What we don't see is how both powerful and ordinary people are remaking their lives as their country dramatically changes. As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party's struggle to retain control. He asks probing questions: Why does a government with more success lifting people from poverty than any civilization in history choose to put strict restraints on freedom of expression? Why do millions of young Chinese professionals-fluent in English and devoted to Western pop culture-consider themselves "angry youth," dedicated to resisting the West's influence? How are Chinese from all strata finding meaning after two decades of the relentless pursuit of wealth? Writing with great narrative verve and a keen sense of irony, Osnos follows the moving stories of everyday people and reveals life in the new China to be a battleground between aspiration and authoritarianism, in which only one can prevail.

    "I turned down a job in finance to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. My dad thought I was crazy. But I figured it was better to disappoint my parents for a few years than to disappoint myself for the rest of my life. I had to disappoint them in order to pursue what I loved. That was the only way to have my Chinese turnip cake and eat an American apple pie too." Jimmy O. Yang is a standup comedian, film and TV actor and fan favorite as the character Jian Yang from the popular HBO series Silicon Valley. In How to American, he shares his story of growing up as a Chinese immigrant who pursued a Hollywood career against the wishes of his parents: Yang arrived in Los Angeles from Hong Kong at age 13, learned English by watching BET RapCity for three hours a day, and worked as a strip club DJ while pursuing his comedy career. He chronicles a near deportation episode during a college trip Tijuana to finally becoming a proud US citizen ten years later. Featuring those and many other hilarious stories, while sharing some hard-earned lessons, How to American mocks stereotypes while offering tongue in cheek advice on pursuing the American dreams of fame, fortune, and strippers.

    Go beyond the shrines, sushi and subway and discover Japan through its language and people.

    But what we're finding is this: knowing which Harry Potter character you are is easy, but actually knowing yourself isn't as simple as just checking a few boxes on an online quiz.For readers who long to dig deeper into what makes them uniquely them (and why that matters), popular blogger Anne Bogel has done the hard part--collecting, exploring, and explaining the most popular personality frameworks, such as Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, Enneagram, and others. She explains to readers the life-changing insights that can be gained from each and shares specific, practical real-life applications across all facets of life, including love and marriage, productivity, parenting, the workplace, and spiritual life. In her friendly, relatable style, Bogel shares engaging personal stories that show firsthand how understanding personality can revolutionize the way we live, love, work, and pray.

    The British expected R.101 to spearhead a fleet of imperial airships that would dominate the skies as British naval ships, a century earlier, had ruled the seas. The dream ended when, on its demonstration flight to India, R.101 crashed in France, tragically killing nearly all aboard.Combining meticulous research with superb storytelling, Fatal Flight guides us from the moment the great airship emerged from its giant shed—nearly the largest building in the British Empire—to soar on its first flight, to its last fateful voyage. The full story behind R.101 shows that, although it was a failure, it was nevertheless a supremely imaginative human creation. The technical achievement of creating R.101 reveals the beauty, majesty, and, of course, the sorrow of the human experience.The narrative follows First Officer Noel Atherstone and his crew from the ship’s first test flight in 1929 to its fiery crash on October 5, 1930. It reveals in graphic detail the heroic actions of Atherstone as he battled tremendous obstacles. He fought political pressures to hurry the ship into the air, fended off Britain’s most feted airship pilot, who used his influence to take command of the ship and nearly crashed it, and, a scant two months before departing for India, guided the rebuilding of the ship to correct its faulty design. After this tragic accident, Britain abandoned airships, but R.101 flew again, its scrap melted down and sold to the Zeppelin Company, who used it to create LZ 129, an airship even more mighty than R.101—and better known as the Hindenburg. Set against the backdrop of the British Empire at the height of its power in the early twentieth century,Fatal Flight portrays an extraordinary age in technology, fueled by humankind’s obsession with flight.

