No public figure in contemporary life has elicited more polarized reactions than Hillary Rodhan Clinton.The first presidential spouse who pursued a major policy-making role,the belea-guered first lady has been a heroine and role model to her feminist allies—and,to her conservative foes,a malevolent ,power-mad shrew.Is she Bill Clinton's greatest asset,or his greatest liability? Now David Brock ,America's most controver-sial journalist,has taken on the most controversial first lady in history,producing a boldly incisive yet surprisingly sensitive portrait.The Hillary Rodham who emerges from these pages is not just a fasci-nating and unofficial leader of an activist lib-eral cohortthat was born in the social and civil unrest of the1960s and has risen tothe highest lev-els of Americna goernment .A political biography of the highet order,the Seducion of Hillary Rodham is the story of one strong-willed wonan's struggle tomaintain her personal and political intergrity in the face ofpowerfuly seductive forces

This important book explores alternative strategies in agricultural and rural development to address the impacts of globalization processes on smallholder agriculturalists and marginalized rural people. Its goal is twofold: (1) to identify and assess the key processes by which globalization is affecting the smallholder agricultural and rural sectors; and (2) to identify and propose both micro- and macro-level policies and other strategies to deal with the problems that arise. This volume presents writings of leading scholars and practitioners working in the private and public sectors. Their work focuses on major crosscutting issues in the developing world and on country-specific case studies.

The conclusion to The Baroque Cycle is a veritable doorstop, but a doorstop perhaps worth its weight in 18th-century gold coins—especially to those who need a reminder about the dangerous misuses of science and “progress.” Critics can’t heap enough praise on Stephenson’s eloquent narration, true-to-life characters, and impeccable plotting (“generated via Waterhouse’s Logic Mills,” says the San Francisco Chronicle). Stephenson exquisitely unearths Baroque history, too, from mints to gardens to Jacobites. While compelling, you’ll best appreciate this epic history-romance-science fiction story “once you have a solid liberal arts education under your belt” (Chronicle). Stephenson mostly gets away with his philosophical pedantry because he’s so smart and inventive. If you have the courage to delve in, you won’t be disappointed. And if you can’t bring yourself to start with Quicksilver, System includes a preface relating “the story thus far” that reviewers found helpful enough.

The late 1990s saw a number of attacks against American military and governmental offices,most notably the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998. On September 11,2001, however,the scale of this conflict changed dramatically,The hijacking of four commercial airliners on that sunny Tuesday morning led to the deaths of some 3,000 people. As in 1998, the terrorist group responsible for this devastating campaign was Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, or "The Base," a loose network of extremists many of whom are willing to die for their cause, the promotion of a militant form of Islam and the destruction of the West. In Al-Qaeda, Jane Corbin, the award-winning senior BBC correspondent for Panorama the British equivalent of 60 Minutes -- crosses four continents in search of bin Laden's terror network. The result of four years research, reporting and travel throughout the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Aanerica, she has conducted hundreds of interviews with key eyewitnesses, investigators, and intelligence officers a

Winston Churchill's six-volume history of the cataclysm thatswept the world remains the definitive history of the Second WorldWar. Lucid, dramatic, remarkable both for its breadth and sweep andfor its sense of personal involvement, it is universallyacknowledged as a magnificent reconstruction and is an enduring,compelling work that led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize forliterature. The Grand Alliance recounts the momentous events of1941 surrounding America's entry into the War and Hitler's march onRussia the continuing onslaught on British civilians during theBlitz, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the alliance betweenBritain and America that shaped the outcome of the War.