven very elderly barbarian heroes lead by Cohen the Barbarian. Opposing him, though, is the evil and manipulative Lord Hong and his army of 750,000 men. Oh...Rincewind is also aided by Twoflower - Discworld's first tourist and the author of a subversive book, about his visit to Ankh-Morpork, which has inspired the rebels in their struggle for freedom. The book is called "What I Did On My Holidays"."One of the funniest authors alive" Independent

When President Richard Nixon held his meetings with Chairman Mao in Beijing in February 1972, at his side was a young U.S. diplomat serving as his principal interpreter: Chas W. Freeman, Jr. Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige presents Ambassador Freeman's most brilliant (and often bitingly witty) on developments in China and the U.S.-Chinese relationship, 1969-2012. Subjects include issues like Taiwan, other strategic issues, and differences over human rights, economic, and trade policies that confronted the world's two most powerful countries throughout those years.

ONE NATION SUBJECT TO CHANGE America at the turn of the twentieth century and just after is the focus of this collection of essays and nonfiction from a veteran journalist, essayist, critic and observer of American life and popular culture. Venturing from an insider’s perspective of The New York Times to his interviews with black police officers, Michael E. Ross explores a nation evolving dramatically, maybe now more than any other time in its history. Exploring television, blues, jazz, hip hop, Al Gore, Ralph Nader, Andrew Sullivan, Jayson Blair, the California recall election’s outcome, America’s gun fixation, the nation’s enduring racial disquiet, the use of language under “Bush II,” and his own reckoning with maturity, the author offers a fresh, irreverent, provocative look at a country caught up in wrenching – and redefining – transition.

A new stage adaptation of one of Pratchett's best-selling novels The Discworld's most inept wizard has been sent from Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork to the oppressive Agatean Empire to help some well-intentioned rebels overthrow the Emperor. He's assisted by toy-rabbit-wielding rebels, an army of terracotta warriors, a tax gatherer and a group of seven very elderly barbarian heroes lead by Cohen the Barbarian. Opposing him, though, is the evil and manipulative Lord Hong and his army of 750,000 men. Oh...Rincewind is also aided by Twoflower - Discworld's first tourist and the author of a subversive book, about his visit to Ankh-Morpork, which has inspired the rebels in their struggle for freedom. The book is called "What I Did On My Holidays"."One of the funniest authors alive" Independent

Interesting Times A team of archaeologists led by three Jesuits and an Israeli rabbi discover a sealed cave in the Sinai Desert. Hidden and unopened for millennia, the cave contains pre-Christian-era treasures, including a stone inscribed with the Prayer of Moses, offering a unique power to a priest who utters it with a request. The rabbi finds and conceals the stone, and later recites the prayer while requesting that modern Israel be transported in time to 1939 to deal as a nuclear power with the Nazi threat. The temporal transformation occurs, and the story recounts the impact on the government and citizens of Israel, the crew of the US Navy cruiser docked in Haifa at the fateful moment, and many others in Europe and the Middle East. The effects on people in 1939 who encounter visitors from the future, with all their technology, are engrossing, and are reported in a fashion that transports the reader to the center of events. A unifying theme revolves around the efforts of the Jesuits and the US naval command staff to find a way to undo the time-shift. The dramatic events leading to a startling climax will be etched in the reader's memory.