    Their extraordinary journey takes us from the brutal poverty of village life in mainland China, to newly prosperous 1930s Hong Kong and finally to the West. Their lives were as dramatic as the times they lived through.A love of food and a talent cooking pulled each generation through the most devastating of upheavals. Helen Tse's grandmother, Lily Kowk, was forced to work as an amah after the violent murder of her father. She honed her famous chicken curry recipe as she crossed the ocean from Hong Kong in the 1950s, and she eventually opened her own restaurant where her daughter, Mabel, worked from the tender age of seven. But gambling and the Triads were pervasive in the Chinese immigrant community, and they tragically lost the restaurant. It was up to Helen and her sisters, the third generation of these exceptional women, to re-establish their grandmother's dream.Sweet Mandarin shows how the most important inheritance is wisdom, and how recipes - passed down the female line - can be the most valuable heirloom.

    The emergence of factories, railroads, and gunboats propelled the West’s rise to power in the nineteenth century, and the development of computers and nuclear weapons in the twentieth century secured its global supremacy. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, many worry that the emerging economic power of China and India spells the end of the West as a superpower. In order to understand this possibility, we need to look back in time. Why has the West dominated the globe for the past two hundred years, and will its power last?Describing the patterns of human history, the archaeologist and historian Ian Morris offers surprising new answers to both questions. It is not, he reveals, differences of race or culture, or even the strivings of great individuals, that explain Western dominance. It is the effects of geography on the everyday efforts of ordinary people as they deal with crises of resources, disease, migration, and climate. As geography and human ingenuity continue to interact, the world will change in astonishing ways, transforming Western rule in the process.Deeply researched and brilliantly argued, Why the West Rules—for Now spans fifty thousand years of history and offers fresh insights on nearly every page. The book brings together the latest findings across disciplines—from ancient history to neuroscience—not only to explain why the West came to rule the world but also to predict what the future will bring in the next hundred years.

    You need a system for learning Spanish that takes you from beginner to expert to fluent! If you want to become fluent in Spanish, this book is for you! In this best selling book on becoming fluent in Spanish, you will learn: The Complete Spanish Fluency Training Program Most people think you need a great Spanish teacher or Spanish immersion program to become fluent in Spanish. While both great teachers and immersion language training can definitely help improve your Spanish speaking skills, many students find that typical courses and short-term immersion experiences are not sufficient to become totally fluent. Sorry, but it's just not that easy to attain fluency. It takes dedication and hard work with the right Spanish learning techniques. How to Learn Spanish Faster In this book, the author recommends a Spanish training system that will allow you to learn the language faster and become fluent much more easily by training yourself how to learn the precise skills you need. Is it hard work? Yes, it is. But it's what it takes to become fluent in Spanish. This little guidebook will save you a ton of time and frustration on your journey to becoming a proficient and fluent Spanish speaker. If you think you can become fluent by simply studying a Spanish-English dictionary and taking a few classes, you're mistaken. Mastering Spanish grammar and the spoken language requires a deeper level of understanding and practice. This Spanish language learning system developed by John Del Gaudio was specifically designed to help you master the parts of the language learning process that hold most Spanish students back from speaking fluently. If you're looking for Spanish books on Kindle so you can become fluent, this one is for you! About The Author John Del Gaudio received his B.A. in Spanish from SUNY at Stony Brook, and spent his junior year at the University of Puerto Rico studying Spanish language and literature. He has traveled extensively in Latin America and resided in Mexico for four years and two in Colombia. He holds the Basic and Advanced Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera. He is a practicing lawyer in Chicago, Illinois, and has been a translator of Spanish legal documents. Whether you're a beginner or seasoned Spanish speaker, this simple system will allow you to achieve fluency faster than ever before. If you want a little guidebook that will save you a ton of time and frustration on your journey to become fluent in Spanish, How to Become Fluent in Spanish is the book for you. If you're ready to learn Spanish like a pro, scroll up and click "buy now" to get started.

    The boy is kept manacled in a pit, chained to a tree, and locked in a closet. The perps—a career bank robber, a petty thief, and his nineteen-year-old never-been-in-trouble Mormon wife—quickly become the targets of the biggest manhunt in Northwest history. The caper plays out like a Hollywood thriller with countless twists and improbable developments. Perhaps the most astonishing thing of all, though, is how it all ends.

