And they've always agreed on one goal: to get out of tiny Paris, Texas, and see the world. The school's foreign exchange program seems like the perfect escape: Piper will go to the original Paris; Mei will go to China; Cassidy will go to Australia; and Izzy, unable to afford the program, will stay at home. To add spice to their semester away, and to stay connected to their best friends, the girls start The International Kissing Club, a Facebook page where they can anonymously update one another and brag about all the amazing guys they're meeting. After all, these girls are traveling abroad: amazing guys abound at every turn! But sometimes fun, flirty vacation flings turn into more serious romances, and sometimes you don't return from abroad the same person you were. Will the girls' relationships-and their friendships-be able to survive?

    The Good Woman of Setzuan, written during Brecht's exile and set in Communist China, is a parable of a young woman torn between obligation and reality, between love and practicality, and between her own needs and those of her friends and neighbors.Adhering closely to the original German text, this is a performance-friendly translation of one of Brecht's most popular plays.

    She helps when the guys drink too much before a game. She tapes them up when they're injured. And in return, they watch her back. While most students spend their time partying, Lily spends her free time working. But her job as the assistant athletic trainer for the PSU football team comes with the benefit of being friends with every player on the team. Except the entirely too cocky, reckless, and charming golden boy of the team: Vincent Bradshaw. When they aren't spouting insults at one another, Vincent and Lily are doing everything in their power to avoid each other. That is, until Vincent gets injured.

    Myers, a North Korea analyst and a contributing editor of The Atlantic, presents the first full-length study of the North Korean worldview. Drawing on extensive research into the regime’s domestic propaganda, including films, romance novels and other artifacts of the personality cult, Myers analyzes each of the country’s official myths in turn—from the notion of Koreans’ unique moral purity, to the myth of an America quaking in terror of “the Iron General.” In a concise but groundbreaking historical section, Myers also traces the origins of this official culture back to the Japanese fascist thought in which North Korea’s first ideologues were schooled.What emerges is a regime completely unlike the West’s perception of it. This is neither a bastion of Stalinism nor a Confucian patriarchy, but a paranoid nationalist, “military-first” state on the far right of the ideological spectrum.Since popular support for the North Korean regime now derives almost exclusively from pride in North Korean military might, Pyongyang can neither be cajoled nor bullied into giving up its nuclear program. The implications for US foreign policy—which has hitherto treated North Korea as the last outpost of the Cold War—are as obvious as they are troubling. With North Korea now calling for a “blood reckoning” with the “Yankee jackals,” Myers’s unprecedented analysis could not be more timely.

    To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

    Brian and Louise meet during their college days at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo and embark on a pursuit of a calling to the nations that propels them from the Navajo Nation's painted desert in Arizona to the wild steppes of Central Asia. Along their way five children join the cross-cultural roller coaster. Disarmingly honest and charmingly humorous, their tale will thrill you and bring tears to your eyes. An intensely personal memoir, this book still manages to pack a powerful dose of missionary insight and Biblical principles for seeing the Church explode into life among peoples that have never even heard of Jesus. Get comfortable. You will not be able to put it down.From the very first page this book jerks you irretrievably into the outrageous, the uproarious and the impossible to imagine. It has got to be one of the most absolutely fascinating tales to ever prove that the truth is stranger than fiction. Nevertheless, it throbs with a sobering and relentless sense of calling and purpose that is truly inspiring. --- the late Dr. Ralph D. Winter, Founder, U.S. Center for World MissionI wept, laughed and was stirred by this book. I love a good story, and this is a really good one! You won't be able to put it down! --- Floyd McClung., author of Living on the Devil's DoorstepBrian Hogan's apostolic passion shines through with an incredible combination of raw honesty and witty humor. A gripping real-life parable unfolds that will have you laughing, weeping and rejoicing at the amazing testimony of God's grace and power revealed through ordinary people facing extra-ordinary obstacles. I wholeheartedly recommend this book as it not only tells an amazing story, but also becomes a discipleship tool that reveals to us a whole new paradigm of church and missions. --- David Broodryk, Kingdom People Network, South AfricaIf you want a radically cross-cultural journey without leaving your favorite easy chair - this book is your ticket. If you desire to plant churches that reproduce among the least reached - this is your training manual wrapped up in a most delightful, brawny and instructive story-box! I laughed - I cried - and wrestled through the realities of what it means to leave the easy chair and watch God prove Himself faithful - accomplishing His dreams for a people through one ordinary and obedient family. Brian Hogan is courageous, practical and real. Focused in the same direction for many years, he is a pioneer, church planter, mentor and model. His journey is a challenge to all those who want to be used by God. Brian's thinking will stretch and grow you; his passion and lifestyle will confront every comfortable corner of your life. There's a Sheep in my Bathtub will be top on the reading list for those I train. --- Carol Davis, director of LeafLine InitiativesBrian Hogan's Erdenet-story had been told to me a number of times as a real and astonishing exception and a true, powerful secret. I am thrilled to see it in print. Brian experienced church history in the making in 1993-1996. May his insights multiply like an epidemic and grip an entire new generation of an apostolic people, so that this planet will never remain the same. --- Wolfgang Simson, author of Houses that Change the World & The Starfish Manifesto

