Bøger udgivet af Random House (NY)

In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world. In Empires of the Sea, acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written his most mesmerizing work to datea thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiraling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, The King of Evil, the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St. John, the last crusading order after the passing of the Templars; the messianic Pope Pius V; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria. This struggles brutal climax came between 1565 and 1571, seven years that witnessed a fight to the finish decided in a series of bloody set pieces: the epic siege of Malta, in which a tiny band of Christian defenders defied the might of the Ottoman army; the savage battle for Cyprus; and the apocalyptic last-ditch defense of southern Europe at Lepantoone of the single most shocking days in world history. At the close of this cataclysmic naval encounter, the carnage was so great that the victors could barely sail away because of the countless corpses floating in the sea. Lepanto fixed the frontiers of the Mediterranean world that we know today. Roger Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality, technology and Inca gold. Empires of the Sea is page-turning narrative history at its besta story of extraordinary color and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises, and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts. It provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilizations.

A World Made New tells the dramatic story of the struggle to build, out of the trauma and wreckage of World War II, a document that would ensure it would never happen again. There was an almost religious intensity to the project, championed by Eleanor Roosevelt under the aegis of the newly formed United Nations and brought into being by an extraordinary group of men and women who knew, like the trainers of the Declaration of Independence, that they were making history. They worked against the clock, in the brief window between the end of World War II and the deep freeze of the cold war, to forge the founding document of the modern rights movement. A distinguished professor of international law, Mary Ann Glendon was given exclusive access to personal diaries and unpublished memoirs of key participants. An outstanding work of narrative history, A World Made New is the first book devoted to this crucial moment in Eleanor Roosevelt's life and in world history.

Monty Roberts is a real-life horse whisperer -- an American original whose gentle training methods reveal the depth of communication possible between man and animal. He can take a wild, high-strung horse who has never before been handled and persuade that horse to accept a bridle, saddle, and rider in 30 minutes. His powers may seem like magic, but his amazing 'horse sense' is based on a lifetime of experience. Roberts started riding at the age of two, and at the age of 13 he went alone into the high deserts of Nevada to study mustangs in the wild. What he learned there changed his life forever. In The Man Who Listens to Horses, he tells about his early days as a rodeo rider in California, his violent horse-trainer father, who was unwilling to accept Monty's unconventional training methods, his friendship with James Dean, his struggle to be accepted in the professional horse-training community, and the invitation that changed his life -- to demonstrate his method of join-up to the Queen of England. From his groundbreaking work with horses, Roberts has acquired an unprecedented understanding of nonverbal communication, an understanding that applies to human relationships as well. He has shown that between parent and child, employee and employer (he's worked with over 250 corporations, including General Motors, IBM, Disney, and Merrill Lynch), and abuser and abused, there are forms of communication far stronger than the spoken word and that they are accessible to all who will learn to listen.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain's manuscript, long thought lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a full understanding of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The changes, deletions, and additions that Mark Twain made in the first half of the original manuscript (changes that are larger and more numerous and significant than those he made in the second half) indicate that he frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational work than the book he finally published. He deleted an episode in which whites at a religious camp meeting try to avoid the embraces of a black slave woman - a woman who may think, mistakenly, that she has just been freed. And even in its smallest variations - such as the consistent alteration of vicious rawhide whippings to ordinary cowhide whippings - the original manuscript demonstrates the skill, the restraint, and the constraints that affected Mark Twain's creative process.

People feel at home in Belle Haven, and in many ways it is like any other small town. But what sets Belle Haven apart is its especially strong sense of community which is tested by the uncontrollable mine fire that burns below the town. Those Who Favor Fire is the love story of Rachel Hearn, who has lived in Belle Haven all her life and the man everyone calls Just Joe, who has arrived only recently - and the story of their love for the town that has brought them together. But as the fire intensifies, endangering Belle Haven and its people, it also threatens what Joe and Rachel have found together.

Examines the late entrepreneur's dealings with the Soviet Union and his role in the BCCI scandal.

In honor of his fiftieth birthday, the popular singer-songwriter and author shares a collecion of reminiscences about his life, tracing his odyssey from reporter to musical success and offering insights into such topics as plane crash survival, therapy, and starting a band.

