"In honor of the bicentennial of Henry David Thoreau's birth, this edition of Walden features an introduction and annotations by renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben. 'We need to understand that when Thoreau sat in the dooryard of his cabin 'from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house,' he was offering counsel and example exactly suited for our...

In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first...

In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he'd completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a dozen critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and--even more important--on his writing.--From publisher description.

"Since the age of twenty-one, Paul McCartney has lived one of the ultimate rock-n-roll lives played out on the most public of stages. Now, Paul's story is told by rock music's foremost biographer, with McCartney's consent and access to family members and close friends who have never spoken on the record before. Paul McCartney reveals the complex character behind the façade and sheds new light on his childhood--blighted by his mother's death but redeemed...

"A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo-the city that would become Tokyo-and a portrait of a great city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West."--

When Oka-san, a brown-and-gold duck, selects the Mitsui Office Park as the perfect spot for her nest, people flock from downtown Tokyo to watch the ducklings hatch. A modern-day Make Way for Ducklings, set in Japan.

"Werner Herzog, one of the most revered filmmakers of all time, in his first book in many years, tells the story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who continued to defend a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War Two. In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts there asked, whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically...

The thrilling true story of Richard Sorge - the man John le Carré called 'the spy to end spies', and whose actions turned the tide of the Second World War. Richard Sorge was a man with two homelands. Born of a German father and a Russian mother in Baku in 1895, he moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. A member of the angry and deluded generation who found new, radical faiths after their experiences on the battlefields of...

Documents the extraordinary story of three brothers in World War II, describing the rescue mission launched by the elder two when their youngest brother was declared missing in action in the Philippines. "They are three brothers, all navy men, who end up coincidentally and extraordinarily at the epicenter of three of World War II's most crucial moments. Bill is tapped by Franklin D. Roosevelt to run the first Map Room in Washington. Benny is the...

"A deeply reported, revealing biography of tennis phenomenon and activist Naomi Osaka, telling the untold story behind her Grand Slam-winning career, her headline-making advocacy for racial justice and mental health, and the challenges of a life in the international spotlight"--