PRIZE WINNERS and BEST BOOKS of the YEAR

“A magnificent novel.” ―The Wall Street Journal

A Best Book of the Year The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and more

Arriving in Istanbul as a boy, Mevlut Karataş is enthralled by both the old city that is disappearing and the new one that is fast being built. He becomes a street vendor, like his father, hoping to strike it rich, but luck never seems to be on Mevlut’s side. He spends three years writing love letters to a girl he has seen just once, only to elope by mistake with her sister. Although he grows to cherish his wife and the family they have together, Mevlut stumbles toward middle age as everyone around him seems to be reaping the benefits of a rapidly modernizing Turkey. Told through the eyes of a diverse cast of characters, in A Strangeness in My Mind Nobel-prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk paints a brilliant tableau of life among the newcomers who have changed the face of Istanbul over the past fifty years.

“Tremendous… [Written with] virtuosic craft, intellectual richness, emotional subtlety and a feeling of freedom.” —The New York Times Book Review

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PULITZER PRIZE WINNER
A Best Book of the Year The New York Times, The Washington Post, People, San Francisco Chronicle, and more

“Gripping…. There is no better book…for readers interested in the roots of the Islamic State and the evil genius of its godfather, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

In a thrilling dramatic narrative, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison and spread with the unwitting aid of two American presidents. Drawing on unique high-level access to CIA and Jordanian sources, Warrick weaves gripping, moment-by-moment operational details with the perspectives of diplomats and spies, generals and heads of state, many of whom foresaw a menace worse than al Qaeda and tried desperately to stop it. Black Flags is a brilliant and definitive history that reveals the long arc of today’s most dangerous extremist threat.

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“A tour de force…. Readers of all political and ideological persuasions might learn something.” —The Economist

In this original, far-reaching, and timely book, Justice Stephen Breyer examines the work of the Supreme Court of the United States in an increasingly interconnected world, a world in which all sorts of activity, both public and private—from the conduct of national security policy to the conduct of international trade—obliges the Court to understand and consider circumstances beyond America’s borders.

Written with unique authority and perspective, The Court and the World reveals an emergent reality few Americans observe directly but one that affects the life of every one of us. Here is an invaluable understanding for lawyers and non-lawyers alike.

“A serious, insightful work, complete with a concrete, highly detailed analysis of scores of cases.” —The Washington Post

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“Striking…. The strongest…biography of Putin.” —The Washington Post

In this gripping narrative of Putin’s rise to power, Steven Lee Myers recounts Putin’s origins–from his childhood of abject poverty in Leningrad to his ascent through the ranks of the KGB, and his eventual consolidation of rule in the Kremlin.

As the world struggles to confront a bolder Russia, the importance of understanding the formidable and ambitious Vladimir Putin has never been greater. On the one hand, Putin’s many domestic reforms–from tax cuts to an expansion of property rights–have helped reshape the potential of millions of Russians whose only experience of democracy had been crime, poverty, and instability after the fall of the Soviet Union. On the other, Putin has ushered in a new authoritarianism–unyielding in its brutal repression of dissent and newly assertive politically and militarily in regions like Crimea and the Middle East. The New Tsar is a staggering achievement, a deeply researched and essential biography of one of the most important and destabilizing world leaders in recent history, a man whose merciless rule has become inextricably bound to Russia’s forseeable future.

“A comprehensive new biography—the most informative and extensive.” —The New York Times Book Review

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“Widely regarded as the nation’s most prestigious awards for short fiction.”—The Atlantic Monthly

The best short stories of the year, selected from thousands, with an introduction, essays from the jurors and writers, and an extensive resource list

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016 gathers twenty of the best short stories of the year, selected from thousands published in literary magazines. The winning stories range in setting from Japan at the outset of World War II to a remote cabin in the woods of Wyoming, and the characters that inhabit them range from a misanthropic survivor of an apocalyptic flood to a unicorn hidden in a suburban house. Whether fantastical or realistic, gothic or lyrical, the stories here are uniformly breathtaking. They are accompanied by the editor’s introduction, essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.

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