Xinjiang is, like Tibet, one of China s autonomous regions. Despite the overwhelming attention scholars and activists have given to Tibet, Xinjiang has garnered relatively little attention. Never a quiescent place, however, it has seen one uprising after another, most recently in violent flare-ups over the cultural repression and economic exclusion of the local Muslim Uyghurs. Oil and Water, by anthropologist and photographer Tom Cliff, is the first book to turn the lens onto Han Chinese settlers. Using ethnographic vignettes, life histories, and arresting photographs, Cliff shows how large-scale social and institutional structures, historical narratives, and national political imperatives have shaped the lives of ordinary Han settlers in Xinjiang. The book weaves together the individual threads of life histories to show what it means to be Han in this frontier zone. Along the way, Cliff makes a number of surprising points: for example, that the Communist Party is in fact more concerned with stability among the Han in frontier regions than Uyghur cooperation itself; or that the frontier is simultaneously seen as backward and ahead in that it is the testing ground for policies and practices that may later be put to use in the core. Most important, by shifting the focus away from often-studied state actions and Uyghur reactions and onto the daily experience of diverse Han settlers, Oil and Water provides the first behind the scenes look into the colonial enterprise that China has tried to hide from the world since it took power sixty years ago.
Beachy Head is a bit of quintessential England–a seaside promontory where green pastures roll to the edge of chalk cliffs, a place of sheep and wind and ineffable beauty. But it is also a major landmark on the map of self-inflicted death. Since 1965, some five hundred people have ended their lives by jumping or driving or simply walking off the 535-foot cliffs, making Beachy Head one of the most popular suicide spots in the world. And still they come, every week another one or two–the young and the old, the terminally ill and the vigorously healthy, the bereft, the insane, the despairing. Why here? Why so many? One chilly English spring, American writer and teacher Tom Hunt left his home and family and journeyed to this bucolic landscape to find out. In a narrative that seamlessly weaves together personal memoir, history, travelogue, and investigative journalism, Hunt recounts a season of disturbing revelations (including that Princess Diana allegedly came here intending to jump). Still reeling from a suicide in his own family, Hunt arrives in England obsessed with Beachy Head’s grisly mystique, yet utterly unsure of what he would discover. Gradually, with typical English reserve, the people who haunt this extraordinary place release their secrets. Servers in the local tavern–known among residents as the Last Stop Pub–whisper about their encounters with hollow-eyed men and women in their final hours. The celebrated local witch asserts his belief that the place was once used for human sacrifice. The kindly coroner provides access to suicide notes, photographs, and the Sudden Death file. “It’s a very cold solution,” confides a wheelchair-bound ex-hippie who miraculously survived his own jump. In the course of wrenching interviews with bereft family members, watchful taxi drivers, and brave rescue workers, it dawns on Hunt that in each of us is a will to die every bit as tenacious and unyielding as the desire to live–and that Beachy Head stiffens and heightens this death wish. It’s a stage that all but begs to be leapt from. A work of terrible sadness and harrowing revelations, Cliffs of Despair is the account of an unforgettable journey to a place where beauty and death collide.
With echoes of Our Town, the Summer of '42 and the Big Chill within its pages, Some Forever combines the life story of John Anderson with the intrigue of a small town mystery. 1989 found John an overeducated, under-employed thirty-eight year old, living an uneventful life. When a get-together of childhood friends turns tragic and begins to unravel some of the hidden secrets of a small river town in Missouri, that staid existence is forever changed. Now finding himself dealing with friendship lost, romance gained, and his reputation and possibly his freedom in jeopardy, John is forced to look both into his future and his past in order to uncover who, among his lifelong friends, are what they seem, and who are not.
Buffy's mother is dead, the emotions of Buffy and her friends are running high, and lots of little things are causing lots of little problems. With everybody preoccupied by grief, anger, guilt and regret, the fight against the forces of darkness doesn't seem that crucial, somehow. Somebody should have told that to the swarm of angry, deformed, green demon-children that are tearing apart Buffy's house and trying to chew off her face!
