A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

Blaine Harden · 256 pages

The heartwrenching New York Times bestseller about the only known person born inside a North Korean prison camp to have escaped North Korea’s political prison camps have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. No one born and raised in these camps is known to have escaped. No one, that is, except Shin Dong-hyuk. In Escape From C

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Barbara Demick · 314 pages

A remarkable view into North Korea, as seen through the lives of six ordinary citizens Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years--a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape most of us have nev

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty

Bradley K. Martin · 888 pages

"Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader offers in-depth portraits of North Korea's ruthless and bizarrely Orwellian leaders, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Lifting Pyongyang's curtain of self-imposed isolation, this book takes readers inside a society that to a Westerner may appear to be from another planet. Subsisting on a diet short on grains and long on lies, North Koreans have been indoctr

Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia's Underground Railroad

Melanie Kirkpatrick · 362 pages

It is a crime to leave North Korea. Yet increasing numbers of North Koreans dare to flee. They go first to neighboring China, which rejects them as criminals, then on to Southeast Asia or Mongolia, and finally to South Korea, the United States, and other free countries. They travel along a secret route known as the new underground railroad. With a journalist's grasp of events and a novelist's ear

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

Lawrence Wright · 448 pages

"Based on more than two hundred personal interviews with both current and former Scientologists--both famous and less well known--and years of archival research, Lawrence Wright uses his extraordinary investigative skills to uncover for us the inner workings of the Church of Scientology: its origins in the imagination of science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard; its struggles to find acceptance as a

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

Suki Kim · 291 pages

"A ... memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign"--Amazon.com It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields-- except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portra

Stories I Only Tell My Friends

Rob Lowe · 344 pages

A teen idol at fifteen, an international icon and founder of the Brat Pack at twenty, and one of Hollywood's top stars to this day, Rob Lowe chronicles his experiences as a painfully misunderstood child actor in Ohio uprooted to the wild counterculture of mid-seventies Malibu, where he embarked on his unrelenting pursuit of a career in Hollywood.

The Parade's Gone By...

Kevin Brownlow · 577 pages

Passing in review here is the silent film era and Mr. Brownlow has done a splendid job of vitalizing the past through interviews and personal research. Most of this material has never seen print before and the filmophile will go wild over reminiscences such as Joseph Henabery's (who assisted Griffith on Intolerance). And the snaps: Garbo who loved watching talking pictures in reverse but refused t

News of a Kidnapping

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future

Victor Cha · 552 pages

Looks at the nation of North Korea, its history, social conditions, and place in world politics as it stands today and where it is likely to end up in the future. In this book the author, pulls back the curtain on provocative, isolationist North Korea, providing our best look yet at its history and the rise of the Kim family dynasty and the obsessive personality cult that empowers them. He illumin

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War

Mark Harris · 511 pages

Traces the World War II experiences of five legendary directors including John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra and George Stevens to assess the transformative impact of the war and period beliefs on Hollywood. By the author of Pictures at a Revolution.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Peter Biskind · 506 pages

"Easy Riders, Raging Bulls vividly chronicles the exuberance and excess of the times: the startling success of Easy Rider and the equally alarming circumstances under which it was made, with drugs, booze, and violent rivalry between costars Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda dominating the set; how a small production company named BBS became the guiding spirit of the youth rebellion in Hollywood and ho

The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick

Mallory O'Meara · 368 pages

Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam

Mark Bowden · 704 pages

The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story

Hyeonseo Lee, David John · 320 pages

An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom. As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure t

In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos

Richard Lloyd Parry · 336 pages

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 712 pages

Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa

Antjie Krog · 403 pages

"Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. But how could this country - one of spectacular beauty and promise - come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom

The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia

David E. Hoffman · 576 pages

"In all of Moscow, few vantage points are as spectacular as Sparrow Hill, a forested, sloping rise perched above the Moscow River where it makes a lazy turn toward the Kremlin. One evening in September 1994, a group of wealthy Russian businessmen gathered in secret at a villa at the crest of the hill, overlooking the river. They began a conversation that would change Russia forever.". "This book

Midnight in Sicily

Peter Robb · 400 pages

Chronicles the relationship of Italy's high-ranking politicians with the Sicily Mafia from the end of World War II to the present

I Want It Now! a Memoir of Life on the Set of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Julie Dawn Cole · 250 pages

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

Steve Coll · 688 pages

The rise and rise of the Bin Laden family is one of the great stories of the twentieth century; its repercussions have already deeply marked the twenty-first. Until now, however, it is a story that has never been fully told, as the Bin Ladens have successfully fended off attempts to understand the family circles from which Osama sprang. In this the family has been abetted by the kingdom it calls h

The Dark Side of Camelot

Seymour M. Hersh · 498 pages

This monumental work of investigative journalism reveals the Kennedy White House as never before. With its meticulously documented & compulsively readable portrait of John F. Kennedy as a man whose reckless personal behavior imperiled his presidency, *The Dark Side of Camelot* sparked a firestorm of controversy upon its initial publication - becoming a runaway bestseller & one of the year's most t

The Massacre at El Mozote

Mark Danner · 304 pages

"Thorough account of Dec. 1981 massacre of villagers by Salvadoran armed forces includes details of subsequent cover-up. Guerrillas acknowledged many civilian victims were rebel supporters, but El Mozote was Protestant stronghold unreceptive even to liberation theology. Good overview of military, death squad, and guerrilla violence in early 1980s"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.