Raised in a powerful Chinese family, the beautiful, brilliant, and captivating Soong Mayling married Nationalist leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and went on to become his chief adviser, interpreter, and propagandist. When the Communists broke with Chiang’s Nationalist Party, Mayling and her sister, the widow of Sun Yat-Sen, found themselves on opposing sides of a civil war. A relentless crusader speaking out against Communism well into her nineties, she sparred with international leaders and impressed Westerners and Chinese alike with her acumen, charm, and glamour. But she was also decried as a manipulative “Dragon Lady” and was despised for living in Western-style splendor while Chinese citizens suffered under her husband’s brutal oppression. The result of years of extensive research in the United States and abroad and access to previously classified CIA and diplomatic files, here at last is the story of an extraordinary woman who has become a symbol of America’s long, vexed love affair with China and China’s own struggle to define itself as a world power.

    If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. In California, wildfires now rage year-round, destroying thousands of homes. Across the US, "500-year" storms pummel communities month after month, and floods displace tens of millions annually.This is only a preview of the changes to come. And they are coming fast. Without a revolution in how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth could become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await--food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today.Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation.

    Start now. All it takes is 2 minutes of your time.'I read this book yesterday and I've done three things today and that is testament to Martin's brilliant vision and ideas. Now it's your turn!' Chris Packham'Once, plastic was the miracle material. Now it's the monster. We all need to cut down our plastic consumption and join Martin's #2minutesolution anti-plastic movement. I'm in.' Julia BradburyOpen this book with your children, give it to your friends. Share your #2minutesolution on twitter and instagram and inspire others. Martin Dorey, anti-plastics expert, has been working to save our beaches from plastic for the past 10 years. His Beach Clean Foundation and global call to arms #2minutebeachclean has been taken up by people all over the world, and has proven that collective small actions can add up to a big difference. Together we can fix this.

    Written in Chinese from a Chinese point of view for a Chinese audience, From the Soil describes the contrasting organizational principles of Chinese and Western societies, thereby conveying the essential features of both. Fei shows how these unique features reflect and are reflected in the moral and ethical characters of people in these societies. This profound, challenging book is both succinct and accessible. In its first complete English-language edition, it is likely to have a wide impact on Western social theorists.Gary G. Hamilton and Wang Zheng's translation captures Fei's jargonless, straightforward style of writing. Their introduction describes Fei's education and career as a sociologist, the fate of his writings on and off the Mainland, and the sociological significance of his analysis. The translators' epilogue highlights the social reforms for China that Fei drew from his analysis and advocated in a companion text written in the same period.

    Following Paul from New York, where he comically navigates Manhattan's art and literary scenes, to Taipei, Taiwan, where he confronts his family's roots, we see one relationship fail, while another is born on the internet and blooms into an unexpected wedding in Las Vegas.From one of this generation's most talked-about and enigmatic writers comes a deeply personal and uncompromising novel about memory, love, and what it means to be alive.

    Author Jigar Shah, internationally recognized for revolutionizing the now multi-billion-dollar solar energy industry, outlines how entrepreneurs and investors can unlock the massive potential that climate change represents. Shah argues that, while new technical innovation is valuable, deployment of existing technologies are the key to reaching our near-term climate targets. Rather than waiting for yet to be developed technology, business model innovation is the key to attract mainstream capital and unlock transformational change. Shah makes a compelling case for reaching our 2020 climate change goals through 100,000 companies worldwide, each generating $100 million in sales. Unlocking our next economy will be driven by thousands of companies deploying existing clean and resource-efficient technologies in electricity-supply (like solar), transportation, building materials, industry, forestry, waste, and agriculture. Shah is not alone; according to the International Energy Agency, and others, $10 trillion can be invested profitably—today—in the world’s existing technologies, making Shah’s plan of 100,000 companies each generating $100 million in sales a reality in catalyzing a new economy in the process. Creating Climate Wealth is also the personal story of Shah’s journey through the solar industry and the founding of SunEdison, the world’s largest solar energy company. Through business model innovations, SunEdison helped trigger the multi-billion dollar solar energy services industry. Shah’s revolutionary approach has been emulated throughout the solar industry. But perhaps more important, it is also being adapted for other industrial sectors like agriculture and transportation – unlocking incredible new revenue streams, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and positively transforming the planet on a global level. This implementation of business-based solutions to solve complex social problems represents a new economic movement; driven by “Impact Investments.” Impact Investments are changing the world for the better, promoting development and economic growth, and encouraging local entrepreneurship. Unlocking these opportunities represent the largest wealth creation opportunity of our generation. Whether you are interested in climate change, poverty alleviation, or just promoting projects that make financial sense, this book is for you. Jigar Shah provides a proven roadmap to understanding the Impact Economy, and creating the lasting changes that will improve our world for future generations.