Remember that time when Buffy's little sister Dawn first found out that Buffy is the Slayer? And then when Angel almost killed Dawn, because no one had told her that he'd turned evil again? Buffy and the gang all have memories connected to Dawn, and only Buffy and Giles know they're not real. But there are still a lot of unanswered questions as to how Dawn came into Buffy's life, and where these memories come from. Now, Dawn has vanished without a trace, and the Scooby gang has no clue where to find her. But Buffy will stop at nothing to find her little sister, even if she has to face off against a cadre of crazed, bloodsucking monks and a former Vampire Slayer turned Slayer Vampire!
ABOUT THE BOOK Sporting the provocative subtitle: “Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More,” The Long Tail is a watershed moment in how we think about business in the Internet Age. Twentieth Century businesses founded on the idea of “hits” emphasized the top ten, twenty, fifty -- pick a number -- of almost anything that could be sold. Movie box office, music, or new cars were judged by sales rankings, and those rankings were equated with quality, desirability, and value. Author Chris Anderson, in many ways a true man of the 21st Century, has a different theory. He posits that in an age of vast digital storage capacities, Internet staples like Amazon, iTunes, Ebay and others have forever altered how customers consider what to buy. In 2004, as Editor-In-Chief of Wired magazine, he first wrote an article entitled “The Long Tail,” which asserted that “endless choice” creates “unlimited demand.” Translation: if you have everything in stock, you can keep selling it. In this new reality, instead of a business model driven solely by hits, Anderson held that the new digital model would depend as much or more upon “niche” buying, because product that took up no physical space could be kept available for sale virtually forever. MEET THE AUTHOR Tom Szollosi graduated from UCLA in 1972 with a degree in English Literature. After a short stint in advertising, he wrote for television beginning in 1976, and has continued to the present, logging over 100 episodes of both drama and comedy. Tom has also written five motion pictures, four novels, and taught screenwriting at UCLA Extension for six years. Tom loves baseball, writing, books, and politics, though not necessarily in that order. Most recently, he has been exploring the world of e-books. He is married, has two sons, and lives in Los Angeles. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Chris Anderson himself says it best in The Long Tail: “The theory of the Long Tail can be boiled down to this: Our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve, and moving toward a huge number of niches in the tail.” These niches, according to Anderson, are “everything else.” No wonder it’s long. Very little of what’s out there is hot at any particular moment. What is hot, a “hit,” comprises the front, or head, of that demand curve. Everything else is part of the tail. You can sell less of a hit if small quantities of all those other things keep moving, and the research says they do. First, Anderson explains how the Internet has “unified elements of a supply-chain revolution that had been brewing for decades.” At lightening speed, TV and top-40 radio lost much of their taste-shaping clout to the computer and its secret weapon, the Internet. Buy a copy to keep reading!
Sunnydale...and the long, hot summer has attracted all kinds of bugs - unfortunatly, they include the six-foot-tall, human-impregnating, people-eating kind...But with Giles tied up in a romance with a mysterious English librarian, Buffy worried over a comatose Riley, Tara still worried about being accepted, and the rest of the Scooby Gang fighting and distrustful, will they be able to exterminate the bug problem - before the problem exterminates them? This collection also features the short story 'Take Back the Night', newly coloured for this edition, and a special excerpt from a book on occult insects
A desperately poor, unemployed Cajun in a small Gulf coast town in Alabama snoops around a plant where a mysterious metal is processed. His best friend has promised him a big reward for information concerning this metal, but neither realizes the life threatening danger involved. Soon after, his partner-in-crime, Lucas, halfway around the world, makes a shocking discovery. His boss, Ellen Thornton, a young Biochemist has developed a unique mining technology using a marine invertebrate. This technology has allowed her to amass a fortune in her New Orleans firm. However, betrayal by a cunning employee threatens her empire. But, a former boyfriend, and a private detective are drawn into the mystery.
As coastal populations burgeon, problems of erosion, pollution and coastal change are becoming ever more serious and necessitate scientifically informed management strategies. This authoritative new study discusses the causes of, and possible solutions to, some of the more pressing problems at the coast, against a background of the natural geomorphological and ecological workings of coastal environments. A holistic approach to the understanding of coastal problems is suggested, which integrates geomorphology, ecology and society through a consideration of the basic processes at work. Coastal problems are caused by both human and natural impacts, often working in conjunction with each other; thus drawing on their wide experience of temperate and tropical coasts the authors consider all types of coastal problems, ranging from those produced entirely naturally to those where the human impact dominates. Extensive use is made of case studies drawn from around the world, from beach erosion along the Nigerian coast to the recovery of the Vietnamese mangroves from war damage. A major theme of the book is that, given recent downgrading of predictions of future sea level rise, it is the distinctive geomorphological, ecological and societal aspects of each coast which are the vital factors. 'Coastal Problems' brings together material vital to any attempts to understand and manage our coasts and will be of interest to all those concerned with the environment and its management.
