Product Description: It is a well-established fact that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. The Spirit Level, based on thirty years of research, takes this truth a step further. One common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members...read more

Product Description: In this outstanding seventh Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery, things are looking pretty grim for Laos' one and only national coroner.Three young Laotian women have died from fencing-sword wounds. Each of them had studied abroad in an Eastern bloc country...read more

Product Description: In this outstanding seventh Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery, things are looking pretty grim for Laos' one and only national coroner.Three young Laotian women have died from fencing-sword wounds. Each of them had studied abroad in an Eastern bloc country...read more

Product Description: On the trail of a killer, Dr. Siri must watch his step before he becomes the next victim, in this sixth book of the series by Colin Cotterill. In 1978 in poverty-stricken Laos, a man from the city with a truck was somebody--a catch for even the prettiest village virgin...read more

Product Description: In this fourth Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery, the reluctant coroner of Laos must foil a plot to overthrow the government. An elderly man has been run down by a logging truck on the street in Vientiane just opposite the post office. His body is delivered to the morgue of Dr...read more

Product Description: The third installment in Colin Cotterill's highly engaging 'Dr. Siri' Paiboun series. Dr. Siri Paiboun is summoned to the mountains of Huaphan Province, where for years the leaders of the current communist government hid in caves, waiting to assume power...read more

Product Description: Meet Dr. Siri Paiboun, the reluctant national coroner of Laos. Laos, 1975 - The Communist Pathet Lao has taken over this former French colony. Dr. Siri Paiboun, a seventy-two-year-old Paris-trained doctor, is appointed national coroner...read more

Product Description: These two classic coming-of-age stories by Voltaire parody the romanticism of his day with the ruthless wit that has made him the undisputed master of social commentary. Candide, which is alternately titled Optimism, is a merciless satire and expose' of the ideas and institutions men live by...read more

Product Description: Michel de Montaigne, one of the foremost writers of the French Renaissance and the originator of the genre of the essay, wrote on subjects ranging from friendship to imagination, from language to conscience. This collection includes twenty-two of Montaigne's essays, including "Of Prognostications," "Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes," "Of Pedantry," and "Of Friendship...read more

Product Description: As private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, the scholar Suetonius had access to the imperial archives and used them (along with eyewitness accounts) to produce one of the most colorful biographical works in history. The Twelve Caesars chronicles the public careers and private lives of the men who wielded absolute power over Rome, from the foundation of the empire under Julius Caesar and Augustus, to the decline into depravity and civil war under Nero and the recovery that came with his successors...read more

Product Description: As private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, the scholar Suetonius had access to the imperial archives and used them (along with eyewitness accounts) to produce one of the most colorful biographical works in history. The Twelve Caesars chronicles the public careers and private lives of the men who wielded absolute power over Rome, from the foundation of the empire under Julius Caesar and Augustus, to the decline into depravity and civil war under Nero and the recovery that came with his successors...read more

Product Description: It's easy to think of piracy as a romantic way of life long gone-if not for today's frightening headlines of robbery and kidnapping on the high seas. Pirates have existed since the invention of commerce itself, but they reached the zenith of their power during the 1600s, when the Mediterranean was the crossroads of the world and pirates were the scourge of Europe and the glory of Islam...read more