    Holding her first grandchild in her arms in 2003, Mary Robinson was struck by the uncertainty of the world he had been born into. Before his fiftieth birthday, he would share the planet with more than nine billion people--people battling for food, water, and shelter in an increasingly volatile climate. The faceless, shadowy menace of climate change had become, in an instant, deeply personal.Mary Robinson's mission would lead her all over the world, from Malawi to Mongolia, and to a heartening revelation: that an irrepressible driving force in the battle for climate justice could be found at the grassroots level, mainly among women, many of them mothers and grandmothers like herself. From Sharon Hanshaw, the Mississippi matriarch whose campaign began in her East Biloxi hair salon and culminated in her speaking at the United Nations, to Constance Okollet, a small farmer who transformed the fortunes of her ailing community in rural Uganda, Robinson met with ordinary people whose resilience and ingenuity had already unlocked extraordinary change.Powerful and deeply humane, Climate Justice is a stirring manifesto on one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of our time, and a lucid, affirmative, and well-argued case for hope.“As advocate for the forgotten and the ignored, Mary Robinson has not only shone a light on human suffering, but illuminated a better future for our world.” -Barack Obama

    That is the legacy we are leaving our children and grandchildren. Plastic flows into our lives from every direction and most of it is not recycled. Instead it is incinerated or ends up in landfill, where it will sit for hundreds of years, or enters the world's seas where it fragments into tiny pieces to become microplastics - the environmental scourge of our times. Many of us had assumed that governments, brands and waste authorities were dealing with plastic on our behalf. But the impact of shows such as Blue Planet along with national beach cleans and high-profile campaigns have resulted in a collective wake-up call. If there were plans and strategies, they have not worked as we imagined. It would be easy to feel despondent but instead we need to turn our anger and emotion into action, starting by making a big dent in our own enormous consumption. Turning the tide on Plastic is here just in time. Journalist, broadcaster and eco lifestyle expert Lucy Siegle provides a powerful call to arms to end the plastic pandemic along with the tools we need to make decisive change. It is a clear-eyed, authoritative and accessible guide to help us to take decisive and effective personal action. Because this matters. When it comes to single-use plastics, we are habitual users, reaching out for plastic water bottles, disposable coffee cups, plastic straws and carrier bags multiple times a day. If only 12 of us adopt Lucy's 'reduce, rethink, refill, refuse' approach, we could potentially ditch 3K-15K single items of plastic in a year. When we consider our power as influencers - whether at school, the hairdressers, at work or on the bus - we suddenly become part of something significant. So now is the time to speak up, take action and demand the change you want to see in the ocean, in the supermarket aisles and on the streets. It's time to turn the tide on plastic, and this book will show you how.

