Perfect for fans of Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn and Andy McNab. The Chinese Dragon has awoken - and is narrowing its sights on the South China Sea.America - and it's president Morgan Taylor - cannot permit such territorial expansion to go unchecked. But America also cannot afford to go to war. To square the circle the President decides to employ the services of David Santos, a retired air force general and intelligence officer, and his "Bravo" team, a company of trained specialists.As the unit is deployed into South East Asia they know that America will deny all knowledge of their existence. Capture will mean torture - and death. Santos and Bravo team must try to prevent a war, working in the shadows. But they will not be alone. China has deployed its own unit, to counter the Americans and foment conflict and conquest. The fate of Bravo team in the South China Sea could shape - or shatter - the peace between two global superpowers.The clock is ticking. The race is on. Praise for The China Sea "The China Sea goes from zero to sixty and never slows down. Great story, great characters, and the real chance this is the blueprint of things to come. Must read." - William P. Wood, author of Broken Trust starring Tom Selleck"Cleverly crafted and masterfully written, with characters rooted in the dark realism of special ops,The China Sea by Richard Herman delivers a riveting, edge-of-the-seat novel of global intrigue as real as this morning’s headlines. Herman, an experienced story-teller and former U.S. air warrior captures both the subtle nuisance and stark dangers of a world teetering on the edge of mass destruction." Steve Martini“A skilled storyteller… Richard Herman knows how to describe the pressure and unpredictability of battle… He has a sure command of what it takes to hold the reader.” - Sacramento Bee“Herman is a master.” - Florida Times-Union“One of the best adventure writers around.” - Clive Cussler“Too many of today’s geopolitical thrillers ring false, but not Herman’s.” - San Francisco Examiner“Herman shines when he describes combat tactics… But it’s his characters that carry the story.” - Air & SpaceRichard Herman is a retired Air Force officer who flew C-130s and F-4s. While on active duty, he logged over 240 combat missions. He also taught at the Air Force Academy and served as an operations plans officer. After retiring, he turned to writing about the aircraft he loves, and is the author of fourteen novels – including critically acclaimed The Warbirds and Force of Eagles.

    Have foreigners shaped China’s history to a greater extent than has previously been acknowledged, reaching back possibly millennia? Was Confucius’ most famous book, the Analects, inspired by entheogenic medicines imported from abroad, possession of which in the 1930s brought one before the firing squad in the name of Confucius? In these book review essays by Isham Cook, foreign devils, old China Hands, eccentric expatriates, and a few Chinese tell an offbeat history of China’s last two centuries, with a backward glance at ancient China as told by Western mummies.

    Find enlightenment with these one-hundred twenty-two traditional Buddhist Zen koans -- stories, dialogues, questions, or statements, used in Zen-practice to provoke the "great doubt," and test a student's progress in Zen practice.

    Here some of Japan’s best and most representative writers chronicle and re-create the impact of this tragedy on the daily lives of peasants, city professionals, artists, children, and families. From the “crazy” iris that grows out of season to the artist who no longer paints in color, the simple details described in these superbly crafted stories testify to the enormity of change in Japanese life, as well as in the future of our civilization. Included are “The Crazy Iris” by Masuji Ibuse, “Summer Flower” by Tamiki Hara, “The Land of Heart’s Desire” by Tamiki Hara, “Human Ashes” by Katsuzo Oda, “Fireflies” by Yoka Ota, “The Colorless Paintings” by Ineko Sata, “The Empty Can” by Kyoko Hayashi, “The House of Hands” by Mitsuharu Inoue, and “The Rite” by Hiroko Takenishi.

