John Rutledge stepped down as Associate Justice to become a state judge in South Carolina; John Jay resigned as Chief Justice to run for Governor of New York; and Alexander Hamilton declined to replace Jay, pursuing a private law practice instead. As Bernard Schwartz shows in this landmark history, the Supreme Court has indeed travelled a long and interesting journey to its current preeminent place in American life. In A History of the Supreme Court, Schwartz provides the finest, most comprehensive one-volume narrative ever published of our highest court. With impeccable scholarship and a clear, engaging style, he tells the story of the justices and their jurisprudence--and the influence the Court has had on American politics and society. With a keen ability to explain complex legal issues for the nonspecialist, he takes us through both the great and the undistinguished Courts of our nation's history. He provides insight into our foremost justices, such as John Marshall (who established judicial review in Marbury v. Madison, an outstanding display of political calculation as well as fine jurisprudence), Roger Taney (whose legacy has been overshadowed by Dred Scott v. Sanford), Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, and others. He draws on evidence such as personal letters and interviews to show how the court has worked, weaving narrative details into deft discussions of the developments in constitutional law. Schwartz also examines the operations of the court: until 1935, it met in a small room under the Senate--so cramped that the judges had to put on their robes in full view of the spectators. But when the new building was finally opened, one justice called it almost bombastically pretentious, and another asked, What are we supposed to do, ride in on nine elephants? He includes fascinating asides, on the debate in the first Court, for instance, over the use of English-style wigs and gowns (the decision: gowns, no wigs); and on the day Oliver Wendell Holmes announced his resignation--the same day that Earl Warren, as a California District Attorney, argued his first case before the Court. The author brings the story right up to the present day, offering balanced analyses of the pivotal Warren Court and the Rehnquist Court through 1992 (including, of course, the arrival of Clarence Thomas). In addition, he includes four special chapters on watershed cases: Dred Scott v. Sanford, Lochner v. New York, Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade. Schwartz not only analyzes the impact of each of these epoch-making cases, he takes us behind the scenes, drawing on all available evidence to show how the justices debated the cases and how they settled on their opinions. Bernard Schwartz is one of the most highly regarded scholars of the Supreme Court, author of dozens of books on the law, and winner of the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. In this remarkable account, he provides the definitive one-volume account of our nation's highest court.

    Shanghai Station is a compelling tale of political terror and personal vengeance that unfolds in 1918 in China's colorful, turbulent port city of Shanghai. Well-born Alexander Karlov arrives in Shanghai with a mission, for the Bolsheviks have brutally killed his mother and abducted his twin sister. Vengeance commands Alexander's soul. It also entangles him in perilous allianceswith the Cossack hit man Ivan Semyonov; with Mei-lan, a woman who knows Shanghai's darkest secrets; with "Big Ear," leader of the city's most powerful Triad; with the French police; and with a spirited young American woman who calls herself Jesse James."

    Over time, they would fully understand her extraordinary story. Ruth was born in China at the beginning of the 20th century, during the reign of the last emperor. Educated by American missionaries, she was one of the first women admitted into a Chinese university, during an era when most Chinese women were illiterate and had bound feet. She would defy tradition and refuse to marry the man her family had chosen for her, instead choosing his younger brother as her husband. Later, as the Japanese Army advanced across China during World War II, her foresight and quick thinking kept her family alive as she, her husband, and their three sons were forced to flee from city to city. In war-torn Chungking, she was Lady Mountbatten's interpreter as the Allies struggled to help China. After the war, the Chais immigrated to the U.S. to what seemed, until Ruth's death, a happier and more peaceful life.In this extraordinary family epic, Ruth's first-born son, Winberg, and his daughter May-lee explore family history to reconstruct her life as they seek to understand her fateful decision. As Winberg writes: "It is my duty to try to understand my mother, to seek answers. To ignore the past is too much like forgetting . . . I hope my memories are enough to fulfill a son's obligations."

    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.

    To their astonishment, they found they had landed in the heart of Tibet. There they had to confront what, to them, seemed a bizarre--even alien--people. At the same time, they had to extricate themselves from the political turmoil that even then was raging around Tibet's right to be independent from China.Now back in print, Lost in Tibet is an extraordinary story of high adventure that sheds light on the remarkable Tibetan people, just at the moment when they were coming to terms with a hostile outside world.

    From unexpected verdicts, like the acquittal won by John Adams when he defended British soldiers charged with the Boston Massacre in 1770 to stirred passions when abolitionist John Brown was convicted of murder - a precedent to the Civil War - to the breakthrough in racial relations when Clarence Darrow won a stunning "not guilty" verdict for black physician Ossian Sweet - at a time when black Americans could hardly expect a fair trial. Fleming also includes the trials of Aaron Burr for treason and a well-known congressman for murder. In courtrooms throughout the nation's history, vivid emotion and heated rhetoric have established consequential precedents and enlarged average men and women to historical dimensions.

    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.

