Celebrates the pleasures of reading and pays homage to the works and writers the author admires above all others, from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens to Jennifer Egan. In an age defined by hyper-connectivity and constant stimulation, Francine Prose makes a compelling case for the solitary act of reading and the great enjoyment it brings. Inspiring and illuminating, What to Read and Why includes selections culled from Prose's previous essays, reviews,...

Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance?In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West. In this brilliant work of political psychology, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of history turned...

"In 1990, less than a year after the Polish people participated in their first democratic election since the 1930s, the young Polish government sent a veteran spy, who had battled the West for decades, to rescue six American officers trapped in Baghdad. The CIA had asked the Polish government for help, as the U.S. was desperately cobbling together allies to counter Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. The captured Americans held valuable intelligence...