Essays include "Being in the Way", "The Philosophy of Tao", and "Landscape, Soundscape" Alan Watts' lectures always drew a large audience of diverse interests, and these Taoist explorations of the "nature of nature" should introduce a new generation to Watt's thought.

    But the "poison dragons" of misfortune shatter his orderly existence. First, when his village is threatened by a vicious civil war, his family stability is threatened by his second son, a brutal rebel officer. Meanwhile, Yun Cai struggles to free an old friend, P'ei Ti, from a hellish prison—no easy task when P'ei Ti is the rebels' most valuable hostage, and Yun Cai sees himself only as a frightened old man. Throughout his ordeals, Yun Cai draws from the glittering memories of his youth, when he journeyed to the capital to study poetry, joined the upper ranks of the civil service, and secured the friendship of P'ei Ti. Above all, he reflects Su Lin, a great love he won and lost, and for which he paid with his freedom and almost his life. Yun Cai is forced to reconsider all that he is and all that he has ever been in order to summon the wit and courage to confront the warlord General An-Shu and his beautiful but cruel consort, the Lady Ta-Chi.

    Leanna Adams moved to China in 2006, was nearly robbed, held her co-worker’s hand as she died in a filthy, smoke-filled hospital, bonded with many of her three hundred students and left part of her heart in Wuhu, China. Adams’s contrasting experiences highlight the differences that make the two cultures unique and the similarities that make all people human.

    Into this steamy morass walks Richard Field, an idealistic Brit haunted by his past and recently appointed to the international police. He's not there long before called to the flat of a Russian prostitute, former daughter of privilege found sadistically murdered, handcuffed to her bed. When he discovers among her possessions a cryptic shipping log, he senses that this murder is more than a random crime of perverse passion. What unfolds is a searing story that propels Field into a confrontation with the city's most ruthless and powerful gangster, and a dangerous attraction to another salacious Russian whose sordid connections seem destined to make her the next victim. Scintillating and subtle, The Master of Rain is a marvelous debut.

    Lenin, Vol. 7, Fourth Russian Edition, prepared by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.C. C.P.S.U.Corrections have been made in accordance with the Fifth Russian Edition of the "Collected Works."

    The first, Thomas, is an entitled deadbeat, content to pass the rest of his days in Asia skating by on the fact that he's white, while the second, a recent college graduate named Daniel, is an idealist at heart. Over the course of the novel, these two characters fight to establish primacy in Ningyuan, a remote town in the south of Hunan, with one of their more overzealous students, Bella, caught in between. Quincy Carroll's cleverly written debut novel examines what we bring from one country to another.

    The poet Donald Davie writes: 'Vikram Seth's poems should have an impact far beyond much noisier pieces; for when did we last see a volume in which the poet's eye is on what is objectively before him, rather than on the intricacies of his own sensibility?'

    Launched by a pair of free-thinking venture capitalists and an Israeli art dealer, the fictional Ilemi Republic is carved out of a disputed border region between Kenya and South Sudan, with the consent of the governments of these two neighboring nations.The fledgling Ilemi Republic is a nation of firsts in modern history: The first nation as a dedicated place of refuge for Christians and Messianic Jews; The first nation with absolutely no taxes or levies of any kind; The first nation with no licenses or permits; The first nation with minimalist government; The first nation to reject fiat currency and establish a tri-metallic currency (gold, silver, and platinum); The first nation to have a self-policing citizenry with a citizen's militia--and hence no standing army and no police force; The first nation with a near absolute right to keep and bear arms, where only weapons of mass destruction are restricted from private ownership; and the first nation without a parliament or congress, where all decisions are made by public referendum."In Land of Promise, [Jim Rawles] crafts an exception to the rule: He speculates on proactive efforts to carve out a liberty lifeboat on Earth. It is the last refuge of free people in charge of their own lives. In every other place on Earth that man has put down roots, the usual suspects come out of the woodwork to offer advice on how to run his life and eventually develop systems that strangle that very life out of them. Some of these have been much worse than others as witnessed in the blood-soaked twentieth century." —Bill Buppert, ZeroGov ForumsAbout the AuthorJames Wesley, Rawles is a internationally recognized authority on family disaster preparedness and survivalism. He has been described by journalists as the "conscience of survivalism." Formerly a U.S. Army intelligence officer, Rawles is now a fiction and nonfiction author, as well as a rancher. Some of his his books have been translated into six languages. He is also a lecturer and the founder and Senior Editor of http://www.SurvivalBlog.com, the Internet's first blogs on preparedness that has enjoyed perennial popularity and now receives more than 320,000 unique visits per week. He and his family live at a remote self-sufficient ranch surrounded by National Forest lands that is is cryptically identified as located "somewhere west of the Rockies."

    Now at last, thanks to the tireless efforts of the Klingon Language Institute, this powerful drama by the legendary Klingon playwright, Wil'yam Shex'pir, can be appreciated in the elegance and glory of its original tongue. This invaluable volume contains the complete text of the play, along with an English translation for easy consultation and comparison. In addition, an incisive introduction explains the play's crucial importance in Klingon culture, while copious notes illustrate how the debased English version diverges from the original, often distorting and even reversing the actual meaning of the verses.Khamlet, the Restored Klingon Version, is a work that belongs in the library of every human who hopes truly to understand what it means to be Klingon.

