Somerset Maugham, who travelled over a thousand miles up the Yangtse river, used his acerbic and insightful notes to write this fascinating book.

    The other masterly essays in this collection include classics such as "My Country Right or Left", "How the Poor Die" and "Such, Such were the Joys", his memoir of the horrors of public school, as well as discussions of Shakespeare, sleeping rough, boys' weeklies, and a spirited defence of English cooking. Opinionated, uncompromising, provocative, and hugely entertaining, all show Orwell's unique ability to get to the heart of any subject.

    Mr. Braithwaite, the new teacher, had first to fight the class bully. Then he taught defiant, hard-bitten delinquents to call him "Sir," and to address the girls who had grown up beside them in the gutter as "Miss".He taught them to wash their faces and to read Shakespeare. When he took all forty-six to museums and to the opera, riots were predicted. But instead of a catastrophe, a miracle happened. A dedicated teacher had turned hate into love, teenage rebelliousness into self-respect, contempt into into consideration for others. A man's own integrity - his concern and love for others - had won through. The modern classic about a dedicated teacher in a tough London school who slowly and painfully breaks down the barriers of racial prejudice, this is the story of a man's integrity winning through against the odds.

    Here is China by rail, as seen and heard through the eyes and ears of one of the most intrepid and insightful travel writers of our time.

    This is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic."When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

    This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.In this memoir translated from the original Japanese, Ishikawa candidly recounts his tumultuous upbringing and the brutal thirty-six years he spent living under a crushing totalitarian regime, as well as the challenges he faced repatriating to Japan after barely escaping North Korea with his life. A River in Darkness is not only a shocking portrait of life inside the country but a testament to the dignity—and indomitable nature—of the human spirit

    There he wrote five scrolls describing the "true principles" required for victory in the martial arts and on the battlefield. Instead of relying on religion or theory, Musashi based his writings on his own experience, observation, and reason.

    In China in 1911, all the women of good families follow this ancient tradition. But Ailin loves to run away from her governess and play games with her male cousins. Knowing she will never run again once her feet are bound, Ailin rebels and refuses to follow this torturous tradition. As a result, however, the family of her intended husband breaks their marriage agreement. And as she enters adolescence, Ailin finds that her family is no longer willing to support her. Chinese society leaves few options for a single woman of good family, but with a bold conviction and an indomitable spirit, Ailin is determined to forge her own destiny. Her story is a tribute to all those women whose courage created new options for the generations who came after them.

    These judges held a unique position. As "fathers to the people" they were at once judge and detective, responsible for all aspects of keeping the peace and for discovering, capturing, and punishing criminals.One of the most celebrated historical magistrates was Judge Dee, who lived in the seventh century A.D. This book, written in the eighteenth century by a person well versed in the Chinese legal code, chronicles three of Judge Dee's most celebrated cases, interwoven to form a novel. A double murder among traveling merchants, the fatal poisoning of a bride on her wedding night, and an unsolved murder in a small town under Judge Dee's jurisdiction — these are the crimes. They take Judge Dee up and down the great silk routes, through clever disguises, into ancient graveyards where he consults the spirits of the dead, and through some clever deduction.After translating Dee Goong An, Robert Van Gulik continued the adventures of Judge Dee in fiction he wrote himself. This, however is the only place where you can find the originals of Judge Dee, the venerable Sergeant Hoong, the treacherous Ma Joong, and the other members of Dee's detective force. As the first publication of Dee Goong An in the United States, this edition makes these cases accessible for the first time.While the cases are superb for reading, they also show the Chinese system of law enforcement and legal proceedings (which are quite different from Western forms). Van Gulik has provided a thorough introduction and appendix with much information on Chinese detective novels, the Chinese system of justice, and particularly relevant aspects of Chinese law that play a part in these stories.

    It has been translated into sixteen languages, made into a prize-winning motion picture, and staged as a play at high schools all over the United States; its very title has become part of the American idiom.Never before has a novel so compellingly laid bare the inner workings of a metropolitan high school. Up the Down Staircase is the funny and touching story of a committed, idealistic teacher whose clash with school bureaucracy is a timeless lesson for students, teachers, parents--anyone concerned about public education. Bel Kaufman lets her characters speak for themselves through memos, letters, directives from the principal, comments by students, notes between teachers, and papers from desk drawers and wastebaskets, evoking a vivid picture of teachers fighting the good fight against all that stands in the way of good teaching.