There were two great top secret Allied endeavors during World War II: the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb in New Mexico, and the program at Bletchley Park, a rural town in Britain, where the finest mathematicians and cryptographers attempted to break the Nazis' unbreakable Enigma code. Winning the war depended on the success of both. In Enigma, Robert Harris, the best-selling author of Fatherland, transports us to March 1943 and the desperate race against time that was waged at Bletchley. His hero, Tom Jericho, has been called back, while recuperating from a nervous breakdown, to try to crack Enigma before German U-boats sink hundreds more American convoys bringing supplies and munitions to Europe. If he solves the puzzle, thousands of Allied troops will live. If not, Jericho and his peers face the responsibility for a massacre. When Jericho's ex-girlfriend turns up missing and is suspected of being a Nazi mole, British and U.S. intelligence take frightening steps to plug the possible leak. Everyone is a suspect, including Jericho, who must use his genius - and his heart - to clear both his and his lover's names.

Dining with Proust invites you into this great novelist's sublime fin-de-siecle world, where you'll feast on wine, sumptuous meals, and, of course, madeleines. The reader enters a gallery of vintage photographs, master paintings, excerpts from his masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, and recipes from the novel revised for the modern kitchen. We follow Proust's path, from his childhood in Combray to the Swanns' in Paris, through Wednesday suppers with Madame Verdurin to the high society of the Reveillon and Guermantes estates, and finally to the seacoast. Eat, drink, and celebrate the good life with the poets and artists of the day, among them Baudelaire, Valery, and Monet. Like its popular predecessor Monet's Table, Dining with Proust is a virtuoso blend of food, literature, art, and history. With sixty delicious, easy-to-follow recipes, and magnificent illustrations, here is a feast for the palate as well as the spirit.

The endearing fable about a straight line who falls in love with a dot and sets out to win her heart away from a squiggle. A borderline classic; 70,000 sold to date!

In 1939, hatred took root in South Africa, where the seeds of apartheid were newly sown. There a boy called Peekay was born. He spoke the wrong language- English. He was nursed by a woman of the wrong color- black. His childhood was marked by humiliation and abandonment. Yet he vowed to survive- he would become welterweight champion of the world, he would dream heroic dreams. But his dreams were nothing compared to what awaited him. For he embarked on an epic journey, where he would learn the power of words, the power to transform lives, and the mystical power that would sustain him even when it appeared that villainy would rule the world: The Power of One.

"Thoroughly enjoyable . . . an important document drawing more much-needed attention to the hidden history of a people both African and American."--Los Angeles Times Book Review. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

Can women be equal to men as long as men are physically stronger? And are men, in fact, stronger? These are key questions that Colette Dowling, author of the bestselling "The Cinderella Complex, raises in her provocative new book. The myth of female frailty, with its roots in nineteenth-century medicine and misogyny, has had a damaging effect on women's health, social status, and physical safety. It is Dowling's controversial thesis that women succumb to societal pressures to appear weak in order to seem more "feminine." The Frailty Myth presents new evidence that girls are weaned from the use of their bodies even before they begin school. By adolescence, their strength and aerobic powers have started to decline unless the girls are exercising vigorously--and most aren't. By sixteen, they have already lost bone density and turned themselves into prime candidates for osteoporosis. They have also been deprived of motor stimulation that is essential for brain growth. Yet as breakthroughs among elite women athletes grow more and more astounding, it begins to appear that strength and physical skill--for all women--is only a matter of learning and training. Men don't have a monopoly on physical prowess; when women and men are matched in size and level of training, the strength gap closes. In some areas, women are actually equipped to outperform men, due partly to differences in body structure, and partly to the newly discovered strengthening benefits of estrogen. Drawing on extensive research in motor development, performance assessment, sports physi-ology, and endocrinology, Dowling presents an astonishing picture of the new physical woman. And she creates apowerful argument that true equality isn't possible until women learn how to stand up for themselves--physically.