In the twenties, Edwin Hubble identified the galactic structure and expansion of the Universe. Many consider his discoveries as important as the work of Albert Einstein. Hubble Time explores the private lives of Edwin and Grace Hubble and their compelling legacy. This stylish “autobiography” is written by Hubble’s fictional granddaughter, Jane. It contains excerpts from Grace Hubble’s actual diaries as well as previously unpublished material by the Hubbles’ intimate friends Aldous Huxley and Anita Loos. In her nightly journal entries, Jane meditates on her grandparents’ clever set, which encapsulated the style and wit of Los Angeles in the thirties and forties, and she reflects wryly on living alone in Los Angeles today.
Set in an easy-to-read Q&A format, this volume is full of the stories and firsthand accounts from many of the men who helped shape the 1970s into one of the most exciting and memorable eras in National Football League history.
Get to Know San Francisco’s Vibrant and Historic Neighborhoods From the Gold Rush to the Summer of Love to the dotcom days, San Francisco is a richly historic city of scenic vistas and diverse neighborhoods. This savvy, entertaining guide explores the best of it all. Kathleen Dodge Doherty and Tom Downs guide you through 35 unique walking tours that traverse San Francisco’s length and breadth. These urban treks are great ways to soak in the vibe of the City by the Bay. The walks’ commentaries include such topics as architecture, local culture, trivia, and neighborhood history, plus tips on where to dine, have a drink, and shop. Each self-guided tour includes full-color photographs, a map, and need-to-know details like distance, difficulty, and more. Route summaries make each walk easy to follow, and a “Points of Interest” section lists the highlights of every tour. Walking San Francisco provides the perfect path for a weekend, an after-work ramble, or a sociable pub crawl. So grab your walking shoes, and become an urban adventurer!
In Walking San Francisco, Tom Downs has created an exceptional guide to exploring the best of the City ''on the ground,'' from North Beach to Lands End, Bernal Heights to Golden Gate Park. Take one of these specially designed walking tours, and you'll not only get great exercise but also soak up the history, culture, and vibe of the City by the Bay. It's like having a savvy tour guide at your side, showing you where to find great mojitos, and pointing out a rare worker-owned strip joint. Two special tours sample the best bars in North Beach and the Mission District. Locals and visitors alike will appreciate insider tips and entertaining asides in the 30 walking trips. Each tour contains a clear neighborhood map and critical public transportation and parking information. Route summaries make each walk easy to follow, and a ''Points of Interest'' section outlines each walk's highlights.
Take a whimsical journey through postwar America with author Tom Hanley, from black-and-white TVs to nuns shooting invisible atomic energy rays from their eyes. From sleek jets and cars with big fins to our current upside-down culture. Written from the heart, 'Cold War Kid' cuts through dry history to serve up a whimsical look at post-war America. From growing up as a military brat on Air Force Bases throughout the country to becoming a pilot, writer, artist and a sixty-something surfer in Hawaii, Tom Hanley pulls no punches when recounting his life experiences in a way that will leave readers with plenty to laugh about. "The funniest memoir I have ever read." Cliff Carle, author and editor
World's Best Cocktails is an exciting global journey, providing the secrets to successful cocktail making, their history and provenance, and where to seek out the world’s best bars and bartenders, from London to Long Island and beyond. Cocktail and liquor connoisseur Tom Sandham provides a comprehensive appraisal of global cocktail culture, highlighting the trends and techniques that make the finest drinks popular in their native climes and across the world. Cocktail lovers will appreciate personal tips from key bartenders such as Jim Meehan and Dale de Groff in New York and Tony Conigliaro and Salvatore Calabrese in London, while cutting-edge recent award winners point to the future with their new daring flavor combinations. At last, discerning drinkers can learn more about what to drink and where, then bring back their coolest cocktail experiences to enjoy at home.