    A giant oil field has been discovered off the Tanzanian coast. Tanzania's a Chinese ally, and the UnitedStates desperately needs this oil to prop up an economy crippled by the collapse of the fracking bubble. A newly-elected US president orders regime change, but the Chinese have plans of their own. The explosion that follows shatters a decades-old balance of global power, brings both nations to the brink of nuclear war, and triggers a crisis back in America that the United States may not survive...Part military-political thriller, part stark warning of an uncomfortably likely future, TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING promises to be one of the year's most controversial novels.

    Painfully sensitive and sad Orville Pym is 15 years old, and this novel recounts the summer holiday after his first miserable year at public school--but as in all of Welch's work, what is most important are the details of his characters' surroundings. Welch is a Proustian writer of uncanny powers of observation who, as William S. Burroughs wrote, "makes the reader aware of the magic that is right under his eyes." Film director John Waters includes this novel as one of his "Five Books You Should Read to Live a Happy Life If Something Is Basically the Matter with You," and writes: "Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's "In Youth Is Pleasure." Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger." Also included in this edition is the first U.S. publication of "I Left My Grandfather's House." This first-person account of an idyllic walking tour in the British countryside undertaken when Welch was 18 makes a fascinating companion piece to the fictionalized, though no less autobiographical, "In Youth Is Pleasure."

    Environmental degradation in China has also contributed to significant public health problems, mass migration, economic loss, and social unrest. In The River Runs Black, Elizabeth C. Economy examines China s growing environmental crisis and its implications for the country s future development.Drawing on historical research, case studies, and interviews with officials, scholars, and activists in China, Economy traces the economic and political roots of China s environmental challenge and the evolution of the leadership's response. She argues that China s current approach to environmental protection mirrors the one embraced for economic development: devolving authority to local officials, opening the door to private actors, and inviting participation from the international community, while retaining only weak central control. The result has been a patchwork of environmental protection in which a few wealthy regions with strong leaders and international ties improve their local environments, while most of the country continues to deteriorate, sometimes suffering irrevocable damage. Economy compares China s response with the experience of other societies and sketches out several possible futures for the country."

    Based upon the original teachings of the great sage Laozi, it has only ever been taught to close students of the masters chosen as the heads of the ancient orders.This book provides a breakdown of the entire Nei Gong process, and explains in plain English the philosophy which underpins Nei Gong practice, and which is based on the original teachings of the ancient Daoist priests. The methodology of Sung breathing, an advanced meditative practice which has until now been reserved for 'inner-door' students is described, and the book contains an entire set of Qigong exercises accompanied by instructional photographs and drawings.This book will be of interest to all practitioners of Qi Gong, martial arts and meditation, and will be a rewarding read for anyone interested in Eastern philosophy.

    Indonesian Ferry Sinks.  Peruvian Bus Plunges Off Cliff.  African Train Attacked by Mobs.  Whenever he picked up the newspaper, Carl Hoffman noticed those short news bulletins, which seemed about as far from the idea of tourism, travel as the pursuit of pleasure, as it was possible to get.  So off he went, spending six months circumnavigating the globe on the world's worst conveyances: the statistically most dangerous airlines, the most crowded and dangerous ferries, the slowest buses, and the most rickety trains.  The Lunatic Express takes us into the heart of the world, to some its most teeming cities and remotest places: from Havana to Bogotá on the perilous Cuban Airways.  Lima to the Amazon on crowded night buses where the road is a washed-out track.  Across Indonesia and Bangladesh by overcrowded ferries that kill 1,000 passengers a year.  On commuter trains in Mumbai so crowded that dozens perish daily, across Afghanistan as the Taliban closes in, and, scariest of all, Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., by Greyhound.The Lunatic Express is the story of traveling with seatmates and deckmates who have left home without American Express cards on conveyances that don't take Visa, and seldom take you anywhere you'd want to go.   But it's also the story of traveling as it used to be -- a sometimes harrowing trial, of finding adventure in a modern, rapidly urbanizing world and the generosity of poor strangers, from ear cleaners to urban bus drivers to itinerant roughnecks, who make up most of the world's population.  More than just an adventure story, The Lunatic Express is a funny, harrowing and insightful look at the world as it is, a planet full of hundreds of millions of people, mostly poor, on the move and seeking their fortunes.

    The world population is expected to reach nine billion people by 2050— that’ s nine billion hungry humans in need of food. The challenge of feeding this rapidly growing population has already been made greater by climate change, which will wreak havoc on the way we produce our food. Disruptions to industrial-scale agriculture, along with rising sea levels, will create millions of environmental refugees, fleeing their homes in search of nourishment and safety. We have also lost touch with the soil— few of us grow our own food or even know where it comes from— and we are at the mercy of the multinationals that control the crops with little foresight about the damage their methods are inflicting on the planet. This puts our very future at risk.In Consumed, award-winning writer Sarah Elton walks fields and farms on four continents, investigating not only the potential— and very real— threats to our food, but also telling the stories of those who are working hard to preserve our future. From Bogot� to Beijing, Delhi to Rome, Nairobi to Toronto, people from all walks of life are creating an alternative to the industrial food we have grown accustomed to piling into our shopping carts, and in the process giving us hope not for a daunting future but for a future in which we can all sit at the table.