    In this new edition, numerous revisions and additions have been made, taking into account the comments and responses of both students and teachers who have been using the course. In Book I, the revisions are directed at making the grammatical explanations easier to understand, while adding further explanations of points that students have difficulty with. Changes have also been made in favor of more natural practice sentences and dialogues. In addition, new appendices list the particles, interrogatives, and sentence patterns in the book, as well as the kanji introduced. More fundamental revisions have been made to Book II, which has been expanded and divided into two volumes, Book II and Book Ill. The changes result in a smoother transition from Book I, make new grammatical elements clearer, and present more natural practice dialogues and exercise sentences. THE JAPANESE FOR BUSY PEOPLE COURSE This concise course in natural Japanese is ideal for such students as businessmen whose aim is a working knowledge of the spoken language in everyday life. Survival Japanese for Adults, ' as it might be called, gets to the heart of the language without recourse to childish or classroom-only Japanese. Book II consists of twenty lessons in the same format as Book I, with dialogues, notes on grammar, and vocabulary, exercises and quizzes. The dialogues introduce the daily language and life of adult Japanese and, compared with Book I, conversations are more natural and include abbreviated expressions and suitable responses. In this revised Book II, kanji are introduced systematically, and alternate readings, stroke order and associated kanji are given for the characters appearing in each chapter.

    So whether you?re planning a trip to Beijing, flirting with an online acquaintance from Shanghai, or just want to start a fight in Chinatown--Niubi! will ensure that nothing you say is lost in translation.

    She tells the story of a Tibetan town perched eleven thousand feet above sea level that is one of the most difficult places in all of China for foreigners to visit. Ngaba was one of the first places where the Tibetans and the Chinese Communists encountered one another. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong’s Red Army fled into the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter—to Tibetans, it was as if they were eating the Buddha. Their experiences would make Ngaba one of the engines of Tibetan resistance for decades to come, culminating in shocking acts of self-immolation. Eat the Buddha spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history, as told through the private lives of Demick’s subjects, among them a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young Tibetan nomad who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirti, an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive lure of Chinese money. All of them face the same dilemma: Do they resist the Chinese, or do they join them? Do they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight? Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one’s culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.

    As they exchanged vows, Susan thought she'd stumbled into an exotic fairy tale, until she realized Cai--and his culture--where not what she thought.In her riveting memoir, Susan recounts her struggle to be the perfect traditional Chinese wife to her increasingly controlling and abusive husband. With keen insight and heart-wrenching candor, she confronts the hopes and hazards of intercultural marriage, including dismissing her own values and needs to save her relationship and protect her newborn son, Jake. But when Cai threatens to take Jake back to China for good, Susan must find the courage to stand up for herself, her son, and her future.Moving between rural China and the bustling cities of Hong Kong and San Francisco, Good Chinese Wife is an eye-opening look at marriage and family in contemporary China and America and an inspiring testament to the resilience of a mother's love--across any border.

    Includes new political terminology, new Russian institutions, new countries and republics and new city names. Contains 26,000 entries in the English-Russian section and 40,000 words in the Russian-English section. Irregularities in Russian declensions and conjugations appear at the beginning of each entry.

    We turn to philosophy for the same reasons we travel: to see the world from a dif­ferent perspective, to unearth hidden beauty, and to find new ways of being. We want to learn how to embrace wonder. Face regrets. Sustain hope. Eric Weiner combines his twin passions for philosophy and global travel in a pil­grimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from great thinkers around the world, from Rousseau to Nietzsche, Confucius to Simone Weil. Traveling by train (the most thoughtful mode of transport), he journeys thousands of miles, making stops in Athens, Delhi, Wyoming, Coney Island, Frankfurt, and points in between to recon­nect with philosophy’s original purpose: teaching us how to lead wiser, more meaningful lives. From Socrates and ancient Athens to Simone de Beauvoir and twentieth-century Paris, Weiner’s chosen philosophers and places provide important signposts as we navigate today’s chaotic times. In The Socrates Express, Weiner invites us to voyage alongside him on his life-changing pursuit of wisdom and discovery as he attempts to find answers to our most vital questions.