When an earthquake of historic magnitude leveled the industrial city of Tangshan in the summer of 1976, killing more than a half-million people, China was already gripped by widespread social unrest. As Mao lay on his deathbed, the public mourned the death of popular premier Zhou Enlai. Anger toward[...]

Roman Ungern von Sternberg was a Baltic aristocrat. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Baron - now in command of an effective rabble of cavalrymen - conquered Mongolia. He was a Kurtz-like figure, slaughtering everyone he suspected of irreligion or of being a Jew. This book tells his story that reh[...]

In the summer of 1976, Mao lay dying, and China was struck by natural disaster. The earthquake that struck Tangshan, a shoddily built mining city, was one of worst in recorded history, killing half a million people. This book recreates the tensions of that fateful summer, when the fate of China and [...]

Usually associated with Renaissance chateaux and historical monuments, the Loire valley is in fact a place of much greater richness and interest than the image of popular perception. The river itself is the longest in France and passes through a succession of landscapes, many of them of a richness w[...]