Vali Nasr’s The Shia Revival turned the debate about the Iraq War on its head, unveiling how the Shia-Sunni rift fueled the Iraqi insurgency, and shooting onto the bestseller lists. Now Fateful Crescent will utterly rewrite the wisdom about the Islamic threat and the "clash of civilizations." With Iran fast becoming a hegemonic powerhouse, embroiling the U.S. in what’s been described as a new Cold War, Vali Nasr reveals there is also a powerful counterforce in the Islamic world to that of the Iranian regime, so far unseen in the West. A vast tidal force is swelling up of upwardly mobile entrepreneurs, consumers, and investors who can tip the scales of power away from extremist belligerence. With a deft combination of historical narrative and contemporary on-the-ground reporting, Nasr demystifies these devout yet development-minded Muslims of the "critical middle"—the stealth force behind the extraordinary growth of aggressively capitalist Dubai—showing that they are people the West can and must do business with. By building strong ties with them, Nasr demonstrates, the tide of extremism can be turned. Fateful Crescent will spark lively debate and play a vital role in bringing about a sea change in thinking about the conflict with Islam.

Find work you love. On your own terms. From the New York Times bestselling author of Life Is in the Transitions comes a bold new road map for finding meaning and purpose in what you do, based on insights drawn from hundreds of life stories of Americans of all backgrounds. America is at a once-in-a-generation turning point around work: unprecedented numbers are quitting their jobs, rethinking their routines, breaking away from stifling expectations. The most suffocating iron cage of all is the idea that each of us must follow a linear career—lock into a dream early, always climb higher, never stop until you reach the top. Few ideas have squandered more human potential. Employing his signature, immersive approach, Bruce Feiler is known for taking complex challenges and converting them into actionable steps that can help each of us live with more fulfillment and joy. From thousands of hours of interviews, Feiler has distilled a powerful new vision of work: The people who are happiest don’t chase someone else’s dreams; they chase their own. Freed from outdated scripts, they identify what brings them meaning and write their own story of success. The Search introduces an all-new toolkit for achieving that goal, 21 Questions to Find Work You Love. Practical and empowering, these questions will help you unearth the story of work you’ve been trying to tell your whole life—then go achieve it. You’ll discover: · The upsides and downsides of work you learned from your parents; · Why your childhood role model offers the best clue to what you should do now; · Who is your waymaker; · When to leave a job and when to stay; · What is your purpose right now; …and much more. From a master storyteller who’s helped millions transform their lives for better, The Search arrives as the world reimagines the basic assumptions of work and offers a timely, urgent playbook for each of us to get the happiness we seek, the meaning we crave, and the success we deserve.

One of Foreign Affairs' Best of Books of 2021 and "Books For The Century"!"Book of the Week" on Fareed Zakaria GPSFinancial Times Best Books of 2020 The definitive account of how regime change in the Middle East has proven so tempting to American policymakers for decades—and why it always seems to go wrong."It's a first-rate work, intelligently analyzing a complex issue, and learning the right lessons from history."—Fareed Zakaria Since the end of World War II, the United States has set out to oust governments in the Middle East on an average of once per decade—in places as diverse as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan (twice), Egypt, Libya, and Syria. The reasons for these interventions have also been extremely diverse, and the methods by which the United States pursued regime change have likewise been highly varied, ranging from diplomatic pressure alone to outright military invasion and occupation. What is common to all the operations, however, is that they failed to achieve their ultimate goals, produced a range of unintended and even catastrophic consequences, carried heavy financial and human costs, and in many cases left the countries in question worse off than they were before.Philip H. Gordon's Losing the Long Game is a thorough and riveting look at the U.S. experience with regime change over the past seventy years, and an insider’s view on U.S. policymaking in the region at the highest levels. It is the story of repeated U.S. interventions in the region that always started out with high hopes and often the best of intentions, but never turned out well. No future discussion of U.S. policy in the Middle East will be complete without taking into account the lessons of the past, especially at a time of intense domestic polarization and reckoning with America's standing in world.

THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR*Shortlisted for the 2021 Financial Times and McKinsey & Company Business Book of the Year Award*'This unique and fascinating history explains why the blame now being piled upon meritocracy for many social ills is misplaced-and that assigning responsibilities to the people best able to discharge them really is better than the time-honoured customs of corruption, patronage, nepotism and hereditary castes' Steven PinkerMeritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their status at birth. For much of history this was a revolutionary thought, but by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left?Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocractic system.Wooldridge also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.

"Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy? The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor, they have answered this question with great insight." -Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post From the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, a crucial new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy in others--and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new threats. In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that countries rise and fall based not on culture, geography, or chance, but on the power of their institutions. In their new book, they build a new theory about liberty and how to achieve it, drawing a wealth of evidence from both current affairs and disparate threads of world history. Liberty is hardly the "natural" order of things. In most places and at most times, the strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak to protect individuals from these threats, or states have been too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck between state and society. There is a Western myth that political liberty is a durable construct, arrived at by a process of "enlightenment." This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue. In reality, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society: The authors look to the American Civil Rights Movement, Europe’s early and recent history, the Zapotec civilization circa 500 BCE, and Lagos’s efforts to uproot corruption and institute government accountability to illustrate what it takes to get and stay in the corridor. But they also examine Chinese imperial history, colonialism in the Pacific, India’s caste system, Saudi Arabia’s suffocating cage of norms, and the “Paper Leviathan” of many Latin American and African nations to show how countries can drift away from it, and explain the feedback loops that make liberty harder to achieve. Today we are in the midst of a time of wrenching destabilization. We need liberty more than ever, and yet the corridor to liberty is becoming narrower and more treacherous. The danger on the horizon is not "just" the loss of our political freedom, however grim that is in itself; it is also the disintegration of the prosperity and safety that critically depend on liberty. The opposite of the corridor of liberty is the road to ruin.

An urgent and informed look at the challenges Britain and world governments will face in a post-Covid-19 world.The Covid crisis has not just highlighted the failures of certain governments, it is accelerating a shift in the balance of power from West to East. After a decade where politics in the US and the UK has been consumed with inward-facing struggles, countries like South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, as well as China, have made extraordinary advances economically, technologically and politically. In this beautifully crafted essay, Micklethwait and Wooldridge explain how we ended up in this mess and explore the possible routes out. If Western governments respond creatively to the crisis, they will have a chance of reversing decades of decline; if they dither and delay while Asia continues to improve, the prospect of a new Eastern-dominated world order will increase. The big question facing the world is whether the West can rise to the challenge as it has before.

The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent CongoA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Economist, Financial Times“This is one of the best books I have read in years . . . gripping, full of colorful characters, and strange plot twists.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN hostIt was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.” Dag Hammarskjöld, the tidy Swede serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission in history. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN and spurned by the United States, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help—an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of Communism in Africa, the CIA sent word to its station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin: Lumumba had to go.Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle out, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup, transferred to enemy territory in a CIA-approved operation, and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjöld, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiate a cease-fire with the Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960–61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.

A case for why regionalization, not globalization, has been the biggest economic trend of the past forty yearsThe conventional wisdom about globalization is wrong. Over the past forty years as companies, money, ideas, and people went abroad more often than not, they looked regional rather than globally. O’Neil details this transformation and the rise of three major regional hubs in Asia, Europe, and North America. Current technological, demographic, and geopolitical trends look only to deepen these regional ties. O'Neil argues that this has urgent implications for the United States. Regionalization has enhanced economic competitiveness and prosperity in Europe and Asia. It could do the same for the United States, if only it would embrace its neighbors.

This revolutionary guide to real change introduces microsteps—tiny, science-backed changes that will help you get your life back on track.Live the life you want, not the life you settle for. Helping people build healthy new habits that improve their lives is more important than ever. Arianna Huffington launched Thrive Global to do just that--Thrive's specific mission is to end the epidemic of stress and burnout and help individuals and companies unlock their greatest potential. Science continues to show that we don't have to sacrifice our well-being in order to succeed; in fact, it turns out that well-being is critical to peak performance. Learning to thrive means: Moving from awareness to action - from knowing what to do to actually doing it Embracing solutions that appeal to wisdom, wonder, intuition, reflection, and are steeped in science Taking the time to rest and recover in order to fuel and maximize productivity, both personal and professional Making the mindset shifts and habit changes that supercharge performance in ways that truly matter to us Eschewing trendy self-care fixes or the latest health fads, Your Time to Thrive is the revolutionary guide to living and working based on Microsteps--tiny, science-backed changes. By making them too-small-to fail, we can incorporate them into our daily lives right away, and begin building healthier ways of living and working. This book is a Microstep bible. With chapters dedicated to sleep, nutrition, movement, focus and prioritization, communication and relationships, unplugging and recharging, creativity and inspiration, and purpose/meaning, Your Time to Thrive shares practical, usable, research-supported mini-habits that will yield huge benefits and empower people to truly thrive in all parts of their lives.

