The show begins in a church basement, where disgraced spies, along with the unwitting audience, gather for a support group meeting. The action soon shifts to Frankfurt Airport, where a mysterious Iraqi defector claims he built secret Iraqi bio-weapons labs. At CIA headquarters, our other characters are contending with their own ambitions, rash decisions, inflexible bosses, unrequited affections, and unremitting boredom—when a fax arrives from Germany, and with it a golden opportunity. If the defector’s story holds up, it will be the ticket out of the basement and into a corner office. It’s all fun and games until the looming cataclysm changes everything.

An adventurous diplomat’s “engrossing and often darkly humorous” memoir of working with Iraqis after the fall of Saddam Hussein(Publishers Weekly). In August 2003, at the age of thirty, Rory Stewart took a taxi from Jordan to Baghdad. A Farsi-speaking British diplomat who had recently completed an epic walk from Turkey to Bangladesh, he was soon appointed deputy governor of Amarah and then Nasiriyah, provinces in the remote, impoverished marsh regions of southern Iraq. He spent the next eleven months negotiating hostage releases, holding elections, and splicing together some semblance of an infrastructure for a population of millions teetering on the brink of civil war. The Prince of the Marshes tells the story of Stewart’s year. As a participant he takes us inside the occupation and beyond the Green Zone, introducing us to a colorful cast of Iraqis and revealing the complexity and fragility of a society we struggle to understand. By turns funny and harrowing, moving and incisive, it amounts to a unique portrait of heroism and the tragedy that intervention inevitably courts in the modern age.

Nya, an inner-city public high school teacher, is committed to her students but desperate to give her only son Omari opportunities they’ll never have. When a controversial incident at his upstate private school threatens to get him expelled, Nya must confront his rage and her own choices as a parent. But will she be able to reach him before a world beyond her control pulls him away? With profound compassion and lyricism, Pipeline brings an urgent conversation powerfully to the fore. Morisseau pens a deeply moving story of a mother’s fight to give her son a future — without turning her back on the community that made him who he is.

"Nimo's War, Emma's War is unique in examining the gendered dimension of the Iraq war, particularly its impact on ordinary Iraqi and American women, thereby revealing an important long-term cost of the conflict. Cynthia Enloe's approach and analysis are extremely original and innovative."--Nadje Al-Ali, author of What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq "Nimo's War, Emma's War is Cynthia Enloe's darkest and most strikingly conceived text to date. War is not 'in' Iraq and Afghanistan, where foreign militaries confront local people, rather it is everywhere, most particularly in 'peacetime' domestic spaces, 'civilian' employment, marital bedrooms and high schools."--Terrell Carver, author of Politics, Language and Metaphor "Cynthia Enloe has pioneered the subject of women, militarism, and war in a series of revelatory books, including Bananas, Beaches, and Bases, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War, and Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives. Nimo's War, Emma's War is her best one yet."--Chalmers Johnson, author of The Blowback Trilogy "Brilliantly researched, vividly written, Cynthia Enloe has gifted us with a new and different story of modern warfare. Entirely gripping and profoundly humane, every page raises new issues. To factor in Nimo and Emma--all the women and families touched by the carnage and agony of war, is to see the bitter range of tragedy community by community. To read this book is to ask: What are we doing to our children--all our children, combatants and civilians? How do women cope with post-war wounds and violence--agony, wreckage, displacement? Cynthia Enloe's book is essential reading for all students and journalists, public citizens and peace activists, who seek women's dignity, healthy societies, humane alternatives to the insanity of careless military destruction."--Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of The Declassified Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt (vols I & II, III forthcoming)

An underemployed, skateboarding party animal, Colby Buzzell traded a dead-end future for the army—and ended up as a machine gunner in Iraq. To make sense of the absurd and frightening events surrounding him, he started writing a blog about the war—and how it differed from the government’s official version. But as his blog’s popularity grew, Buzzell became the embedded reporter the Army couldn’t control—despite its often hilarious efforts to do so. The result is an extraordinary narrative, rich with unforgettable scenes: the Iraqi woman crying uncontrollably during a raid on her home; the soldier too afraid to fight; the troops chain-smoking in a guard tower and counting tracer rounds; the first, fierce firefight against the “men in black.” Drawing comparisons to everything from Charles Bukowski to Catch-22, My War depicts a generation caught in a complicated and dangerous world—and marks the debut of a raw, remarkable new voice.

