Roger Bennett

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “The Hummingbird is a remarkable accomplishment, a true gift to the world.” —Michael Cunningham “Long considered one of Italy's leading writers, Sandro Veronesi has re-written the family saga. Ardent, gripping, and inventive to the core, it has already been hailed a classic.”—Jhumpa Lahiri "The Hummingbird is a masterly novel, a brilliantly conceived mosaic of love and tragedy."—Ian McEwan The #1 international sensation from a master of European literature—winner of Italy’s Premio Strega—a saga of a Florentine family from the 1960s to the present that brilliantly captures the power of history and the multi-faceted experience of life itself as it explores how we contend with uncontrollable forces that both buffet and buoy us. Marco Carrera is “the hummingbird,” a man with an almost supernatural ability to remain still amid the chaos of an ever-changing world. Though his life is rife with emotional challenges—suffering the death of his sister and the absence of his brother; caring for his elderly parents; raising his granddaughter when her mother, Marco's own child, is no longer capable; loving an enigmatic woman—Marco carries on with a noble stoicism that belies an intensity for living. As the years pass and the arc of his life bends, Marco finds himself filled with joy for the future as the baton passes from him to the next generation. A beautiful and compelling journey through time told in myriad narrative styles, The Hummingbird is a story of suffering, happiness, loss, love, and hope—of a man who embodies the quiet heroism that defines daily life for countless ordinary folk. A thrilling novel about the need to look to the future with hope and live with intensity to the very end, Sandro Veronesi’s masterpiece—eminently readable, rich in insight, and filled with interesting twists and revelations—is a portrait of human existence, the vicissitudes and vagaries that propel and ultimately define us Translated from the Italian by Elena Pala "A great novel, vibrating with life and death, happiness and pain, nostalgia and hope for the future." —Vanity Fair "Everything that makes the novel worthwhile and engaging is here ... magnificent – moving, replete, beautiful." —The Guardian

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.

With rare and unrivaled access, bestselling coauthor of Soccernomics and longtime Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper tells the story of how FC Barcelona became the most successful club in the world—and how that era is now ending FC Barcelona is not just the world’s highest grossing sports club, it is simply one of the most influential organizations on the planet. At last count, it had approximately 214 million social media followers, more than any other sports club except Real Madrid CF—and by one earlier measure, more than all thirty-two NFL teams combined. It has more in common with multinational megacompanies like Netflix or small nation-states than it does with most soccer teams. No wonder its motto is “More than a club.” But it was not always so. In the past three decades, Barcelona went from a regional team to a global powerhouse, becoming a model of sustained excellence and beautiful soccer, and a consistent winner of championships. Simon Kuper unravels exactly how this transformation took place, paying special attention to the club’s two biggest stars, Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi, who is arguably the greatest soccer player of all time. Messi joined Barça at age thirteen and, more than anyone, has been the engine and standard-bearer of Barcelona’s glory. But his era is coming to an end—and with it, a once-in-a-lifetime golden run. This book charts Barça’s rise and fall. Like many world-beating organizations, FC Barcelona closely guards its secrets, granting few outsiders access to the Camp Nou, its legendary home stadium. But after decades of writing about the sport and the club, Kuper was given access to the inner sanctum and the people behind the scenes who strive daily to keep Barcelona at the top. Erudite, personal, and capturing all the latest upheavals, his portrait of this incredible institution goes beyond soccer to understand FC Barcelona as a unique social, cultural, and political phenomenon.

The Club is the previously untold inside story of how English soccer’s Premier League became the wildest, richest, most popular sports product on the planet. This is a sports and business tale of how money, ambition, and twenty-five years of drama remade an ancient institution into a twenty-first-century entertainment empire. No one knew it when their experiment began, but without any particular genius or acumen, the motley cast of billionaires and hucksters behind the modern Premier League struck gold. Pretty soon, everyone wanted to try their luck, from Russian oligarchs to Emirati sheikhs, American tycoons, and Asian Tiger titans. Some succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Some lost everything. Today, players are sold for tens of millions, clubs are valued in the billions, and games are beamed out to nearly two hundred countries, all while the league struggles to preserve its English soul. Deeply researched and drawing on one hundred exclusive interviews, including the key decision makers at every major English team, The Club is the definitive and wildly entertaining narrative of how the Premier League took over the world.

Essential World Cup Reading | Featured in The New York Times' 'What to Read During the World Cup' Wall Street Journal reporters Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg offer a deeply reported account of the intertwined sagas and legacies of two of the greatest soccer players of all time—Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo—examining how their rivalry has grown from a personal competition to a multi-billion-dollar industry, paralleling the stunning rise, overwhelming excesses, and uncertain future of modern international soccer. For over fifteen years, almost any conversation about international soccer has always come back to two players—Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo—undoubtedly the greatest of their generation but with styles, attitudes, and fanbases that couldn’t be more different. For millions of people around the world “Messi or Ronaldo?” isn’t simply a barroom argument, or an affirmation of fandom, so much as a statement of philosophy, of values, of what global soccer is today and of what it will be tomorrow. Now Wall Street Journal reporters and co-authors of The Club, Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg, unite the stories of Messi and Ronaldo into a single modern epic of global sports, detailing how one rivalry changed both the game and the business of international soccer—forever. Based on dozens of firsthand accounts and years of original reporting, Messi vs. Ronaldo weaves together the stakes, color, and characters at the heart of each man’s story, going inside the locker rooms and boardrooms where their legends were forged and revealing off-field drama as gripping as anything that happened on it. From their contrasting origin stories to their divergent career arcs and their conflicting reputations, these players have built their successes on opposite paths, yet each, in his own way, offers a riveting tale of triumph and excess. Taken together, their story embodies the astronomical growth of international soccer, how social media has revolutionized the power of sports celebrity, and how the desire to capitalize on the billions of dollars these players represent electrified some of the most storied clubs in Europe—Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Manchester United among them—and cost them almost everything. With the 2022 World Cup almost certain to be the last for both of these figures, Messi vs. Ronaldo offers a deeply researched look at their legacy and grapples with the impact that their talents have had on the game for better and for worse. Much more than a retelling of the dual accomplishments of these great players, this is truly a biography of a rivalry, one that has become a crucial lens for understanding the past, present, and future of global soccer.