Distinguished American professor Sheila Miyoshi Jager interweaves international events and previously unknown personal accounts to give a brilliant new history of the war, its aftermath and its global impact told from American, Korean, Soviet and Chinese sides. This is the first account to examine not only the military, but the social and political aspects of the war across the whole region - and it takes the story up to the present day.Drawing on newly accessible diplomatic archives and reports from South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Comission, Jager not only analyses top-level military strategy but also depicts on-the-ground atrocities committed by both side that have never been revealed. The most accessible, up-to-date and balanced account yet written, rich with maps and illustrations, Brothers at War is the thrilling and highly original debut of a historian comparable to Max Hastings or Antony Beevor. It will become the definitive chronicle of the struggle's origins, aftermath, and global impact.

Like The Group, Mary McCarthy's classic tale about coming of age in New York, Joanna Smith Rakoff 's richly drawn and immensely satisfying first novel details the lives of a group of Oberlin graduates whose ambitions and friendships threaten to unravel as they chase their dreams, shed their youth, and build their lives in Brooklyn during the late 1990s and the turn of the twenty-first century. There's Lil, a would-be scholar whose marriage to an egotistical writer initially brings the group back together (and ultimately drives it apart); Beth, who struggles to let go of her old beau Dave, a onetime piano prodigy trapped by his own insecurity; Emily, an actor perpetually on the verge of success -- and starvation -- who grapples with her jealousy of Tal, whose acting career has taken off. At the center of their orbit is wry, charismatic Sadie Peregrine, who coolly observes her friends' mistakes but can't quite manage to avoid making her own. As they begin their careers, marry, and have children, they must navigate the shifting dynamics of their friendships and of the world around them. Set against the backdrop of the vast economic and political changes of the era -- from the decadent age of dot-com millionaires to the sobering post-September 2001 landscape -- Smith Rakoff's deeply affecting characters and incisive social commentary are reminiscent of the great Victorian novels. This brilliant and ambitious debut captures a generation and heralds the arrival of a bold and important new writer.

A thoughtful analysis of how our world's borders came to be and why we may be emerging from a lengthy period of "cartographical stasis" What is a country? While certain basic criteria--borders, a government, and recognition from other countries--seem obvious, journalist Joshua Keating's book explores exceptions to these rules, including self-proclaimed countries such as Abkhazia, Kurdistan, and Somaliland, a Mohawk reservation straddling the U.S.-Canada border, and an island nation whose very existence is threatened by climate change. Through stories about these would-be countries' efforts at self-determination, as well as their respective challenges, Keating shows that there is no universal legal authority determining what a country is. He argues that although our current world map appears fairly static, economic, cultural, and environmental forces in the places he describes may spark change. Keating ably ties history to incisive and sympathetic observations drawn from his travels and personal interviews with residents, political leaders, and scholars in each of these "invisible countries."

• A New York Times Summer Reading List selection • A Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book of 2015 • A Business Insider Best Summer Read • An Esquire Father’s Day Book selection • A New York Observer Best Music Book of 2015 • A memoir charting thirty years of the American independent rock underground by a musician who knows it intimately Jon Fine spent nearly thirty years performing and recording with bands that played various forms of aggressive and challenging underground rock music, and, as he writes in this memoir, at no point were any of those bands “ever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame.” Yet when members of his first band, Bitch Magnet, reunited after twenty-one years to tour Europe, Asia, and America, diehard longtime fans traveled from far and wide to attend those shows, despite creeping middle-age obligations of parenthood and 9-to-5 jobs, testament to the remarkable staying power of the indie culture that the bands predating the likes of Bitch Magnet--among them Black Flag, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youth --willed into existence through sheer determination and a shared disdain for the mediocrity of contemporary popular music. In indie rock’s pre-Internet glory days of the 1980s, such defiant bands attracted fans only through samizdat networks that encompassed word of mouth, college radio, tiny record stores and ‘zines. Eschewing the superficiality of performers who gained fame through MTV, indie bands instead found glory in all-night recording sessions, shoestring van tours and endless appearances in grimy clubs. Some bands with a foot in this scene, like REM and Nirvana, eventually attained mainstream success. Many others, like Bitch Magnet, were beloved only by the most obsessed fans of this time. Like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, Your Band Sucks is an insider’s look at a fascinating and ferociously loved subculture. In it, Fine tracks how the indie-rock underground emerged and evolved, how it grappled with the mainstream and vice versa, and how it led many bands to an odd rebirth in the 21 st Century in which they reunited, briefly and bittersweetly, after being broken up for decades. Like Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Your Band Sucks is a unique evocation of a particular aesthetic moment. With backstage access to many key characters in the scene—and plenty of wit and sharply-worded opinion—Fine delivers a memoir that affectionately yet critically portrays an important, heady moment in music history.

Empire’s Tracks boldly reframes the history of the transcontinental railroad from the perspectives of the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Pawnee Native American tribes, and the Chinese migrants who toiled on its path. In this meticulously researched book, Manu Karuka situates the railroad within the violent global histories of colonialism and capitalism. Through an examination of legislative, military, and business records, Karuka deftly explains the imperial foundations of U.S. political economy. Tracing the shared paths of Indigenous and Asian American histories, this multisited interdisciplinary study connects military occupation to exclusionary border policies, a linked chain spanning the heart of U.S. imperialism. This highly original and beautifully wrought book unveils how the transcontinental railroad laid the tracks of the U.S. Empire.