    His reporting about Enron’s bankruptcy and the controversy surrounding it was being used by NPR, he was hot on the trail of a possible connection to an Army Secretary, and he was one of the few reporters granted an interview with Enron President Jeff Skilling. And then it all came crashing down.When Salon was forced to take down Leopold’s article about Army Secretary Thomas E. White’s role in the Enron bankruptcy, his world began to unravel. Ostracized from the mainstream media, slipping into a deep depression, with no prospects on the horizon, Jason Leopold was forced to start from scratch.News Junkie is Jason’s story, an addict to the core, he traded an early life of drugs and crime for the equally addictive world of breaking news. From the top of the reporting world to its dregs and back again, Leopold takes us on a journey through some of the biggest events of the recent past, all the while letting us into his inner struggles.With an unforgettable array of characters, from weepy editors and love-starved politicos to steroid-pumped mobsters who intimidate the author into selling drugs and stolen goods, News Junkie shows how a man once fueled by raging fear and self-hatred transforms his life, regenerated by love, sobriety and a new, harmonious career with the media.

    

    As they see matters, wealth in the form of means of production and wealth in the form of consumers’ goods are essentially indistinguishable. For all practical purposes, they have no awareness of the existence of capital and of its importance. Thus, capitalists are generally depicted as fat men, whose girth allegedly signifies an excessive consumption of food and of wealth in general, while their alleged victims, the wage earners, are typically depicted as substantially underweight, allegedly signifying their inability to consume, thanks to the allegedly starvation wages paid by the capitalists.The truth is that in a capitalist economic system, the wealth of the capitalists is not only overwhelmingly in the form of means of production, such as factory buildings, machinery, farms, mines, stores, warehouses, and means of transportation and communication, but all of this wealth is employed in producing for the market, where its benefit is made available to everyone in the economic system who is able to afford to buy its products.Consider. Whoever can afford to buy an automobile benefits from the existence of the automobile factory and its equipment where that car was made. He also benefits from the existence of all the other automobile factories, whose existence and competition served to reduce the price he had to pay for his automobile. He benefits from the existence of the steel mill that provided the steel for his car, and from the iron mine that provided the iron ore needed for the production of that steel, and, of course, from the existence of all the other steel mills and iron mines whose existence and competition served to hold down the prices of the steel and iron ore that contributed to the production of his car.And, thanks to the great magnitude of wealth employed as capital, the demand for labor, of which capital is the foundation, is great enough and thus wages are high enough that virtually everyone is able to afford to a substantial degree most of the products of the economic system. For the capital of the capitalists is the foundation both of the supply of products that everyone buys and of the demand for the labor that all wage earners sell. More capital—a greater amount of wealth in the possession of the capitalists—means a both a larger and better supply of products for wage earners to buy and a greater demand for the labor that wage earners sell. Everyone, wage earners and capitalists alike, benefits from the wealth of the capitalists, because, as I say, that wealth is the foundation of the supply of the products that everyone buys and of the demand for the labor that all wage earners sell. More capital in the hands of the capitalists always means a more abundant, better quality of goods and services offered for sale and a larger demand for labor. The further effect is lower prices and higher wages, and thus a higher standard of living for wage earners.Furthermore, the combination of the profit motive and competition operates continually to improve the products offered in the market and the efficiency with which they are produced, thus steadily further improving the standard of living of everyone.In the alleged conflict between the so-called 99 percent and the so-called 1 percent, the program of the 99 percent is to seize as far as possible the wealth of the 1 percent and consume it. To the extent that it is enacted, the effect of this program can only be to impoverish everyone, and the 99 percent to a far greater extent than the 1 percent. To the extent that the 1 percent loses its mansions, luxury cars, and champagne and caviar, 99 times as many people lose their houses, run-of-the mill cars, and steak and hamburger.

    Schiller's version is based on an ancient Greek legend recorded by the Roman author Gaius Julius Hyginus.The most prominent theme of "Run, Melos!" is unwavering friendship. Despite facing hardships, the protagonist Melos does his best to save his friend's life, and in the end his efforts are rewarded.

    It draws on extensive interviews with Kissinger, as well as 150 other sources, including Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In addition, it makes use of many of Kissinger's private papers. The result is an intimate narrative, filled with surprising revelations, that takes this century's most colorful statesman from his childhood as a persecuted Jew in Nazi Germany, through his tortured relationship with Richard Nixon, to his twilight years as a globe-trotting business consultant.

