Shortly before 5pm on Saturday 1 September 1928 Europe gained a new kingdom and its only Muslin king: 32-year-old Zog I of Albania. Zog I was a crucial figure in modern Albanian history, creating - or attempting to create - national and cultural identity for a country that had known little stability or sense of identity since the middle ages. He was also the most unusual monarch of the 20th century, described by contemporaries as: "a despotic brigand"; "the modern Naploeon"; "Mussolini's lackey"; "the finest patriot"; "frankly a cad". This biography shows Zog as the product of a unique time and place. People who live in secure, stable countries are invited to set aside their assumptions about European monarchy and meet a king who fired back at assassins and paid his bills with gold bars.

The first political biography of King Zog and his times, in English, has become the standard work on interwar Albania.

The story of the adorable dragon with a heart of gold is now available in a chunky board book format perfect for Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler's youngest fans. What do dragons learn at Madam Dragon's school? How to fly. . .How to roar. . .How to breathe fire! Zog is the most eager student in the class, but he's also the most accident prone. With each test (and each bump, bruise, or scrape), his dream of earning a gold star seems further away than ever. But a mysterious girl keeps coming to his rescue. And when Zog faces his toughest test yet, she may be just the person to help Zog win classroom glory! The beloved creators of Room on the Broom, The Gruffalo, and Stick Man are back with this tale of an unexpected hero who's good as gold.

“Outstanding pop-culture history.” —Newsday The “smart and zippy account” (The Wall Street Journal) of how Las Vegas saved Elvis and Elvis saved Las Vegas in the greatest musical comeback of all time. Elvis’s 1969 opening night in Vegas was his first time back on a live stage in more than eight years. His career had gone sour—bad movies, mediocre pop songs that no longer made the charts—and he’d been dismissed by most critics as over-the-hill. But in Vegas he played the biggest showroom in the biggest hotel in the city, drawing more people for his four-week engagement than any other show in Vegas history. His performance got rave reviews; “Suspicious Minds,” the song he introduced there, gave him his first number-one hit in seven years; and Elvis became Vegas’s biggest star. Over the next seven years, he performed more than 600 shows there, and sold out every one. Las Vegas was changed, too. By the end of the ‘60s, Vegas’ golden age—when the Rat Pack led a glittering array of stars who made it the nation’s premier live-entertainment center—was losing its luster. Elvis created a new kind of Vegas show: an over-the-top, rock-concert extravaganza. He set a new bar for Vegas performers, with the biggest salary, the biggest musical production, and the biggest promotion campaign the city had ever seen. He opened the door to a new generation of pop/rock artists and brought a new audience to Vegas—not the traditional well-heeled older gamblers, but a mass audience from Middle America that Vegas depends on for its success to this day. At once “a fascinating history of Vegas as gambling capital, celebrity playground, mob hangout, [and] entertainment Valhalla” (Rolling Stone) and the incredible “tale of how the King got his groove back” (Associated Press), Elvis in Vegas is a classic feel-good story for the ages.

Bernd J. Fischer has put together a collection that highlights the impact of Balkan leaders on nationalism, ethnic and sociocultural factors, economic frameworks, and other territorial dynamics that provided the undercurrents that were exposed during the Balkan's recent fragmentation.