Anna Deavere Smith, the award-winning playwright and actor, has spent a lifetime listening--really listening--to the people around her. As a child in the segregated Baltimore of the early 1960s, Smith absorbed the words of her parents, teachers, neighbors--even train conductors--and realized that there was something more being communicated than the actual words: The conductor's voice had a mild kind of grandeur that was a cousin to the vocal tones I had heard at funerals--"Ashes-to-ashes"--and at christenings and weddings. These are words that have been said many times, but the person who speaks them understands that each time it must be said as if it matters, because it does matter. We never know what lies ahead, and we never know what just happened, and all words must house respect of those two unknowns. In Talk to Me, Smith looks back at a singular career as a seeker and interpreter of language in America, revealing the methodology behind her extraordinary search for the truth and nuances of verbal communication. For thirty years, the defining thesis of Smith's work has been that how we speak is just as important in communicating truth and identity as what we say. Everything from individual vocal tone to grammar, Smith demonstrates, can be as identifiable and revealing as a fingerprint. Her journey has taken her from the rarefied bastions of academia to riot-torn streets; she has conducted hundreds of interviews with subjects ranging from women prisoners to presidents of the United States. In 1995, her ongoing investigation led her to Washington, D.C. After all, what better place to wage an inquiry into the power of language and the language of power than in the city where"message" is a manufactured product? What happens when we as citizens accept--which we seem to be doing more and more--our chosen leaders' failure to tell the truth? And how can we know that we are hearing what Washington really has to say when everything we receive is filtered through the media? Armed with a blazing intellect and a tape recorder, Smith tackled these questions head-on, conducting more than four hundred interviews with people both inside and outside the power structure of Washington. She recorded these sessions in her trademark verbatim transcripts, which include every tic and verbal utterance of her subjects. More than thirty of these remarkable documents appear in this book, including interviews with Bill Clinton, Anita Hill, Studs Terkel, George Bush, Mike McCurry, and Helen Thomas. After five years of searing investigation into the world of the politicians, spin doctors, and power brokers who are steering the course of our country from inside the beltway, Smith has come away with a revelatory assessment--by turns devastating and hopeful--of the lexicon of power and politics in America. Talk to Me is a landmark contribution from a woman whose pioneering insights into language speak volumes.

"Elizabeth Lesser offers up a rich cornucopia of lessons for the soul in The New American Spirituality, a warm and fascinating account of a modern pilgrimage." --Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., author of Emotional Intelligence In the crowded field of books dealing with spirituality, psychology, and religion, what has been missing is a comprehensive, authoritative guide to the many choices facing spiritual seekers today. The New American Spirituality fills that need. This encouraging, empowering "user's manual" for the soul teaches you how to chart a unique and personal path through the diverse landscapes of the American spiritual quest. In 1977, Lesser cofounded the Omega Institute, now America's largest adult-education center focusing on wellness and spirituality. Working with many of the eminent thinkers and practitioners of our times in the fields of religion, psychology, mysticism, science, and healing, Lesser found that the hunger for a spiritual life can be satisfied by a rich blend of the world's wisdom traditions. In The New American Spirituality she synthesizes the lessons she has learned from different belief systems, and intertwines them with illuminating stories from her life as a seeker, teacher, daughter, wife, and mother. She answers pertinent questions--how do you determine what is right for you from the many strains of the modern spiritual search? how do you assess a teacher or practice? how can you gauge your progress?--while warning of the tendency to miss out on real growth by merely dabbling in the latest fads. Recounting her own trials and errors and offering meditative exercises as well as references to some of the world's great spiritual teachers, Lesserprovides directions through the four landscapes of the spiritual journey: the mind: developing awareness, learning meditation, easing stress and anxiety the heart: finding what one really loves, dealing with grief and loss, becoming fully alive the body: returning the body to the spiritual fold, healing, coping with aging and the fear of death the soul: naming God for ourselves, exploring other realms of consciousness, trusting the mysterious nature of the universe, developing compassion and forgiveness Warm, accessible, and wise, The New American Spirituality is a cross-disciplinary sourcebook for the millions of Americans who, whether or not they participate in an organized religion, wish to incorporate a more meaningful, joyful, and individualized spirituality into their daily lives.