    Meridian exercise is a technique developed and perfected over the course of thousands of years in the Asian healing arts traditions.

    Though most people know of him only for the famous Pythagorean Theorem (a2 +b2=c2), in fact the pillars of our scientific tradition—belief that the universe is rational, that there is unity to all things, and that numbers and mathematics are a powerful guide to truth about nature and the cosmos—hark back to the convictions of this legendary sixth-century B.C. scholar.Born around 570 B.C. on the cultured Aegean island of Samos, Pythagoras (according to ancient tales) studied with the sage Thales nearby at Miletus, and with priests and scribes in Egypt and Babylon. Eventually he founded his own school at Croton in southern Italy, where he and his followers began to unravel the surprising deep truths concealed behind such ordinary tasks as tuning a lyre. While considering why some string lengths produced beautiful sounds and others discordant ones, they uncovered the ratios of musical harmony, and recognized that hidden behind the confusion and complexity of nature are patterns and orderly relationships. They had surprised the Creator at his drafting board and had glimpsed the mind of God! Some of them later would also find something darker in numbers and nature: irrationality, a revelation so unsettling and subversive that it may have contributed to the destruction of their brotherhood.Praised for her ability to illuminate complex subjects, Kitty Ferguson brilliantly evokes the archaic world of Pythagoras, showing how ideas spread in antiquity, chronicling the influence he and his followers have had on so many extraordinary people in the history of Western thought and science, and bringing a poignant human saga to readers who are daily reminded that harmony and chaos can and do coexist.

    

    In her first US cookbook, Ching shows readers how to make fresh, simple, delicious, and satisfying takeout food without ever leaving their homes. From the traditional Chicken Chow Mein to the adventurous Cantonese style steamed Lobster with Ginger Soy Sauce, here is delicious do-it-yourself Chinese food without the delivery guy…just as tasty and healthier than anything you can get at your favorite Chinese restaurant.

    The complete versions of both works are too long to be taught in one term, and this abridgement answers the need for a one-volume edition of both works suitable for use in survey courses in classical Japanese literature or world literature in translation and by the general reader daunted by the complete works. The translator has selected representative portions of the two texts with a view to shaping the abridgments into coherent, aesthetically acceptable wholes.Often called the world's earliest novel, The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, is a poetic evocation of aristocratic life in eleventh-century Japan, a period of brilliant cultural efflorescence. This new translation focuses on important events in the life of its main character, Genji. It traces the full length of Genji's relationship with Murasaki, the deepest and most enduring of his emotional attachments, and contains all or parts of 10 of the 41 chapters in which Genji figures, including the "Broom Tree" chapter, which provides a reprise of the themes of the book.In romanticized but essentially truthful fashion, The Tale of the Heike describes the late twelfth-century political intrigues and battlefield clashes that led to the eclipse of the Kyoto court and the establishment of a military government by the rival Minamoto (Genji) clan. Its underlying theme, the evanescence of worldly things, echoes some of the concerns of the Genji, but its language preserves many traces of oral composition, and its vigor and expansiveness contrast sharply with the pensive, elegant tone of the Genji. The selections of the Heike, about 40 percent of the work, are taken from the translator's complete edition, which received great acclaim: "this version of the Heike is superb and indeed reveals to English-language readers for the first time the full scope, grandeur, and literary richness of the work."—Journal of Asian StudiesFor both the Genji and the Heike abridgments, the translator has provided introductions, headnote summaries, and other supplementary materials designed to help readers follow the sometimes confused story lines and keep the characters straight. The book also includes an appendix, a glossary, a bibliography, and two maps.

    The year is 1986, and the strange communal life of this foursome, extending over half a year, from the end of winter to midsummer, makes up the plot,such as it is, of Plainsong, as this ersatz family finds itself growing closer, and lifecontinues—quietly—around them. Part of the generation that grew to prominence following the success of baby boomers like Haruki Murakami, KazushiHosaka’s work chronicles the small moments, the moments without conflict,that most novels work to elide. His characters talk, work, exist; their story is onewhere the tiniest occurrence takes on the proportions of a grand drama.