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Books published by publisher Picador

  • The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966

    Rick Atkinson

    eBook (Picador, April 1, 2010)
    The first trade paperback edition of the New York Times best-seller about West Point's Class of 1966, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Atkinson.This is the story of the twenty-five-year adventure of the generation of officers who fought in Vietnam. With novelistic detail, Atkinson tells the story of West Point's Class of 1966 primarily through the experiences of three classmates and the women they loved--from the boisterous cadet years and youthful romances to the fires of Vietnam, where dozens of their classmates died and hundreds more grew disillusioned, to the hard peace and family adjustments that followed. The rich cast of characters includes Douglas MacArthur, William Westmoreland, and a score of other memorable figures. The West Point Class of 1966 straddled a fault line in American history, and Rick Atkinson's masterly book speaks for a generation of American men and women about innocence, patriotism, and the price we pay for our dreams.
  • The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation

    Natalie Y. Moore

    Paperback (Picador, April 4, 2017)
    **One of Buzzfeed's 18 Best Nonfiction Books Of 2016**A lyrical, intelligent, authentic, and necessary look at the intersection of race and class in Chicago, a Great American CityIn this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago-native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation in the city's South Side; with a memoirist's eye, she showcases the lives of these communities through the stories of people who reside there. The South Side shows the impact of Chicago's historic segregation - and the ongoing policies that keep the system intact.
  • We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century

    Erwin Chemerinsky

    Paperback (Picador, Nov. 13, 2018)
    "This work will become the defining text on progressive constitutionalism ― a parallel to Thomas Picketty’s contribution but for all who care deeply about constitutional law. Beautifully written and powerfully argued, this is a masterpiece." --Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law School, and author of Free Culture Worried about what a super conservative majority on the Supreme Court means for the future of civil liberties? From gun control to reproductive health, a conservative court will reshape the lives of all Americans for decades to come. The time to develop and defend a progressive vision of the U.S. Constitution that protects the rights of all people is now.University of California Berkeley Dean and respected legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky expertly exposes how conservatives are using the Constitution to advance their own agenda that favors business over consumers and employees, and government power over individual rights. But exposure is not enough. Progressives have spent too much of the last forty-five years trying to preserve the legacy of the Warren Court’s most important rulings and reacting to the Republican-dominated Supreme Courts by criticizing their erosion of rights―but have not yet developed a progressive vision for the Constitution itself. Yet, if we just look to the promise of the Preamble―liberty and justice for all―and take seriously its vision, a progressive reading of the Constitution can lead us forward as we continue our fight ensuring democratic rule, effective government, justice, liberty, and equality.Includes the Complete Constitution and Amendments of the United States of America
  • War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line

    David Nott

    Hardcover (Picador, Feb. 21, 2019)
    For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993, to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out life-saving operations and field surgery in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital. The conflicts he has worked in form a chronology of twenty-first-century combat: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Darfur, Congo, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Gaza and Syria. But he has also volunteered in areas blighted by natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal. Driven both by compassion and passion, the desire to help others and the thrill of extreme personal danger, he is now widely acknowledged to be the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world. But as time went on, David Nott began to realize that flying into a catastrophe – whether war or natural disaster – was not enough. Doctors on the ground needed to learn how to treat the appalling injuries that war inflicts upon its victims. Since 2015, the foundation he set up with his wife, Elly, has disseminated the knowledge he has gained, training other doctors in the art of saving lives threatened by bombs and bullets. War Doctor is his extraordinary story.
  • Hild: A Novel

    Nicola Griffith

    Paperback (Picador, Oct. 28, 2014)
    WINNER OF THE WASHINGTON STATE BOOK AWARD FOR FICTIONIn seventh-century Britain, a new religion is coming ashore and small kingdoms are merging, frequently and violently. Hild is the king's youngest niece, with a glittering mind and a natural authority.She is destined to become one of the pivotal figures of the Early Middle Ages: Saint Hilda of Whitby. But for now she has only the powerful curiosity of a bright child and the precarious advantage of a plotting uncle, Edwin of Northumbria, who will stop at nothing to become overking of Angles. Hild establishes a place for herself at his side as the king's seer, and she is indispensable―as long as she doesn't lead Edwin astray. The stakes are high―life and death―for Hild, for her family, and, increasingly, for those who seek the protection from this strange girl who seems to see the future. Drawing from the few records history has left us, Nicola Griffith has brought the young Saint Hilda's harsh, but beautiful, world to vivid, absorbing life.
  • Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

    GLORIA STEINEM

    Paperback (Picador, Feb. 12, 2019)
    An updated, third edition of the renowned feminist’s most diverse and timeless collection of essays, with a new foreword by Emma Watson. Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions has sold over half a million copies since its original publication in 1983, acclaimed for its witty, warm, and life-changing view of the world, "as if women mattered." Steinem's truly personal writing is here, from the now-famous exposé, "I Was a Playboy Bunny," to the moving tribute to her mother "Ruth's Song (Because She Could Not Sing It)". Her prescient essays on female genital mutilation and the difference between erotica and pornography that are still referenced and relevant today, and the hilarious satire, "If Men Could Menstruate” resonates as much as ever.As Watson writes of Steinem in her foreword, “She makes what otherwise can be arduous and depressing reading into something not only relatable, but also enjoyable... Her plain common sense, calling things out as they are, will make you laugh out loud. This is her superpower.”
  • The World Is Flat : A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

