In “Disparity,” for example, Yu Hua illustrates the mind-boggling economic gaps that separate citizens of the country. In “Copycat,” he depicts the escalating trend of piracy and imitation as a creative new form of revolutionary action. And in “Bamboozle,” he describes the increasingly brazen practices of trickery, fraud, and chicanery that are, he suggests, becoming a way of life at every level of society. Characterized by Yu Hua’s trademark wit, insight, and courage, China in Ten Words is a refreshingly candid vision of the “Chinese miracle” and all its consequences, from the singularly invaluable perspective of a writer living in China today.

    In the pages of MetaMaus, Art Spiegelman re-enters the Pulitzer prize-winning Maus, the modern classic that has altered how we see literature, comics, and the Holocaust ever since it was first published twenty-five years ago. Does he probe the questions that Maus most often evokes—Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics?—and gives us a new and essential work about the creative process. MetaMaus includes a bonus DVD-R that provides a digitized reference copy of The Complete Maus linked to a deep archive of audio interviews with his survivor father, historical documents, and a wealth of Spiegelman’s private notebooks and sketches. Compelling and intimate, MetaMaus is poised to become a classic in its own right.

    The harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.

    As the holocaust approached, many Jewish families in Germany fled to one of the only open ports available to them: Shanghai. Once called "the armpit of the world," Shanghai ultimately served as the last resort for tens of thousands of Jews desperate to escape Hitler's "Final Solution." Against this backdrop, 11-year-old Ursula Bacon and her family made the difficult 8,000-mile voyage to Shanghai, with its promise of safety. But instead of a storybook China, they found overcrowded streets teeming with peddlers, beggars, opium dens, and prostitutes. Amid these abysmal conditions, Ursula learned of her own resourcefulness and found within herself the fierce determination to survive.

    It is the story of Albert Facey, who lived with simple honesty, compassion and courage. A parentless boy who started work at eight on the rough West Australian frontier, he struggled as an itinerant rural worker, survived the gore of Gallipoli, the loss of his farm in the Depression, the death of his son in World War II and that of his beloved wife after sixty devoted years - yet he felt that his life was fortunate.Facey's life story, published when he was eighty-seven, has inspired many as a play, a television series, and an award-winning book that has sold over half a million copies.

    They planned their future together, secure in the belief that their love could survive anything, even Hitler. Then, in March 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary.Here is the moving and dramatic account of one woman's courage in the face of war, and of a love that spanned three decades. From the agony of separation to the horrors of a concentration camp, from her marriage to Otto Schimmel, an Auschwitz survivor who promised her a new life in America, through the joy and struggle of raising a family, Betty never forgot her first love. Then, in 1975, she returned to Budapest and saw someone across a crowded room...To See You Again is Betty Schimmel's wrenching memoir of survival and sacrifice, of love lost and love found. A true story that unfolds with all the suspense of a novel, it is one that will not soon be forgotten.

    An Alaskan alone—and lonely—in Japan, she begins to pay attention.My Year of Dirt and Water is a record of that journey. Allowed only occasional and formal visits to see her cloistered husband, Tracy teaches English, studies Japanese, and devotes herself to making pottery. Her teacher instructs her to turn cup after cup—creating one failure after another. Past and present, East and West intertwine as Tracy is twice compelled to return home to Alaska to confront her mother’s newly diagnosed cancer and the ghosts of a devastating childhood. Revolving through the days, My Year of Dirt and Water circles hard questions: What is love? What is art? What is practice? What do we do with the burden of suffering? The answers are formed and then unformed—a ceramic bowl born on the wheel and then returned again and again to dirt and water.

    This autobiography will follow Thurston's journey from a Brisbane kid who was written off as too skinny, too slow and too wild to play professionally, to his debut with the Canterbury Bulldogs in 2003, to State of Origin star, to Dally M and Clive Churchill Medal winner, and the fairytale premierships.

    Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland with no design, yet heeding signs–including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger’s words, “Anything is possible: after all, it’s the Year of the Monkey.” For Smith–inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing–the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places, this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment set in. But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world. Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith’s signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.

    when, finally reconciled to the inevitable, they returned to Italy one last time.Which, as they say, is another story.Also includes chapters on the idiosyncrasies of the Italian language and the Italian driving experience.

    Whether he's discussing courtship rituals or pop culture, drones or the rhythms of daily life in an extended family compound, he transports us beyond the alarmist headlines of an anxious West and a volatile East and helps to bring a dazzling diverse world within emotional and intellectual reach.

    In a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight, and one in 50 East Germans were informing on their countrymen and women, there are a thousand stories just waiting to get out. Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany - she meets Miriam, who as a 16-year-old might have started World War III, visits the man who painted the line which became the Berlin Wall and gets drunk with the legendary 'Mik Jegger' of the East, once declared by the authorities to his face to 'no longer to exist'. Written with wit and literary flair, Stasiland provides a rivetting insight into life behind the wall.

