America's leading expert on democracy delivers the first insider's account of the U.S. occupation of Iraq-a sobering and critical assessment of America's effort to implant democracy In the fall of 2003, Stanford professor Larry Diamond received a call from Condoleezza Rice, asking if he would spend several months in Baghdad as an adviser to the American occupation authorities. Diamond had not been a supporter of the war in Iraq, but he felt that...

This study explores the surprising relationship between Proust's creative genius, his financial extravagance, and the steady hand that kept him afloat. What Marcel Proust wanted from life most of all was unconditional requited love, and the way he went after it, smothering the objects of his affection with gifts, cost him a fortune. To pay for such extravagance, he engaged in daring speculations on the stock exchange. The task of his cousin and financial...

Jesper Humlin is a poet of middling acclaim who is saddled by his underwhelming book sales, an exasperated girlfriend, a demanding mother, and a rapidly fading tan. His boy-wonder stockbroker has squandered Humlin's investments, and his editor, who says he must write a crime novel to survive, begins to pitch and promote the nonexistent book despite Humlin's emphatic refusals. Then, when he travels to Gothenburg to give a reading, he finds himself...

Ammeson shares the extraordinary and off-the-wall true story of Minnie Wallace Walkup Ketcham, who left a trail of broken hearts, empty wallets, and corpses through The Gilded Age. Just sixteen when she stood trial for the wrongful death of her first husband, the Creole beauty from New Orleans. She targeted, seduced, and murdered two more wealthy older men while evading justice in the courtroom-- and her lawyer's fees.