A Walking Distance is an autobiography that takes you from a small growing border town in south Texas to the Middle East. Along the way, the story derives from growing up in the hardships of a low income family and the dream of a young man searching for a purpose while divided between religion, race and the choices in life. He learns and grows by staying away from the constant drugs and gangs in school only to find the association he wanted in the football team. After being a part of an up-and-rising successful Texas high school football program, his experience in the football stardom takes him one step higher to the hardest task he had ever come across as he joins the elite fighting force in the United States Marines. He quickly learns that the Marine Corps is not at all what he expected as he lives the life of a marine and is flown overseas to fight in the Iraq War. A Walking Distance truly takes you for a ride as the road twists and turns towards an indefinite conclusion. The author carries you from Laredo to the Middle East then back again in a constant cycle as he walks towards what is needed to be successful and the simple pursuit of happiness in an unseen future.

How can you march to the beat of your own drummer when you're still writing the song? Everyone's search for one's authentic self is at the heart of Wonderland: Alice's Rock & Roll Adventure. Carroll's beloved, poetic tale of self-actzualization is brought to life by a cast of actor/musicians who create an eclectic, live rock soundtrack as 7 1/2-year-old Alic search for her own inner musical voice. Along the way, Alice faces challenges and fears, but she meets the ultimate test in the form of the Jabberwocky, an insidious monster made up of the dark thoughts and self-doubt that lurks inside us all. In learning to believe in the impossible, Alice learns to belief in herself. Throughout her journey, thea ctors surround Alice in a live musical tapestry ranging from classic rock to punk to ska and even a little bit of Bollywood. Rock concert meets live theatre as Alice reflects the vulnerabilities of all kids and then confidently finds her own inner voice.

Mark Twain wrote: “There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses – and then there is Sarah Bernhardt.” In 1899, the international stage celebrity set out to tackle her most ambitious role yet: Hamlet. Theresa Rebeck’s new play rollicks with high comedy and human drama, set against the lavish Shakespearean production that could make or break Bernhardt’s career.

The high-octane thriller hailed by David Baldacci as "chilling and suspenseful" and by Nelson Demille as "one of the best novels to come out of the chaos in Iraq." Billions of dollars are missing from Iraqi banks, and journalist Luca Terracini will risk everything to discover where it is. His Iraqi-American background has made it easier for him to infiltrate the darkest corners of the war, but death of his beloved Nicola in a suicide bombing has made him reckless. In pursuit of the money, he meets UN representative Daniela Garner, who seems to know more about the heist than anyone. As Luca gets closer, his actions begin to reverberate around the world. As usual, it's all about the money: who has it, who's lost it, and who's ultimately going to pay, as clandestine agents emerge from the shadows and powerful nations seek to control information and bury secrets, no matter the cost.

"One diplomat's darkly humorous and ultimately scathing assault on just about everything the military and State Department have done—or tried to do—since the invasion of Iraq. The title says it all."—The New York Times A work of "scathing, gallows humor" (The Boston Globe), We Meant Well is a tragicomic voyage of ineptitude and corruption that leaves its writer—and readers—appalled and disillusioned, but wiser. Charged with rebuilding Iraq, would you spend taxpayer money on a sports mural in Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhood to promote reconciliation through art? How about an isolated milk factory that cannot get its milk to market? Or a pastry class training women to open cafés on bombed-out streets that lack water and electricity? As Peter Van Buren shows, we bought all these projects and more in the most expensive hearts-and-minds campaign since the Marshall Plan. We Meant Well is his eyewitness account of the civilian side of the surge—that surreal and bollixed attempt to defeat terrorism and win over Iraqis by reconstructing the world we had just destroyed. Leading a State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team on its quixotic mission, Van Buren details, with laser-like irony, his yearlong encounter with pointless projects, bureaucratic fumbling, overwhelmed soldiers, and oblivious administrators secluded in the world's largest embassy, who fail to realize that you can't rebuild a country without first picking up the trash.