On a bright July morning in 1870 the British explorer George Hayward was brutally murdered high in the Hindu Kush. Who was he, what had brought him to this wild spot, and why was he killed? Told in full for the first time, this is the gripping tale of Hayward's journey from a Yorkshire childhood to a place at the forefront of the 'Great Game' between the British Raj and the Russian Empire. Driven by 'an insane desire' Hayward crossed the Western Himalayas, tangled with despotic chieftains and ended up on the wrong side of both the Raj and the mighty Maharaja of Kashmir. Tim Hannigan explores the conspiracies and controversies that surrounded his death, travelling in Hayward's footsteps to bring the story up to date, and to reveal how the echoes of the Great Game still reverberate across Central Asia in the twenty-first century.

On a bright July morning in 1870 the British explorer George Hayward was brutally murdered high in the Hindu Kush. Who was he, what had brought him to this wild spot, and why was he killed? Told in full for the first time, this is the gripping tale of Hayward's journey from a Yorkshire childhood to a place at the forefront of the 'Great Game' between the British Raj and the Russian Empire. Driven by 'an insane desire' Hayward crossed the Western Himalayas, tangled with despotic chieftains and ended up on the wrong side of both the Raj and the mighty Maharaja of Kashmir. Tim Hannigan explores the conspiracies and controversies that surrounded his death, travelling in Hayward's footsteps to bring the story up to date, and to reveal how the echoes of the Great Game still reverberate across Central Asia in the twenty-first century.

Kafiristan, or "The Land of the Infidels," was a region of eastern Afghanistan where the inhabitants had retained their traditional pagan culture and religion and rejected conversion to Islam. The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush is a detailed ethnographic account of the Kafirs, written by George Scott Robertson (1852-1916), a British administrator in India. With the approval of the government of India, Robertson made a preliminary visit to Kafiristan in October 1889, and then lived among the Kafirs for almost a year, from October 1890 to September 1891. Robertson describes his journey from Chitral (in present-day Pakistan) to Kafiristan and the difficulties he encountered in traveling about the country and in gaining information about the Kafir culture and religion. The latter, he writes, "is a somewhat low form of idolatry, with an admixture of ancestor-worship and some traces of fire-worship also. The gods and goddesses are numerous, and of varying degrees of importance or popularity." Robertson describes religious practices and ceremonies, the tribal and clan structure of Kafir society, the role of slavery, the different villages in the region, and everyday life and social customs, including dress, diet, festivals, sport, the role of women in society, and much else that he observed first-hand. The book is illustrated with drawings, and it concludes with a large fold-out topographical map, which shows the author's route in Kafiristan. In 1896 the ruler of Afghanistan, Amir 'Abd al-Rahman Khan (reigned 1880-1901), conquered the area and brought it under Afghan control. The Kafirs became Muslims and in 1906 the region was renamed Nuristan, meaning the "Land of Light," a reference to the enlightenment brought by Islam.

What happens when a regular person accidentally finds themselves lost in the middle of a war? In 1991, Chris Woolf travelled to Afghanistan to visit a BBC colleague. They hitched a ride with an aid convoy and bumbled straight into the war.

Electrifying investigation of White House lies about the assassination of Osama bin Laden In 2011, an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, the man the United States had begun chasing before the devastating attacks of 9/11. The news did much to boost President Obama’s first term and played a major part in his reelection victory of the following year. But much of the story of that night, as presented to the world, was incomplete, or a lie. The evidence of what actually went on remains hidden. At the same time, the full story of the United States’ involvement in the Syrian civil war has been kept behind a diplomatic curtain, concealed by doublespeak. It is a policy of obfuscation that has compelled the White House to turn a blind eye to Turkey’s involvement in supporting ISIS and its predecessors in Syria. This investigation, which began as a series of essays in the London Review of Books, has ignited a firestorm of controversy in the world media. In his introduction, Hersh asks what will be the legacy of Obama’s time in office. Was it an era of “change we can believe in” or a season of lies and compromises that continued George W. Bush’s misconceived War on Terror? How did he lose the confidence of the general in charge of America’s forces who acted in direct contradiction to the White House? What else do we not know?.

Sultans, Spices, and Tsunamis: The Incredible Story of the World's Largest Archipelago Indonesia is by far the largest nation in Southeast Asia and has the fourth largest population in the world after the United States. Indonesian history and culture are especially relevant today as the Island nation is an emerging power in the region with a dynamic new leader. It is a land of incredible diversity and unending paradoxes that has a long and rich history stretching back a thousand years and more. Indonesia is the fabled "Spice Islands" of every school child's dreams--one of the most colorful and fascinating countries in history. These are the islands that Europeans set out on countless voyages of discovery to find and later fought bitterly over in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. This was the land that Christopher Columbus sought, and Magellan actually reached and explored. One tiny Indonesian island was even exchanged for the island of Manhattan in 1667! This fascinating history book tells the story of Indonesia as a narrative of kings, traders, missionaries, soldiers and revolutionaries, featuring stormy sea crossings, fiery volcanoes, and the occasional tiger. It recounts the colorful visits of foreign travelers who have passed through these shores for many centuries--from Chinese Buddhist pilgrims and Dutch adventurers to English sea captains and American movie stars. For readers who want an entertaining introduction to Asia's most fascinating country, this is delightful reading.

In a seedy hotel near Ground Zero, a woman lies face down in a pool of acid, features melted of her face, teeth missing, fingerprints gone. The room has been sprayed down with DNA-eradicating antiseptic spray. Pilgrim, the code name for a legendary, world-class segret agent, quickly realizes that all of the murderer's techniques were pulled directly from his own book, a cult classic of forensic science written under a pen name.

In 1811, an army of 10,000 British redcoats splashed ashore through the muddy shallows off Batavia (now Jakarta) to conquer the Dutch colony of Java. They would remain there for five turbulent years. Drawing on both British and Javanese archival sources, this narrative history-cum-biography explores the bloody battles and furious controversies that marked British rule in Java, and reveals the future founder of Singapore, Thomas Stamford Raffles in a shocking new light.

Hun, the universal appellation for terror, was earned with brutality and blood. Legend has it that Mahira, a Hun dynasty King of the early 6th century, was the most cruel man of all time. Sagala, the capital of his vast but dying empire, that extended from the Central Steppes, over the Hindu Kush, into what is modern-day Pakistan and north-western India, to the borders of the Gupta Empire, was a place where unrivalled beauty and extreme bestiality existed in uneasy alliance. Like his predecessors, Mahira too, had visions that made him both feared as well as invincible. Obsessed with the desire to rule the world, he set off into the grasslands of Central Asia, on a journey to unite every kingdom known to man, under his savage rule. But the Gods scoffed at his hubris and visited him with nightmarish visions and excruciating pain. A prisoner of intense suffering, Mahira grew ever more erratic, ever more brutal. His heinous murder of the King of Lanka, lives on in folklore to this day. On taking the kingdom of Kashmir, he ordered the massacre of the entire Buddhist population. On a whim, he slaughtered a hundred of his own elephants. But, as this victim of malady escapes execution, hatred, betrayal, conflict and war, all he truly desires is the love of his Queen. Centuries have passed since King Mahira lived and ruled, but his infamy and deeds live on in legend and folklore. And echoes of his aggression, quest for power, world domination and subjugation of people, resound 1400 years later, with dangerous portent, in a world given increasingly to violence and terror.