    

    Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, The New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

    We recycle, try to reduce our waste and plastics, choose organic food when shopping, eat less meat, and opt for environmentally friendly cleaning products. Yet we often wish we were doing more and it can be overwhelming to know where to start. Live Green is a practical guide of 52 tips and changes you can make to your home and lifestyle over the course of a year. Tackling all areas of your life from home and garden, your cleaning routine, food, fashion, natural beauty, and Christmas, this book has all the ingredients to help you achieve a more sustainable existence. Learn how to modify your daily habits to rid yourself of environmental guilt and rediscover the pleasures of living a slower and simpler life. From creating your own eco-friendly cleaning products and improving your natural beauty regime to creating a capsule wardrobe and composting – discover how to get the most out of life by living more intentionally. Live simply. Live Green.

    Come with me--see what I have seen--and try to understand what global warming really means for us and for our children. Leave Washington and travel to the places I have visited..."--From the PrefaceA glacier disappears high in the Peruvian Andes. Floodwaters surge across the English countryside. Ten thousand Pacific Islanders begin to evacuate their homeland. A dust storm turns day into night across the Inner Mongolian plains. These events may seem unrelated, but they are not. Even as scientists and other experts debate the specifics, climate crisis is already affecting the lives of millions.In this ground-breaking book, Mark Lynas reveals the first evidence--collected during an epic three-year journey across five continents--about how global warming is hitting people's lives all around the world. From American hurricane chasers to Mongolian herders, from Alaskan Eskimos to South Sea islanders, Lynas's encounters and discoveries give us a stark warning about the even worse dangers that lie ahead if nothing is done.High Tide's message is urgent and its revelations are at once shocking and inspiring--shocking as so few of us yet realize the magnitude of what's happening, and inspiring as there is still time to avert much greater catastrophe. No one who reads this book will be able to look their children in the eyes and say "I didn't know."As global temperatures soar to record levels, Lynas bears witness to:- CRIPPLING DROUGHT: China's Yellow River no longer reaches the sea for half the year, and villages across the north of the country are disappearing under advancing sand dunes- BAKED ALASKA: Permafrost is melting, leaving houses, roads and whole forests sucked into the thawing ground. Winter is in retreat, leaving animals confused and Native Alaskan people without a livelihood- DISAPPEARING GLACIERS: Every glaciated mountain range on Earth is experiencing massive ice losses. Montana's Glacier National Park has lost 100 glaciers in the last century; only 50 remain. Water supplies to hundreds of millions of people--from Peru to Pakistan--are threatened- HIGH TIDES: Islanders on the tiny South Pacific nation of Tuvalu are already leaving their homeland as rising sea levels engulf their atolls. Today 70 percent of the world's sandy shorelines are retreating; up to 90 percent of the beaches on the Eastern U.S. seaboard are eroding fast- CATASTROPHIC FLOODS: English villagers now talk about a "wet season" rather than a winter. Heavier rainfall is now falling across the global mid-latitudes, from the continental U.S. to Russia, sparking devastating floods on an ever more frequent basis.

    Her actions sparked a global movement, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.No One Is Too Small to Make A Difference brings you Greta in her own words, for the first time. Collecting her speeches that have made history across the globe, from the United Nations to Capitol Hill and mass street protests, her book is a rallying cry for why we must all wake up and fight to protect the living planet, no matter how powerless we feel. Our future depends upon it.

    Now the authors have returned to Chen Village to bring the village's tumultuous story up to the nineties. Chen Village Under Mao and Deng includes not only the bulk of the original text of Chen Village, but also three new chapters on village life under Deng: gripping descriptions of the village leader's purge, the rapid industrialization of the district, an alienated "lost generation" of young peasants, and the new village officials' legal and illegal efforts at self-enrichment. Readers who enjoyed Chen Village will be doubly fascinated by the ironic twists and turns of recent events among the Chens.

    In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York's subways would start eroding the city's foundations, and how, as the world's cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dalai Lama, and paleontologists—who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths—Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.From places already devoid of humans (a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; Chernobyl), Weisman reveals Earth's tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman's narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn't depend on our demise. It is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and in posing an irresistible concept with both gravity and a highly readable touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.