The Rise of Rahm - Rahm Emanuel's Political Ascent, from Clinton through Congress to Obama's White House and Chicago's City Hall

For the first time, the Nobel Prize laureate and "man in the middle" of the planet's most explosive confrontations speaks out—on his dealings with America, negotiations with Iran, reform and democracy in the Middle East, and the prospects for a future free of nuclear weapons.

For the past two decades, Mohamed ElBaradei has played a key role in the most high-stakes conflicts of our time. Unique in maintaining credibility in the Arab world and the West alike, ElBaradei has emerged as a singularly independent, uncompromised voice. As the director of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, he has contended with the Bush administration's assault on Iraq, the nuclear aspirations of North Korea, and the West's standoff with Iran. For their efforts to control nuclear proliferation, ElBaradei and his agency received the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

Now, in a vivid and thoughtful account, ElBaradei takes us inside the international fray. Inspector, adviser, and mediator, ElBaradei moves from Baghdad, where Iraqi officials bleakly predict the coming war, to behind-the-scenes exchanges with Condoleezza Rice, to the streets of Pyongyang and the trail of Pakistani nuclear smugglers. He dissects the possibility of rapprochement with Iran while rejecting hard-line ideologies of every kind, decrying an us-versus-them approach and insisting on the necessity of relentless diplomacy. Above all, he illustrates that the security of nations is tied to the security of individuals, dependent not only on disarmament but on a universal commitment to human dignity, democratic values, and the freedom from want.

Probing and eloquent, The Age of Deception is an unparalleled account of society's struggle to come to grips with the uncertainties of our age.

Twelve-year-old Ally is the only witness to a bank robbery in her small town. Unable to block out the memory of the robbers, a notorious gang known as the Gauze Men, Ally joins her little brother and a bunch of neighborhood boys digging a hole in her backyard.

Only the hole isn't just a hole - it's a massive set of tunnels snaking beneath the neighborhood and heading for an abandoned steel mill. Ally is old enough to know the danger, but she reasons spending time with sixth-grade heartthrob Paul is more fun than sitting at home with her worries. And dangerous it is - none of the kids' parents realize the tunnels exist, but the Gauze Men might.

Barack Obama arrived in Washington in 2008 symbolizing the political change he promised on the campaign trail during his historic presidential victory. But in many ways, Washington changed Obama more than Obama changed Washington.  This is the story of how the idealist of the 2008 campaign evolved into a hard-nosed pragmatist, shelving his promise of a new kind of politics to fight increasingly partisan budget battles and run a bare-knuckles re-election campaign. Through a series of articles and photographs published by The Washington Post, this book outlines the change in his political personality during his four years in office, and describes his engagement with some of the most challenging issues he confronted during his time in office – and what his approach may mean for a second term should he win in November.