    Thomas L. Friedman

    eBook (Picador, July 24, 2007)
    This Independence Day edition of The World is Flat 3.0 includes an an exclusive preview of That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back, by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, on sale September 5th, 2011.A New Edition of the Phenomenal #1 Bestseller"One mark of a great book is that it makes you see things in a new way, and Mr. Friedman certainly succeeds in that goal," the Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote in The New York Times reviewing The World Is Flat in 2005. In this new edition, Thomas L. Friedman includes fresh stories and insights to help us understand the flattening of the world. Weaving new information into his overall thesis, and answering the questions he has been most frequently asked by parents across the country, this third edition also includes two new chapters--on how to be a political activist and social entrepreneur in a flat world; and on the more troubling question of how to manage our reputations and privacy in a world where we are all becoming publishers and public figures.The World Is Flat 3.0 is an essential update on globalization, its opportunities for individual empowerment, its achievements at lifting millions out of poverty, and its drawbacks--environmental, social, and political, powerfully illuminated by the Pulitzer Prize--winning author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree.
  • Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America's Most Perilous Year

    David Von Drehle

    Paperback (Picador, Sept. 24, 2013)
    Author of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America New York Times BestsellerAs 1862 dawned, the American republic was at death's door. The government appeared overwhelmed, the U.S. Treasury was broke, and the Union's top general was gravely ill. The Confederacy―with its booming economy and commanding position on the battlefield―had a clear view to victory. The survival of the country depended on the judgment and resilience of the unschooled frontier lawyer who had recently been elected president.Twelve months later, the Civil War had become a cataclysm but the tide had turned. The Union generals who would win the war had emerged, while the Confederate Army had suffered the key losses that would lead to its doom. The blueprint of modern America had been indelibly inked, and Abraham Lincoln―the man who brought the nation through its darkest hour―had been forged into a singular leader. In Rise to Greatness, acclaimed author David Von Drehle has created both a deeply human portrait of America's greatest president and a dramatic narrative about our most fateful year.
  • Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution

    Menno Schilthuizen

    Paperback (Picador, April 2, 2019)
    From evolutionary biologist Menno Schilthuizen, a book that will make you see yourself and the world around you in an entirely new way *Carrion crows in the Japanese city of Sendai have learned to use passing traffic to crack nuts.*Lizards in Puerto Rico are evolving feet that better grip surfaces like concrete.*Europe’s urban blackbirds sing at a higher pitch than their rural cousins, to be heard over the din of traffic.How is this happening?Menno Schilthuizen is one of a growing number of “urban ecologists” studying how our manmade environments are accelerating and changing the evolution of the animals and plants around us. In Darwin Comes to Town, he takes us around the world for an up-close look at just how stunningly flexible and swift-moving natural selection can be.With human populations growing, we’re having an increasing impact on global ecosystems, and nowhere do these impacts overlap as much as they do in cities. The urban environment is about as extreme as it gets, and the wild animals and plants that live side-by-side with us need to adapt to a whole suite of challenging conditions: they must manage in the city’s hotter climate (the “urban heat island”); they need to be able to live either in the semidesert of the tall, rocky, and cavernous structures we call buildings or in the pocket-like oases of city parks (which pose their own dangers, including smog and free-rangingdogs and cats); traffic causes continuous noise, a mist of fine dust particles, and barriers to movement for any animal that cannot fly or burrow; food sources are mainly human-derived. And yet, as Schilthuizen shows, the wildlife sharing these spaces with us is not just surviving, but evolving ways of thriving.Darwin Comes toTown draws on eye-popping examples of adaptation to share a stunning vision of urban evolution in which humans and wildlife co-exist in a unique harmony. It reveals that evolution can happen far more rapidly than Darwin dreamed, while providing a glimmer of hope that our race toward over population might not take the rest of nature down with us.
  • A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

    Anonymous, Philip Boehm

    eBook (Picador, Feb. 28, 2017)
    A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceFor eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. "With bald honesty and brutal lyricism" (Elle), the anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. "Spare and unpredictable, minutely observed and utterly free of self-pity" (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland), A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject--the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.A Woman in Berlin stands as "one of the essential books for understanding war and life" (A. S. Byatt, author of Possession).
  • That Night: A Novel

    Alice McDermott

    Paperback (Picador, Feb. 28, 2012)
    A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award It is high summer, the early 1960s. Sheryl and Rick, two Long Island teenagers, share an intense, all-consuming love. But Sheryl's widowed mother steps between them, and one moonlit night Rick and a gang of hoodlums descend upon her quiet neighborhood. That night, driven by Rick's determination to reclaim Sheryl, the young men provoke a violent confrontation, and as fathers step forward to protect their turf, notions of innocence belonging to both sides of the brawl are fractured forever. Alice McDermott's That Night is "a moving and captivating novel, both celebration and elegy…a rare and memorable work" (The Cleveland Plain Dealer).
  • The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

    Michael Booth

    eBook (Picador, Jan. 27, 2015)
    NAMED THE #1 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, A WITTY, INFORMATIVE, AND POPULAR TRAVELOGUE ABOUT THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES AND HOW THEY MAY NOT BE AS HAPPY OR AS PERFECT AS WE ASSUMEJournalist Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians for more than ten years, and he has grown increasingly frustrated with the rose-tinted view of this part of the world offered up by the Western media. In this timely book he leaves his adopted home of Denmark and embarks on a journey through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes are, the secrets of their success, and, most intriguing of all, what they think of one another. Why are the Danes so happy, despite having the highest taxes? Do the Finns really have the best education system? Are the Icelanders as feral as they sometimes appear? How are the Norwegians spending their fantastic oil wealth? And why do all of them hate the Swedes? In The Almost Nearly Perfect People Michael Booth explains who the Scandinavians are, how they differ and why, and what their quirks and foibles are, and he explores why these societies have become so successful and models for the world. Along the way a more nuanced, often darker picture emerges of a region plagued by taboos, characterized by suffocating parochialism, and populated by extremists of various shades. They may very well be almost nearly perfect, but it isn't easy being Scandinavian.