WITH AN EXCLUSIVE NEW CHAPTER FOR THE PAPERBACK EDITIONThe Amazon No.1 BestsellerThe Sunday Times BestsellerTHE ROYAL BOOK OF THE YEAR_________________________________'Eye-poppingly revealing. . . impeccable sources, historical heft and canny insights served up with a zingy wit. There are many royal biographers, but few as good as this. She turns gossip into the first draft of history.' TELEGRAPHFrom the Queen's stoic resolve to the crisis of Meghan and Harry. From the ascendance of Camilla and Kate to the downfall of Andrew. Full of remarkable inside access, The Palace Papers by Sunday Times bestselling author Tina Brown will change how you understand the Royal Family.'Clever, well-informed and disgustingly entertaining' THE TIMES'There are royal books, and there are royal books. But The Palace Papers is in a genre of its own' RADIO TIMES'Jaw dropping! What a book . . . if you ever want to feel like a fly on the wall of any of the palaces, this is it.'LORRAINE KELLY'Brown's prose has the swoosh of an enjoyably OTT ballgown' FINANCIAL TIMES'The world's sharpish and best-informed royal expert' PIERS MORGAN'Riveting and rigorous' PANDORA SYKES'A witty, rip-roaring read . . . full off perceptive and witty observations' i Newspaper'A rollicking ride through recent royal family history . . . Tina Brown's sparkling prose and eye for detail enliven an entertaining exposé' OBSERVER'The most explosive royal book of the year' THE SUN'Gloriously irreverent, racily written and often very funny. The early chapters on the long affair between Prince Charles and Camilla read like a non-fiction version of Jilly Cooper's Rutshire Chronicles' NEW STATESMAN'A motherlode of delectable gossip . . . Brown has produced a work both scholarly and scandalous that makes us think about what the post-Elizabethan world may bring, alternately amusing and horrifying us along the way . . . vivid and richly-embroidered' INDEPENDENT'The devil is in the delicious detail . . . Brown tackles her subjects with the same brio she brought to her years as a highly regarded magazine editor . . . Her access to those who flit around the royals gives her writing an edgy authenticity' DAILY MAIL'Brown thrashes her way through absolutely everything that has happened to the family since the end of the last book in 1997 . . . Charles and Camilla are vividly brought to life in a series of well-researched stories and anecdotes' SUNDAY TIMES'The Palace Papers is a sharp-nibbed observation of a generation of tumult for the House of Windsor, bookended by the deaths of Princess Diana and Prince Philip. It's a story about media as much as monarchy, and it draws from almost every chapter in Brown's career in journalism' FINANCIAL TIMES'It's hard to look away as Tina Brown delves into decades' worth of royal scandals' GUARDIAN'Utter brilliance . . . a rip-roaring read' SCOTSMAN'A brilliant book. Tina Brown has inside knowledge and writes so well' LADY ANNE GLENCONNER (author of Lady in Waiting)_________________________________'Never again', became Queen Elizabeth II's mantra shortly after Diana's death. More specifically, there could never be 'another Diana' - a member of the family whose global popularity upstaged, outshone, and posed an existential threat to the British monarchy. Picking up where The Diana Chronicles left off, The Palace Papers reveals how the royal family reinvented itself after the traumatic years when Diana's blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet.Tina Brown takes readers on a tour de force journey that shows the Queen's stoic resolve as she coped with the passing of Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother and her partner for seven decades, Prince Philip, and triumphed in her Jubilee years even as the family dramas raged around her. She explores Prince Charles's determination to make Camilla his queen, the tension between William and Harry who are on 'different paths', the ascendance Kate Middleton, the disturbing allegations surrounding Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein, and Harry and Meghan's stunning decision to 'step back' as senior royals. Despite the fragile monarchy's best efforts, 'never again' seems fast approaching.