    The Classic of Mountains and Seas explores 204 mythical figures such as the gods Foremost, Fond Care, and Yellow, and goddesses Queen Mother of the West and Girl Lovely, as well as many other figures unknown outside this text. This eclectic Classic also contains crucial information on early medicine (with cures for impotence and infertility), omens to avert catastrophe, and rites of sacrifice, and familiar and unidentified plants and animals. It offers a guided tour of the known world in antiquity, moving outwards from the famous mountains of central China to the lands beyond the seas. Translated with an introduction and notes by Anne Birrell."

    Youll be gripped by tales of murder, intrigue, crime, punishment and the pursuit of justice. Despite how unbelievable the stories banged up inside these pages may seem, Law's Strangest Cases promises to tell the truth, the whole truthand nothing but the truth about the most ludicrous criminal cases in legal history. Full of riotous and entertaining stories, this book is perfect for anyone who is doing time on a long stretch. Just dont try to steal it, or you may end up inside! Inside youll encounter: The only dead parrot ever to give evidence in a court of lawOne of the most indigestible dilemmas if youd been shipwrecked 2,000 miles from home, would you have eaten Parker the cabin boy?The doctor with the worst bedside manner of all timeThe murderess who collected money from her mummified victim for 21 years Word count: 45,000

    Four thousand metres above this city was a country of stone and ice, and, even though it was officially closed, there was still a way in. A compelling and unforgettable encounter on the roof of the world… Hoping to reach Tibet after a twenty-year obsession, Charlie Carroll travelled to China. Contending with Chinese bureaucracy, unforgiving terrain and sickness-inducing altitude, Charlie experienced twenty-first-century Tibet in all its heartbreaking beauty. Tibetan-born Lobsang fled the volatile region over the Himalayas, on foot, as a child in 1989. An exile in Nepal, then a student in India, he was called back to Tibet by love. At the end of the road known as the Friendship Highway, he met Charlie and recounted his extraordinary life story, exemplifying the hardship, resilience and hope of modern Tibetan life.

    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.

    It is an “important book…a powerful corrective to the standard narrative of the Burger Court” (The New York Times Book Review).When Richard Nixon campaigned for the presidency in 1968 he promised to change the Supreme Court. With four appointments to the court, including Warren E. Burger as the chief justice, he did just that. In 1969, the Burger Court succeeded the famously liberal Warren Court, which had significantly expanded civil liberties and was despised by conservatives across the country. The Burger Court is often described as a “transitional” court between the Warren Court and the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts, a court where little of importance happened. But as this “landmark new book” (The Christian Science Monitor) shows, the Burger Court veered well to the right in such areas as criminal law, race, and corporate power. Authors Graetz and Greenhouse excavate the roots of the most significant Burger Court decisions and in “elegant, illuminating arguments” (The Washington Post) show how their legacy affects us today. “Timely and engaging” (Richmond Times-Dispatch), The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right draws on the personal papers of the justices as well as other archives to provide “the best kind of legal history: cogent, relevant, and timely” (Publishers Weekly).

    But as different as the Han culture might have been to other great ancient civilizations, the inhabitants of ancient China faced the same problems as people have for time immemorial: earning enough money, coping with workplace dramas and keeping your home in order … although the equivalent in this era was more about bribing inspectors, avoiding bullying from abusive watchmen and trying to keep your house from being looted by Huns. In each chapter we meet one of 24 citizens of this ancient culture, from the midwife to the soldier, the priest to the performer and the bronze worker to the tomb looter, and see what an average day in ancient China was really like.

    Now, in China: The Novel, Rutherfurd takes readers into the rich and fascinating milieu of the Middle Kingdom..The story begins in 1839, at the dawn of the First Opium War, and follows Chinese history through Mao's Cultural Revolution and up to the present day. Rutherfurd chronicles the rising and falling fortunes of members of Chinese, British, and American families, as they negotiate the tides of history. Along the way, in his signature style, Rutherfurd provides a deeply researched portrait of Chinese history and society, its ancient traditions and great upheavals, and China's emergence as a rising global power. As always, we are treated to romance and adventure, heroines and scoundrels, grinding struggle and incredible fortunes. China: The Novel brings to life the rich terrain of this vast and constantly evolving country. From Shanghai to Nanking to the Great Wall, Rutherfurd chronicles the turbulent rise and fall of empires as the colonial West meets the opulent and complex East in a dramatic struggle between cultures and people.Extraordinarily researched and majestically told, Edward Rutherfurd paints a thrilling portrait of one of the most singular and remarkable countries in the world.

    J. Simpson case that no one dared to write, that no one else could write. In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Vincent Bugliosi, the famed prosecutor of Charles Manson and author of Helter Skelter, goes to the heart of the trial that divided the country and made a mockery of justice. He lays out the mountains of evidence; rebuts the defense; offers a thrilling summation; condemns the monumental blunders of the judge, the "Dream Team," and the media; and exposes, for the first time anywhere, the shocking incompetence of the prosecution.