    Boy, was I wrong. Now they’ve become my temptations… and they’re willing to share.Matt, Dereck, and Bryce made sure my high school experience was hell. They pushed me to the edge until I saw no other way out, but to run.After transferring and finishing high school far away from the cruel trio, I’m on my way to becoming the best goddamn nurse ever.Then, the boys show up on my campus, and everything goes to shit. Working as a firefighter, cop, and paramedic while going to school, they might’ve fooled everyone into thinking they’re the saviors, but I know they’re up to their old tricks. Only this time, it’s not my mind, but my body they’re after.Too bad I’m not the weak girl I used to be. This time, I won’t run. This time, I’ll face the trio and bring them down to their knees.Yet the more time I spend with them, the more I see that they’ve changed. My heart is telling me I can trust them. My soul wants all three. Will I be able to leave my past demons behind and give myself to my three men?Her Temptations is a steamy reverse harm, enemies to lovers, college romance. No cheating, No cliffhanger, plenty of heat, and a guaranteed HEA!

    The book is rich with real-life anecdotes and examines the nature of the TCK kid experience and its effects on maturing, developing a sense of identity, and adjusting to one's passport country upon return. The authors give readers an understanding of the challenges and benefits of the TCK life and provide practical suggestions and advice on maximizing those benefits.

    Now I’m taking Princess Lessons.” Katherine Saunders had every intention of enjoying her two-week study abroad trip to the tiny European country of Montavian. With nothing more on her agenda than having a good time, she envisioned sleeping til noon on downy featherbeds every day, and hitting hottest clubs by night. But a chance encounter with the world’s most cocky Crown Prince has derailed those plans, leaving her not only breathless, but wanting far more. Eric Jean-Francois Devillers III has more important things to think about than a flighty American student intent on seeing the sights, but there’s something about Kat that he can’t get out of his head. No matter how many times he cuts her down with a biting remark—more intent on convincing himself that she’s no Queen than trying to convince her—he can’t stop thinking about the petite spitfire from across the pond. But there’s more to being the future queen than just a pretty face and a sharp wit. Katherine has generations of royals to convince that she’s suitable for the role…and even has to convince herself. *BONUS BOOK*: One Night with a Bad Boy: (A Redemption Story), a full-length novel from Ella Slade, is included at the end of this book, completely FREE!

    The news media–once the vaunted watchdogs of our republic–are often too timid or distracted to identify these deceptions.unSpun is the secret decoder ring for the twenty-first-century world of disinformation. Written by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the founders of the acclaimed website FactCheck.org, unSpun reveals the secrets of separating facts from disinformation, such as: • the warning signs of spin, hype, and bogus news• common tricks used to deceive us• how to find trustworthy and objective sources of informationTelling fact from fiction shouldn’t be a difficult task. With this book and a healthy dose of skepticism, anyone can cut through the haze of biased media reportage to be a savvier consumer and a better-informed citizen.“Read this book and you will not go unarmed into the political wars ahead of us. Jackson and Jamieson equip us to be our own truth squad, and that just might be the salvation of democracy.” –Bill Moyers“THE DEFINITIVE B.S. DETECTOR–AN ABSOLUTELY INVALUABLE GUIDEBOOK.”–Mark Shields, syndicated columnist and political analyst, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer“unSpun is an essential guide to cutting through the political fog. Just in time for the 2008 campaign, Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson have written a citizen’s guide to avoiding the malarkey of partisan politics.”–Mara Liasson, NPR national political correspondent“The Internet may be a wildly effective means of communication and an invaluable source of knowledge, but it has also become a new virtual haven for scammers–financial, political, even personal. Better than anything written before, unSpun shows us how to recognize these scams and protect ourselves from them.”–Craig Newmark, founder and customer service representative, Craigslist.orgFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