    The history she’d ignored while growing up became a source of comfort and inspiration, and narrowed the gap separating her—an independent, Chinese-American woman—from her Old World Chinese parents.In Forget Sorrow, Yang makes her debut into the graphic form with the story of her father’s family, reunited under the House of Yang in Manchuria during the Second World War and struggling—both together and individually—to weather poverty, famine, and, later, Communist oppression. The parallels between Belle Yang’s journey of self-discovery and the lives and choices of her grandfather, his brothers, and their father (the Patriarch) speak powerfully of the conflicts between generations—and of possibilities for reconciliation.Forget Sorrow demonstrates the power of storytelling and remembrance, as Belle—in telling this story—finds the strength to honor both her father and herself.

    Christensen's experience as a military policeman (MP) in a city of millions at a time when chaos and fear reigned. As a 23-year-old from a small town in Washington State, the author was plunged into a chaotic city of brawling servicemen, prostitutes, racial violence, enemy rockets, riots, and death. It was a place that would give him a unique opportunity to see up close a different side of the Vietnam War and its effect on the human condition. Nearly 80 stories collectively convey the author’s experiences and his arc—from naive to jaded, angry, confused, anxious, and bone-weary exhausted—that is representative of so many GIs who served in the Vietnam War as well as those veterans of today’s conflicts around the globe. * “A true warrior and a gifted and prolific author, Loren gives the reader a deep and illuminating insight into his experience that changed his life and subsequently led him toward helping others through his writing. Policing Saigon is a powerful book.” Lt. Col. Dave Grossman * Military Policeman Loren Christensen takes the reader on a gritty, moving, and intense ride-a-along in Saigon, Vietnam. K.F., Afghanistan War veteran Table of Contents Introduction PART ONE: THE FIRST FEW DAYS Chap 1: Flying there Chap 2: Door gunners and policing for cigarette butts Chap 3: Welcome to Saigon Chap 4: Python Chap 5: Culture shock Chap 6: Dead men’s gear PART TWO: "ROUTINE DAYS" Chap 7: Day after day Chap 8: EOD Chap 9: Skylight Chap 10: Cobra Chap 11: Bob Hope Chap 12: Papa-san and the ammo truck Chap 13: Dead mama-san Chap 14: Jail window Chap 15: “Karate number one” Chap 16: Sampson Chap 17: 100-P alley Chap 18: 200-P alley Chap 19: The swimming pool Chap 20: “Dance to the Music” Chap 21: Drugs Chap 22: Tracer rounds Chap 23: Puff the magic dragon Chap 24: Almost a coup Chap 25: Vietnam blues Chap 26: Tension Chap 27: A shaky fork Chap 28: Illusions of relief Chap 29: Korean Marines Chap 30: AFVN radio: “Goooooood morning, Vietnaaaaaam” Chap 31: “I’m not a crook” Chap 32: Running Code 3 Chap 33: Fire Chap 34: Riot Chap 35: Power and rank: a deadly mix Chap 36: The vision Chap 37: Screams Chap 38: Meyerkord Hotel Chap 39: Resisting arrest Chap 40: Letters Chap 41: One GI who went home and came right back PART THREE: LOSING IT Chap 42: Silencer Chap 43: Hangman Chap 44: Johnny Walker Black Chap 45: Escaped prisoner Chap 46: The punch Chap 47: Death of the spirit Chap 48: Grenade PART FOUR: PROSTITUTES Chap 49: “Boom-boom number one” Chap 50: Clap Chap 51: Peter PART FIVE: THE INDIGENOUS Chap 52: A fellow martial artist Chap 53: A most excellent shot Chap 54: “Everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout me” Chap 55: China girl Chap 56: Date night Chap 57: The old gravedigger Chap 58: Altered states: the Buddhist temple Chap 59: Dog sex and an alligator baby PART SIX: STREET CHILDREN Chap 60: A Tu Do paperboy Chap 61: Cemetery k

    He lands an enviable gig writing about shopping and fashion for the city’s major newspaper, but an ill-fated promotional junket gets Albo into hot water. He becomes a gossip item and finds himself caught in an acrimonious war between Old and New Media. Here's a gimlet-eyed account of the back-biting media scene, a glimpse into the inner workings of the fashion crowd, and a candid portrait of what it takes to survive as a writer in today’s chattering and watchful New York City."I was perilously close to exposing a secret underground economy of promotion: favors and junkets and banquets and gifts that keeps the city in motion, and keeps underpaid writers at work. Basically, I became the Silkwood of Swag."