George Webber has written a successful novel about his family and hometown. When he returns to that town, he is shaken by the force of the outrage and hatred that greets him. Family and friends feel naked and exposed by the truths they have seen in his book, and their fury drives him from his home.

He begins a search for his own identity that takes him to New York and a hectic social whirl; to Paris with an uninhibited group of expatriates; to Berlin, lying cold and sinister under Hitler's shadow. At last, Webber returns to America and rediscovers it with love, sorrow, and hope.

Sherman Alexie is one of our most gifted and accomplished storytellers and a treasured writer of huge national stature. His first novel in ten years is the hilarious and tragic portrait of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity.

With powerful and swift prose, Flight follows this troubled foster teenager—a boy who is not a "legal" Indian because he was never claimed by his father—as he learns that violence is not the answer. The journey for Flight's young hero begins as he's about to commit a massive act of violence. At the moment of decision, he finds himself shot back through time to resurface in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, where he sees why "Hell is Red River, Idaho, in the 1970s."

Red River is only the first stop in an eye-opening trip through moments in American history. He will continue traveling back to inhabit the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Bighorn and then ride with an Indian tracker in the nineteenth century before materializing as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. During these furious travels through time, his refrain grows: "Who's to judge?" and "I don't understand humans."

When finally, blessedly, our young warrior comes to rest again in his own life, he is mightily transformed by all he has seen. This is Sherman Alexie at his most brilliant—making us laugh while he's breaking our hearts.

From the master of literary reportage, whose acclaimed books include Shah of Shahs, The Emperor, and The Shadow of the Sun, comes an intimate account of his first youthful forays beyond the Iron Curtain.

Just out of university in 1955, Kapuscinski told his editor that he’d like to go abroad. Dreaming no farther than Czechoslovakia, the young reporter found himself sent to India. Wide-eyed and captivated, he would discover in those days his life’s work—to understand and describe the world in its remotest reaches, in all its multiplicity.

From the rituals of sunrise at Persepolis to the incongruity of Louis Armstrong performing before a stone-faced crowd in Khartoum, Kapuscinski gives us the non-Western world as he first saw it, through still-virginal Western eyes.

The companion on his travels: a volume of Herodotus, a gift from his first boss. Whether in China, Poland, Iran, or the Congo, it was the “father of history”—and, as Kapuscinski would realize, of globalism—who helped the young correspondent to make sense of events, to find the story where it did not obviously exist.

It is this great forerunner’s spirit—both supremely worldly and innately Occidental—that would continue to whet Kapuscinski’s ravenous appetite for discovering the broader world and that has made him our own indispensable companion on any leg of that perpetual journey.

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul is a captivating narrative set in post-colonial Africa during the time of Independence. This novel offers a vivid exploration of a continent in transition.

The story follows Salim, a young Indian man, who embarks on a journey to establish a small business in Central Africa. As he navigates the complexities of a newly-dependent state, he becomes intricately involved with the fluid and dangerous political landscape.

Set against a backdrop of chaos, violent change, and social breakdown, Salim's journey is one of personal growth and survival amidst historical upheaval. This novel serves as a microcosm of a changing world, characterized by warring tribes, ignorance, isolation, and poverty.

Naipaul's work emerges as a truly moving story that reflects on the cultural and political transformations of the time.