After a long and eventful life, Allan Karlsson ends up in a nursing home, believing it to be his last stop. The only problem is that he's still in good health, and in one day, he turns 100. A big celebration is in the works, but Allan really isn't interested (and he'd like a bit more control over his vodka consumption). So he decides to escape. He climbs out the window in his slippers and embarks on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey, involving,...

This novel continues the stories of five interrelated families who struggle with social, political, and economic turmoil in the mid-twentieth century, during which they witness the rise of Nazi Germany, the Spanish Civil War, and the horrors of World War II. It picks up right where the first book left off, and continues up to the explosions of the American and Soviet atomic bombs. Carla von Ulrich, born of German and English parents, finds her life...

Follows the fate of five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh - as they move through the dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.

"The moment just before Radar Radmanovic is born, all of the hospital's electricity mysteriously fails. The delivery takes place in total darkness. Lights back on, the staff sees a healthy baby boy-with pitch-black skin-born to the stunned white parents. No one understands the uncanny electrical event or the unexpected skin color. "A childbirth is an explosion, " the ancient physician says by way of explanation. "Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn't...

The acclaimed literary biographer looks at the early life of influential writer and public figure H.G. Wells, from his school days and his emergence as writer of extraordinary depth to the publication of The Time Machine.

This documents the political turmoil, horrors of war, medical breakthroughs, scientific advancements and social upheavals that made this century one of the most critical and turbulent periods in human history.

The "New York Times" columnist assesses the efforts of Pope Francis to change the Roman Catholic Church, discussing how Francis' willingness to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion threatens to divide the Church.

Beginning in the summer of 1903 the children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, and dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, and society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators' only calling card: the symbol of a black hand. The tabloid press heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point. Joseph Petrosino, a dogged and ingenious detective, and the all-Italian...