Working as a U.S. Army criminal investigator in the American Zone of occupied Germany seven months after the defeat of the Nazis, former homicide detective Mason Collins risks his life to track down a ritualistic killer in the ruins of Munich.--

Winter 1945. Seven months after the Nazi defeat, Munich is in ruins. Investigator Mason Collins must enforce the law in a place where order has been obliterated. And his job just became much more dangerous. A killer is stalking the devastated city - one who has knowledge of human anatomy, enacts mysterious rituals with his prey and seems to pick victims at random. Relying on his wits and instincts, Mason must venture places where his own life is put at risk. What Mason doesn't know is that the killer he's chasing is stalking him, too.

Set in Virginia during the Civil War and a century beyond, this novel by the award-winning author of The Yellow Birds explores the brutal legacy of violence and exploitation in American society. Spanning over one hundred years, from the antebellum era to the 1980's, A Shout in the Ruins examines the fates of the inhabitants of Beauvais Plantation outside of Richmond, Virginia. When war arrives, the master of Beauvais, Anthony Levallios, foresees that dominion in a new America will be measured not in acres of tobacco under cultivation by his slaves, but in industry and capital. A grievously wounded Confederate veteran loses his grip on a world he no longer understands, and his daughter finds herself married to Levallois, an arrangement that feels little better than imprisonment. And two people enslaved at Beauvais plantation, Nurse and Rawls, overcome impossible odds to be together, only to find that the promise of coming freedom may not be something they will live to see. Seamlessly interwoven is the story of George Seldom, a man orphaned by the storm of the Civil War, looking back from the 1950s on the void where his childhood ought to have been. Watching the government destroy his neighborhood to build a stretch of interstate highway through Richmond, he travels south in an attempt to recover his true origins. With the help of a young woman named Lottie, he goes in search of the place he once called home, all the while reckoning with the more than 90 years he lived as witness to so much that changed during the 20th century, and so much that didn't. As we then watch Lottie grapple with life's disappointments and joys in the 1980's, now in her own middle-age, the questions remain: How do we live in a world built on the suffering of others? And can love exist in a place where for 400 years violence has been the strongest form of intimacy? Written with the same emotional intensity, harrowing realism, and poetic precision that made The Yellow Birds one of the most celebrated novels of the past decade, A Shout in the Ruins cements Powers' place in the forefront of American letters and demands that we reckon with the moral weight of our troubling history.

Describing the 100th Division's swift but grueling advance to Helibronn, Longacre chronicles the entire bitter battle and its aftermath, using private letters, journals, German and American action reports, and other primary source material.

“Monumental… [A] vast and detailed study that is surely the finest single-volume history of World War II. Richard Overy has given us a powerful reminder of the horror of war and the threat posed by dictators with dreams of empire.” – The Wall Street Journal A thought-provoking and original reassessment of World War II, from Britain’s leading military historian A New York Times bestseller Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins to recast the way in which we view the Second World War and its origins and aftermath. As one of Britain’s most decorated and respected World War II historians, he argues that this was the “last imperial war,” with almost a century-long lead-up of global imperial expansion, which reached its peak in the territorial ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, before descending into the largest and costliest war in human history and the end, after 1945, of all territorial empires. Overy also argues for a more global perspective on the war, one that looks broader than the typical focus on military conflict between the Allied and Axis states. Above all, Overy explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked the war and its protracted aftermath—which extended far beyond 1945. Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece, a new and definitive look at the ultimate struggle over the future of the global order, which will compel us to view the war in novel and unfamiliar ways. Thought-provoking, original and challenging, Blood and Ruins sets out to understand the war anew.

In Cold War Ruins Lisa Yoneyama argues that the efforts intensifying since the 1990s to bring justice to the victims of Japanese military and colonial violence have generated what she calls a "transborder redress culture." A product of failed post-World War II transitional justice that left many colonial legacies intact, this culture both contests and reiterates the complex transwar and transpacific entanglements that have sustained the Cold War unredressability and illegibility of certain violences. By linking justice to the effects of American geopolitical hegemony, and by deploying a conjunctive cultural critique—of "comfort women" redress efforts, state-sponsored apologies and amnesties, Asian American involvement in redress cases, the ongoing effects of the U.S. occupation of Japan and Okinawa, Japanese atrocities in China, and battles over WWII memories—Yoneyama helps illuminate how redress culture across Asia and the Pacific has the potential to bring powerful new and challenging perspectives on American exceptionalism, militarized security, justice, sovereignty, forgiveness, and decolonization.

Syria is home to one of the most brutal and protracted civil wars in history, posing a threat to global stability and enabling the expansion of the Islamic State (sometimes called "ISIS"). This in-depth analysis reveals the beginning, present state, and future of this conflict. The current crises involving ISIS have attracted worldwide attention to the complex politics and cultural panorama of the Middle East, including Syria. Political analyst and author David S. Sorenson discusses the ongoing civil war in Syria from its origins, to its key players, and to its propagation into neighboring countries. In the process, the work delves into Syria's demographics, history, economy, and security to illustrate the civil war's impact on the Middle East and the world. This in-depth analysis covers the Assad regime, ISIS's role in the region, possible outcomes of the conflict, and security implications for the country. Starting with a history of Syria, the work identifies the factors that have contributed to the onset and continuation of the civil war, moves on to an analysis of the outbreak and growth of the war, and points out key factors that fueled its intensity. A look at the Islamic State considers the internationalization of the Syrian civil war, explaining how the addition of many parties outside of Syria have made the war more violent and protracted. The book concludes by considering alternative endings for the conflict and addressing the role of world powers in the conflict and its outcome.