Tom Bissell is a prizewinning writer who published three widely acclaimed books before the age of thirty-four. He is also an obsessive gamer who has spent untold hours in front of his various video game consoles, playing titles such as Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, BioShock, and Oblivion for, literally, days. If you are reading this flap copy, the same thing can probably be said of you, or of someone you know. Until recently, Bissell was somewhat reluctant to admit to his passion for games. In this, he is not alone. Millions of adults spend hours every week playing video games, and the industry itself now reliably outearns Hollywood. But the wider culture seems to regard video games as, at best, well designed if mindless entertainment. Extra Lives is an impassioned defense of this assailed and misunderstood art form. Bissell argues that we are in a golden age of gaming—but he also believes games could be even better. He offers a fascinating and often hilarious critique of the ways video games dazzle and, just as often, frustrate. Along the way, we get firsthand portraits of some of the best minds (Jonathan Blow, Clint Hocking, Cliff Bleszinski, Peter Molyneux) at work in video game design today, as well as a shattering and deeply moving final chapter that describes, in searing detail, Bissell’s descent into the world of Grand Theft Auto IV, a game whose themes mirror his own increasingly self-destructive compulsions. Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, Extra Lives is like no other book on the subject ever published. Whether you love video games, loathe video games, or are merely curious about why they are becoming the dominant popular art form of our time, Extra Lives is required reading.
A Breath From Tragedy, a Whisper from Glory For Patrick Nolan, every climb tells a story. And now maybe it's his own .... He's right at the rim, staring over the cliff's knife edge and wondering how things went wrong so quickly. It all started after arriving home from a weekend climbing trip with his father, Kevin. That's when word reached them. In a silent moment, they'd lost the person most important to them--her death raising unanswerable questions and dangerous doubts. Launching a new life in a new town to escape their pain, son and father find themselves in danger of being torn apart forever. As his father seeks a route to solace on the dangerous high face of the rock, Patrick finds a path to hope with the unlikeliest of allies--a pastor's daughter. Together they must discover the one answer that can bring Patrick and Kevin back from the brink of the precipice Sometimes There's No Place to Go But Up
A desperately poor, unemployed Cajun in a small Gulf coast town in Alabama snoops around a plant where a mysterious metal is processed. His best friend has promised him a big reward for information concerning this metal, but neither realizes the life threatening danger involved. Soon after, his partner-in-crime, Lucas, halfway around the world, makes a shocking discovery. His boss, Ellen Thornton, a young Biochemist has developed a unique mining technology using a marine invertebrate. This technology has allowed her to amass a fortune in her New Orleans firm. However, betrayal by a cunning employee threatens her empire. But, a former boyfriend, and a private detective are drawn into the mystery.
The bestselling title, developed by International experts - now updated to offer comprehensive coverage of the core and extended topics in the latest syllabus. - Covers the core and supplement sections of the updated syllabus - Supported by the most comprehensive range of additional material, including Teacher Resources, Laboratory Books, Practice Books and Revision Guides - Written by renowned, expert authors with vast experience of teaching and examining international qualifications We are working with Cambridge International Examinations to gain endorsement.
Drivers, signalmen, stationmasters and more share their stories of working on steam trains. Take a step back into the world of steam railways, and discover the reality of life and work on Britain's railway system before the Beeching cuts and the introduction of diesel changed it forever. Tom Quinn has sought out a fascinating range of characters who recount their experiences of working on steam trains. From a shedmaster to a fireman, from an engine driver to a signalman, tales of accidents and mishaps, evenings round the fire in the worker's common room, and the perils of left luggage in the days when almost anything might—and frequently did—turn up! These remarkable reminiscences paint a vivid picture of life on the old railways when Britain's railway system was the envy of the world.
Nestled within our green and pleasant land lies pockets of emerald trees. Their roots search deep into the ground and the branches reach high towards the sun. For centuries some of these have stood watching and listening to the human creatures living among them, hearing their stories and remembering. What mysteries could these woodlands tell if the trees could speak? Stories of brave deeds and foolish, star-crossed lovers, of monsters, giants and witches, hobs and kings. Discover the secrets of our forests in this engaging collection of folk tales.
