THE CARPET WARS is foreign correspondent Christopher Kremmer's riveting and timely account of a decade spent living, travelling and reporting from Asia and the Middle East. During his time reporting from Asia and the Middle East he formed an obsession with carpets and the 'perfect rug' - an obsession that saw him trace the threads of the carpet-making trade through the Islamic nations of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Along the way he made lifelong friendships, but he also discovered societies ripped apart by war, religion and fratricide, and ruled over by warlords like 'the Lion of Panjsher' Ahmed Shah Massoud - and terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. tHE CARPEt WARS tells the story of Kremmer's amazing journey and his fascinating but fraught experiences in one the most ancient, misunderstood and least-touristed parts of the world.

In 1990, Christopher Kremmer arrived in Afghanistan to interview the doomed communist president, Dr Najibullah as rampaging factions of mujahideen massed on the outskirts of Kabul. He found himself intrigued by the politics and culture of the land, and his book provides revealing, often first-hand portraits of warlords such as Ahmad Shah Masood, the Lion of Panjsher, of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and of Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf. The real stories of the lands of the ancient silk route, however, are accessed through Kremmer's obsession with the carpets of the region.

Set amidst the timeless landscape and remote villages of Anatolia, The Carpet Weaver of Uşak is the haunting and unforgettable story of a deep friendship between two women, one Greek Orthodox, the other a Muslim Turk: a friendship that transcends an atmosphere of mistrust, fear and ultimate collapse, long after the wars have ended.

Afghanistan, 1977. Kanishka Nurzada, the son of a leading carpet seller, falls in love with his friend Maihan, with whom he shares his first kiss at the age of sixteen. Their romance must be kept secret in a nation where the death penalty is meted out to those deemed to be kuni, a derogatory term for gay men. And when war comes to Afghanistan, it brings even greater challenges-and danger-for the two lovers. From the cultural melting pot of Kabul to the horrors of an internment camp in Pakistan, Kanishka's arduous journey finally takes him to the USA in the desperate search for a place to call home-and the fervent hope of reuniting with his beloved Maihan. But destiny seems to have different plans in store for him. Intimate and powerful, The Carpet Weaver is a sweeping tale of a young gay man's struggle to come of age and find love in the face of brutal persecution.

An unforgettable portrait of a place and a people shaped by centuries of art, trade, and war. In the middle of the salt-frosted Afghan desert, in a village so remote that Google can’t find it, a woman squats on top of a loom, making flowers bloom in the thousand threads she knots by hand. Here, where heroin is cheaper than rice, every day is a fast day. B-52s pass overhead—a sign of America’s omnipotence or its vulnerability, the villagers are unsure. They know, though, that the earth is flat—like a carpet. Anna Badkhen first traveled to this country in 2001, as a war correspondent. She has returned many times since, drawn by a land that geography has made a perpetual battleground, and by a people who sustain an exquisite tradition there. Through the four seasons in which a new carpet is woven by the women and children of Oqa, she immortalizes their way of life much as the carpet does—from the petal half-finished where a hungry infant needs care to the interruptions when the women trade sex jokes or go fill in for wedding musicians scared away by the Taliban. As Badkhen follows the carpet out into the world beyond, she leaves the reader with an indelible portrait of fates woven by centuries of art, war, and an ancient trade that ultimately binds the invaded to the invader.

"This is a fascinating book. It will educate you. Schwartzel has done some extraordinary reporting." — The New York Times Book Review “In this highly entertaining but deeply disturbing book, Erich Schwartzel demonstrates the extent of our cultural thrall to China. His depiction of the craven characters, American and Chinese, who have enabled this situation represents a significant feat of investigative journalism. His narrative is about not merely the movie business, but the new world order.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon An eye-opening and deeply reported narrative that details the surprising role of the movie business in the high-stakes contest between the U.S. and China From trade to technology to military might, competition between the United States and China dominates the foreign policy landscape. But this battle for global influence is also playing out in a strange and unexpected arena: the movies. The film industry, Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explains, is the latest battleground in the tense and complex rivalry between these two world powers. In recent decades, as China has grown into a giant of the international economy, it has become a crucial source of revenue for the American film industry. Hollywood studios are now bending over backward to make movies that will appeal to China’s citizens—and gain approval from severe Communist Party censors. At the same time, and with America’s unwitting help, China has built its own film industry into an essential arm of its plan to export its national agenda to the rest of the world. The competition between these two movie businesses is a Cold War for this century, a clash that determines whether democratic or authoritarian values will be broadcast most powerfully around the world. Red Carpet is packed with memorable characters who have—knowingly or otherwise—played key roles in this tangled industry web: not only A-list stars like Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and Richard Gere but also eccentric Chinese billionaires, zany expatriate filmmakers, and starlets who disappear from public life without explanation or trace. Schwartzel combines original reporting, political history, and show-biz intrigue in an exhilarating tour of global entertainment, from propaganda film sets in Beijing to the boardrooms of Hollywood studios to the living rooms in Kenya where families decide whether to watch an American or Chinese movie. Alarming, occasionally absurd, and wildly entertaining, Red Carpet will not only alter the way we watch movies but also offer essential new perspective on the power struggle of this century.

Now regarded as the bane of many college students' existence, calculus was one of the most important mathematical innovations of the seventeenth century. But a dispute over its discovery sewed the seeds of discontent between two of the greatest scientific giants of all time -- Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Today Newton and Leibniz are generally considered the twin independent inventors of calculus, and they are both credited with giving mathematics its greatest push forward since the time of the Greeks. Had they known each other under different circumstances, they might have been friends. But in their own lifetimes, the joint glory of calculus was not enough for either and each declared war against the other, openly and in secret. This long and bitter dispute has been swept under the carpet by historians -- perhaps because it reveals Newton and Leibniz in their worst light -- but The Calculus Wars tells the full story in narrative form for the first time. This vibrant and gripping scientific potboiler ultimately exposes how these twin mathematical giants were brilliant, proud, at times mad and, in the end, completely human.