“Allegra Hyde’s seductive first novel tackles the big stuff of climate change and the more intimate matter of heartbreak with grace. Indeed, Eleutheria bravely braids these together, the story of a lost soul moving through the world we’re rapidly losing.” —Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind Willa Marks has spent her whole life choosing hope. She chooses hope over her parents’ paranoid conspiracy theories, over her dead-end job, over the rising ocean levels. And when she meets Sylvia Gill, renowned Harvard professor, she feels she’s found the justification of that hope. Sylvia is the woman-in-black: the only person smart and sharp enough to compel the world to action. But when Sylvia betrays her, Willa fears she has lost hope forever. And then she finds a book in Sylvia's library: a guide to fighting climate change called Living the Solution. Inspired by its message and with nothing to lose, Willa flies to the island of Eleutheria in the Bahamas to join the author and his group of ecowarriors at Camp Hope. Upon arrival, things are not what she expected. The group’s leader, author Roy Adams, is missing, and the compound’s public launch is delayed. With time running out, Willa will stop at nothing to realize Camp Hope's mission—but at what cost? A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

This “ groundbreaking book . . . is essential reading not only for the Filipino diaspora but for anyone who cares about the mysteries of racial identity” (Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist). Is race only about the color of your skin? In The Latinos of Asia, Anthony Christian Ocampo shows that what “color” you are depends largely on your social context. Filipino Americans, for example, helped establish the Asian American movement and are classified by the US Census as Asian. But the legacy of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines means that they share many cultural characteristics with Latinos, such as last names, religion, and language. Thus, Filipinos’ “color” —their sense of connection with other racial groups—changes depending on their social context. The Filipino story demonstrates how immigration is changing the way people negotiate race, particularly in cities like Los Angeles where Latinos and Asians now constitute a collective majority. Amplifying their voices, Ocampo illustrates how second-generation Filipino Americans’ racial identities change depending on the communities they grow up in, the schools they attend, and the people they befriend. Ultimately, The Latinos of Asia offers a window into both the racial consciousness of everyday people and the changing racial landscape of American society.

Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America

It was during the tumultuous years of the late 1960s and early 1970s that Geoffrey Blodgett turned his attention to the rich history of Oberlin College and its surrounding northern Ohio community. He understood that well-researched and thoughtfully interpreted history can help a community better understand its mission and values and address its current dilemmas, and his aim for these essays was to help put contemporary campus crises and conflicts into historical context. Although several essays included in Oberlin History were originally published in scholarly journals, Blodgett clearly wrote these for an Oberlin audience. Elegantly written and grounded in wide-ranging historical scholarship, Blodgett's work is far more sophisticated than most local and institutional histories.

Heralded as “one of his generation’s most original and exhilarating writers” by The New York Times, Gary Shteyngart has fused his literary chops and biting humor into one-of-a-kind fiction that provokes, inspires, and entertains—sometimes all at once. Throughout the two bestselling novels in this eBook bundle, Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story, Shteyngart is at the height of his powers: “wildly funny” (San Francisco Chronicle), “freakishly intelligent” (Elle), “ridiculously witty and painfully prescient” (Time). Don’t miss Gary Shteyngart’s highly anticipated memoir, Little Failure, an American immigrant story of a lifelong misfit who finally finds his place in the world, told with the author’s sharp powers of observation, self-deprecating humor, surprising revelations, and moving insights into the human heart. ABSURDISTAN “Exuberant, wise, hilarious . . . a long, funny, heartbreaking lament for home, whatever that means, and wherever that might be.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review Meet Misha Vainberg, son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia and a 325-pound patriot of no country save New York City. Misha just wants to live in the South Bronx with his hot Latina girlfriend, but after his gangster father murders an Oklahoma businessman, all hopes of a U.S. visa are lost. Salvation lies in tiny, oil-rich Absurdistan, where a crooked consular officer will sell Misha a Belgian passport. Then civil war breaks out, a local warlord installs Misha as minister of multicultural affairs, and our hero finds himself fighting for his life, falling in love, and trying to figure out if a normal life is still possible in the twenty-first century. SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY “Wonderful . . . [combines] the tenderness of the Chekhovian tradition with the hormonal high jinks of a Judd Apatow movie.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times In the near future, America is crushed by a financial crisis, and our patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Then Lenny Abramov, son of a Russian immigrant janitor and ardent fan of “printed, bound media artifacts” (aka books), meets Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel Korean American woman with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness. Could falling in love redeem a planet falling apart? All Lenny has to do is convince his fickle new love that there is still value in being a real human being. Praise for Gary Shteyngart “Compared with most young novelists his age . . . Shteyngart is a giant mounted on horseback. He ranges more widely, sees more sweepingly and gets where he’s going with far more aplomb.”—The New York Times Book Review “Obscenely gifted . . . [His] prose never fails to pop, and nothing escapes his satiric eye.”—Entertainment Weekly “The Joseph Heller of the information age.”—Salon “His imagination is either warped or prophetic; you choose. But his writing is brilliant.”—The Seattle Times “Not since mid-seventies Woody Allen has anyone cracked so wise and so well.”—Esquire “There is no one better at skewering social systems.”—The Wall Street Journal