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Montenegro was admitted to the UN as its 192nd member in June 2006, thus recovering the independence it had lost nearly ninety years earlier at the Versailles Peace Conference. This is the first full-length history of the country in English for a century, tracing the history of the tiny Balkan state from its earliest roots in the medieval empire of Zeta through its consistently ambiguous and frequently problematic relationship with its larger neighbour Serbia, the emergence of a priest/warrior ruler in the shape of the Vladika and its emergence from Ottoman suzerainty at the Congress of Berlin. In more recent history, the book focuses on Montenegro’s troubled twentieth century, its prominent role in the Balkan wars, its unique deletion from world maps as an independent state despite being on the winning side in the Great War, its ignominious role in the wars leading to the disintegration of Yugoslavia and its final reemergence as a member of the international community on the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 2006. Since independence, Montenegro has grappled with the question of Euro-Atlantic integration, including membership of NATO (achieved) and the EU (applicant). Even as it has fought to define its identity, it has gone from being one of the poorest nations in the Western Balkans to having the highest per capita income of the region. It successfully navigated democratic transition in 2020.

Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks in Eastern America

"Beautiful, haunted, evocative and so open to where memory takes you. I kept thinking that this is the book that I have waited for: where objects, and poetry intertwine. Just wonderful and completely sui generis." (Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes) An unforgettable voyage across the reaches of America and the depths of memory, this generational memoir of one incredible family reveals America’s unique craft tradition. In Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay, renowned critic Christopher Benfey shares stories—of his mother’s upbringing in rural North Carolina among centuries-old folk potteries; of his father’s escape from Nazi Europe; of his great-aunt and -uncle Josef and Anni Albers, famed Bauhaus artists exiled at Black Mountain College—unearthing an ancestry, and an aesthetic, that is quintessentially American. With the grace of a novelist and the eye of a historian, Benfey threads these stories together into a radiant and mesmerizing harmony.

Ex-Mob enforcer Isaiah Coledrige has hung out a shingle as a private eye in New York's Hudson Valley, and in his newest case, a seemingly simple murder investigation leads him to the most terrifying enemy he has ever faced. When a small-time criminal named Harold Lee turns up in the Ashokan reservoir--sans a heartbeat, head, or hands--the local Mafia capo hires Isaiah Coleridge to look into the matter. The Mob likes crime, but only the crime it controls...and as it turns out, Lee is the second independent contractor to meet a bad end on the business side of a serrated knife. One such death can be overlooked. Two makes a man wonder. A guy in Harold Lee's business would make his fair share of enemies, and it seems a likely case of pure revenge. But as Coledrige turns over more stones, he finds himself dragged into something deeper and more insidious than he could have imagined, in a labyrinthine case spanning decades. At the center are an heiress moonlighting as a cabaret dancer, a powerful corporation with high-placed connections, and a serial killer who may have been honing his skills since the Vietnam War...