    Tác phẩm đăng liên tục trên mạng bắt đầu từ tháng 9 năm 2003 cho đến nay vẫn là tác phẩm được bạn đọc trong và ngoài mạng yêu thích bởi lối viết dung dị và chan chứa yêu thương. Tình yêu là chủ đề muôn thuở, có bao nhiêu chuyện tình trong cuộc đời thì có bấy nhiêu diễn biến thăng trầm. nhưng hạnh phúc nhất vẫn là được nắm tay nhau đến đầu bạc răng long. Điều mà Bên nhau trọn đời muốn nói. Không dùng lời hoa mỹ, không dùng những chi tiết câu khách tầm thường, mà bằng văn phong đơn giản, từng lời thoại nhẹ nhàng nhưng đi vào lòng người đọc tự bao giờ... Toàn bộ câu chuyện là một cảm giác thú vi, lâng lâng, mang đến cho người đọc những xúc cảm ngọt nàgo…English description:A young love leads to a lifetime of entanglements. Zhao Mo Sheng is a university student with a sunny disposition. The bright and cheerful Mo Sheng fell in love at first sight with He Yi Chen, one of the top students from the Law Faculty. However, his poor communication skill, makes her depart sadly for overseas. Seven years later, Zhao Mo Sheng returned home and spotted him immediately in a crowded supermarket, …….This is a very short and sweet story about two college sweethearts, who separated on a bitter note but fate tosses them together again seven years later. (Description borrowed from Shushengbar)

    Seventeen-year-old Alex Jackson comes home from school to find that his father, a CBC news cameraman, wants to take him to China's capital, Beijing.  Once there, Alex finds himself on his own in Tian An Men Square as desperate students fight the Chinese army for their freedom.  Separated from his father and carrying illegal videotapes, Alex must trust the students to help him escape.Closely based on eyewitness accounts of the massacre in Beijing, Forbidden City is a powerful and frightening story.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    With a father who drives his Ford pickup with a Kodak movie camera sitting shotgun just in case he sees an accident, and whose home movies feature more footage of disasters than of his children, Monica is primed to become a morbid child.Yet in spite of her father's bouts of violence and abuse, her mother's selfishness and prim denial, and her siblings' personal battles and betrayals, Monica never succumbs to despair. Instead, she forges her own way, thriving at school and becoming fast friends with Julie Kilner, whose father is the town mortician.She and Julie prefer the casket showroom, where they take turns lying in their favorite coffins, to the parks and grassy backyards in her hometown of Elk Grove, Ohio. In time, Monica and Julie get a job driving the company hearse to pick up bodies at the airport, yet even Monica's growing independence can't protect her from her parents' irresponsibility, and from the feeling that she simply does not deserve to be safe. Little does she know, as she finally strikes out on her own, that her parents' biggest betrayal has yet to be revealed.Throughout this remarkable memoir of her dysfunctional, eccentric, and wholly unforgettable family, Monica Holloway's prose shines with humor, clear-eyed grace, and an uncommon sense of resilience. "Driving with Dead People" is an extraordinary real-life tale with a wonderfully observant and resourceful heroine.

    Her parents were taken from her at a young age, then her uncle sold her into prostitution; it was enough for many years just to cope and survive. One day, fate places a kind gentlemanin her path, and she begins to discover the city outside the brotheland the world beyond China's borders. As a larger canvas of life emerges, Pan realizes that she has something of value to say -- and a talent through which she can express herself. From Shanghai to Paris, Pan is challenged by the harsh realities in politics, art, and love, and must rely on her own strength to develop her talent. In so doing, she takes a relatively ordinary life and makes it extraordinary.A work of fiction -- but based on the life and work of a real artist -- The Painter from Shanghai transports readers to early-20th-century China, a culture marked by oppression. Epstein has proven herself a shining talent in this first novel, tackling such weighty questions as: How does a talented artist blossom, even under repressive conditions? What is art, and what is love? What makes a life well lived? The answers form a mesmerizing portrait of one young woman's journey to find herself and to nourish her creative talents despite appreciable odds.(Summer 2008 Selection)

    Originally published against government wishes in Vietnam because of its non-heroic, non-ideological tone, The Sorrow of War has won worldwide acclaim and become an international bestseller