"Absolutely riveting . . . Essential reading for foodies, java-junkies, anthropologists, and anyone else interested in funny, sardonically told adventure stories." —Anthony Bourdain, author of Kitchen Confidential Full of humor and historical insights, The Devil’s Cup is not only ahistory of coffee, but a travelogue of a risk-taking brew-seeker. In this captivating book, Stewart Lee Allen treks three-quarters of the way around the world on a caffeinated quest to answer these profound questions: Did the advent of coffee give birth to an enlightened western civilization? Is coffee the substance that drives history? From the cliffhanging villages of Southern Yemen, where coffee beans were first cultivated eight hundred years ago, to a cavernous coffeehouse in Calcutta, the drinking spot for two of India’s Nobel Prize winners . . . from Parisian salons and cafés where the French Revolution was born, to the roadside diners and chain restaurants of the good ol’ USA, where something resembling brown water passes for coffee, Allen wittily proves that the world was wired long before the Internet. And those who deny the power of coffee (namely tea drinkers) do so at their own peril.

A “fascinating and well-documented social history” of American beer, from the immigrants who invented it to the upstart microbrewers who revived it (Chicago Tribune). Grab a pint and settle in with AmbitiousBrew, the fascinating, first-ever history of American beer. Included here are the stories of ingenious German immigrant entrepreneurs like Frederick Pabst and Adolphus Busch, titans of nineteenth-century industrial brewing who introduced the pleasures of beer gardens to a nation that mostly drank rum and whiskey; the temperance movement (one activist declared that “the worst of all our German enemies are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, and Miller”); Prohibition; and the twentieth-century passion for microbrews. Historian Maureen Ogle tells a wonderful tale of the American dream—and the great American brew. “As much a painstakingly researched microcosm of American entrepreneurialism as it is a love letter to the country’s favorite buzz-producing beverage . . . ‘Ambitious Brew’ goes down as brisk and refreshingly as, well, you know.” —New York Post

"[These volumes] are endlessly absorbing as an excursion into cultural history and national memory."--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

An explosive end to the Walking Between Worlds trilogy. Heaven is in turmoil over the war being waged below. Hell is a ravaged wasteland, its beauty lost to all but ancient memory. Earth is trapped between, unaware of the army of supernaturals battling for their souls. A champion emerges to lead them, and to search for their lost king. His new student sees the timeless art of dealing with demons in an astonishingly unique way; it makes William question everything he is supposed to be teaching the warrior apprentice, while battling day and night to save the way of the Walker. Ruling from their lofty perches, the angels have long since lost their way. They want control of everything, and will stop at nothing to get it. Barely an army, the remaining demon hunters dodge plots from above and fire from below in their hopes to secretly save the worlds they walk between once more. The dragons that reign in Hell have grown more brutal over long centuries; when one queen fell, a more fearsome dragon took her place. It will take more than one miracle to stop her from setting all the worlds aflame forever. Fall of the Walker King is the third novel in the Walking Between Worlds universe, a supernatural story set in Heaven, Hell, and San Francisco. Recommended reading order Walking Between Worlds: Demons & Angels Rise of the Walker King Fall of the Walker King Before Walking Between Worlds: The Demon Be Damned The Heart of the Dragon (release date TBA)

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE 2020 A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019 A revelatory new biography of Adolf Hitler from the acclaimed historian Brendan Simms Adolf Hitler is one of the most studied men in history, and yet the most important things we think we know about him are wrong. As Brendan Simms's major new biography shows, Hitler's main preoccupation was not, as widely believed, the threat of Bolshevism, but that of international capitalism and Anglo-America. These two fears drove both his anti-semitism and his determination to secure the 'living space' necessary to survive in a world dominated by the British Empire and the United States. Drawing on new sources, Brendan Simms traces the way in which Hitler's ideology emerged after the First World War. The United States and the British Empire were, in his view, models for Germany's own empire, similarly founded on appropriation of land, racism and violence. Hitler's aim was to create a similarly global future for Germany - a country seemingly doomed otherwise not just to irrelevance, but, through emigration and foreign influence, to extinction. His principal concern during the resulting cataclysm was not just what he saw as the clash between German and Jews, or German and Slav, but above all that between Germans and what he called the 'Anglo-Saxons'. In the end only dominance of the world would have been enough to achieve Hitler's objectives, and it ultimately required a coalition of virtually the entire world to defeat him. Brendan Simms's new book is the first to explain Hitler's beliefs fully, demonstrating how, as ever, it is ideas that are the ultimate source of the most murderous behaviour.

Brilliant young New Zealand physicist, Dr. Brandon Maine, is unexpectedly engulfed by an unknown family history in German colonial East Africa. Lured by the mysterious Rachel, his exploratory visit morphs into chaos when he stumbles across unlikely friends whose discovery of an enormous uranium field threatens them all. In the midst of gathering evil, Bran is swept into the vortex of an Africa he never knew existed-a world of the supernatural and atrocities that have shackled the continent for generations and almost destroy him. Drawing from these ancient unseen powers, rapacious politician Gabriel Iramo will stop at nothing-including genocide-to gain control of the country and plunge a continent back into the old ways. The shocking discovery that there is no safe middle ground shatters Bran's laissez-faire approach to life while holding the clue to Africa's revival. But to live the adventure and be true to its demands will take all that he has and alter the course of nations.

“The back door opened. In a wedge of lemon light stood Philip Shaw. Once again he’d come to fetch his brother home, back home from the demons of war ...” The trouble with earwigging is you only hear half the story. The trouble with half a story is the need to know more.