From the internationally bestselling author of The Genesis Secret-a seductive, exotic new thriller In the silent caves beneath France, young archaeologist Julia Kerrigan unearths an ancient skull-with a hole bored through the forehead. After she reveals her discovery, her mentor is brutally murdered. Deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia, photographer Jake Thurby is offered a mysterious assignment by a beautiful Cambodian lawyer who is investigating finds at the two-thousand-year-old Plain of Jars-finds that shadowy forces want kept secret. From the temples of Angkor Wat and the wild streets of Bangkok to the prehistoric caves in Western Europe, what links Jake's and Julia's discoveries is a strange, demonic woman whose unquenchable thirst for vengeance-and the horrors she seeks to avenge- are truly shocking. Readers have become enthralled by Knox's vivid blend of buccaneering modern adventure, gothic horror, and grand intellectual puzzles. The Lost Goddess is his most exciting novel to date.
2 Readers will get to know Tom Baker well in this unflinching, introspective, and honest account of his always-interesting life. In prose that is unadorned, sometimes ugly, but always authentic, he mixes harrowing tales of combat in Vietnam with humorous tales of growing up in the mountains of western North Carolina. He introduces readers to the friends, family members, and forces that have shaped him and his experiences. In the process, he reveals how history impacts people in ways large and small that echo for generations and across continents. His story reveals firsthand the thrills and consequences of a warrior mindset, a mindset that can lead to be trauma and enlightenment. Tom Baker is much more than just a warrior, though, and certainly not a wannabe. He is someone who has seen a lot of darkness but has not let that block out the light. —Alex Macaulay, PhD, US military historian Many people have sought solitude and inner peace in the mixed hardwood forests of the southern Appalachian Mountains. My father, Charles Woodard, also heard the call to the woods. Like Tom Baker, his mentee and friend for many years, Dad was pulled into the comforting and sometimes dangerous confines of the forest. These forests were where Tom Baker went to not only make a living but also to confront and deal with the demons of war and the struggles they bring to lives beyond war. Living life one day at a time, he searched for the inner strength to slowly, over time, remake himself, his life, and so many of the lives around him. —Dickie Woodard, former timber cutter and lifelong outdoorsman All of us have demons. Tom Baker’s memoir is moving in how transparently and unashamedly its author shares his demons with us. Here is a man who has loved and been loved, has dodged death and has dealt death, has been scared and has been lost, and has loved and been loved yet again. As you read about his life, you realize that it is not insanity that leads a former soldier and logger to run and bike and navigate through the woods at all hours of the day and night, but sanity and his need to preserve himself for himself and for those he loves. Baker tells a tale of how adventure racing, instead of helping him to outrun his demons, gave him the emotional tools to turn, face those demons, and stomp them into the ground. His example is a gift to all who know him, and his memoir is a gift to all those who will know him now through his writing. —Nate Kreuter, PhD, author and adventure racer
Welcome to Black Cat Weekly #52. This week, our acquiring editors have outdone themselves—Michael Bracken has an original story by William Burton McCormick, “House of Tigers,” which was a Black Orchid Novella Award finalist. Though it didn’t win, it’s a great story. (Competition is fierce for this particular award, since it judged by Linda Landrigan, editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. I won the first Black Orchid for my story “Horse Pit,” and I haven’t dared enter since—I try to read all the winners, and they keep getting better and better. These days I probably wouldn’t stand a chance!) Barb Goffman also has an original, “It’s Not Tennis” by Shannon Taft, another good one. And Cynthia Ward has selected the modern classic “Whiter Teeth, Fresher Breath” by Tom Marcinko, which proves aliens do have it all. Even better oral hygiene! Plus we have a mystery novel by David Goodis (author of Dark Passage and Shoot the Piano Player), a space opera by E.E. “Doc” Smith, and science fiction from Arthur Leo Zagat and Stephen Marlowe! Here’s the complete lineup: Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure: “House of Tigers,” by William Burton McCormick [Michael Bracken Presents, Novella] “Mailed It,” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery] “It’s Not Tennis,” by Shannon Taft [Barb Goffman Presents short story] Cassidy’s Girl, by David Goodis [novel] Science Fiction & Fantasy: “Whiter Teeth, Fresher Breath,” by Tom Marcinko [Cynthia Ward Presents short story] “Picnic,” by Stephen Marlowe [short story] “The Cavern of the Shining Pool,” by Arthur Leo Zagat [novella] Galactic Patrol, by E.E. “Doc” Smith [novel]
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