News from the world of independent booksellers: Awesome Books has opened a new shop Downtown that will stay open until midnight on (Today)

News from the world of independent book sellers: Awesome Books has opened a new shop Downtown that will stay open until midnight on weekends, while Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont is looking for new owners to take over the local institution. (Yesterday)

'Anyone who tells you America is in decline ... doesn't know what they're talking about," proclaimed President Barack Obama in his 2012 State of the Union address. Robert Kagan, author of "The World America Made" and a foreign policy adviser to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, agrees. Confounding the pundits, Mr. Obama made headlines by endorsing this book. (02/12/2012)

In Josh Bazell's 2009 debut novel, "Beat the Reaper," Pietro Brnwa was an ex-hitman forced to dispatch old Mob demons while creating a new, respectable life for himself as Dr. Peter Brown. It was a sick, funny thrill ride, and Dr. Bazell's sequel, "Wild Thing," is no less so, as this time "Bearclaw" Brnwa sports yet another alias, Lionel Azimuth. (02/12/2012)

At the end of World War I, the victorious powers carved up the territories formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire. With President Woodrow Wilson committed to self-determination as the guiding principle of their deliberations, while European leaders insisted on establishing colonies in the Middle East (and elsewhere), they recognized, with French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, that "the art of arranging how men are to live is even more complex than that of massacring them." (02/12/2012)