    I, on the other hand, have a crystal-clear memory of that moment. It happened at night in the summer of 1966, when my elementary school headmaster hanged himself.In 1966 Moying, a student at a prestigious language school in Beijing, seems destined for a promising future. Everything changes when student Red Guards begin to orchestrate brutal assaults, violent public humiliations, and forced confessions. After watching her teachers and headmasters beaten in public, Moying flees school for the safety of home, only to witness her beloved grandmother denounced, her home ransacked, her father's precious books flung onto the back of a truck, and Baba himself taken away. From labor camp, Baba entrusts a friend to deliver a reading list of banned books to Moying so that she can continue to learn. Now, with so much of her life at risk, she finds sanctuary in the world of imagination and learning.This inspiring memoir follows Moying Li from age twelve to twenty-two, illuminating a complex, dark time in China's history as it tells the compelling story of one girl's difficult but determined coming-of-age during the Cultural Revolution.Snow Falling in Spring is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

    The Union laid claim to the Revolution--so did the Confederacy. Civil rights leaders said they were the true sons of liberty--so did Southern segregationists. This book tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation's founding, including the battle waged by the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and evangelical Christians to "take back America."Jill Lepore, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, offers a wry and bemused look at American history according to the far right, from the "rant heard round the world," which launched the Tea Party, to the Texas School Board's adoption of a social-studies curriculum that teaches that the United States was established as a Christian nation. Along the way, she provides rare insight into the eighteenth-century struggle for independence--the real one, that is. Lepore traces the roots of the far right's reactionary history to the bicentennial in the 1970s, when no one could agree on what story a divided nation should tell about its unruly beginnings. Behind the Tea Party's Revolution, she argues, lies a nostalgic and even heartbreaking yearning for an imagined past--a time less troubled by ambiguity, strife, and uncertainty--a yearning for an America that never was.The Whites of Their Eyes reveals that the far right has embraced a narrative about America's founding that is not only a fable but is also, finally, a variety of fundamentalism--anti-intellectual, antihistorical, and dangerously antipluralist.

    It provides the beginner with an accurate, sophisticated, yet accessible account, and offers new insights and challenging perspectives to those who have more specialized knowledge. Focusing on the period in Chinese philosophy that is surely most easily approachable and perhaps is most important, it ranges over of rich set of competing options. It also, with admirable self-consciousness, presents a number of daring attempts to relate those options to philosophical figures and movements from the West. I recommend it very highly.--Lee H. Yearley, Walter Y. Evans-Wentz Professor, Religious Studies, Stanford University

    For most, Communism brings new hope; but for Dr. Ni-Fu Cheng, Communism is no better nor worse than any other system, and only modern science will truly enable the Chinese people to compete with the outside world. On the verge of a stupendous scientific discovery, Dr. Cheng never fears for his safety, and he cannot leave China—not yet. But he will not take a chance with his only daughter, Su-Wei: she has to live. As Dr. Cheng sends Su-Wei to live in America, his heart aches. Don’t worry about me, he thinks. I am the rabbit in the moon. No one will hurt me. Not as long as I can find the secret…San Francisco, 1989—Forty years after Mao and his People’s Liberation Army set out to change China forever, Dr. Lili Quan begins a journey that will change her life forever. In her 27 years, Lili had rarely thought of herself as anything other than an American. But to honor her mother’s dying wish that Lili “return home,” Lili reluctantly sets out for China.On this extraordinary trip filled with remarkable discoveries, Lili finds her grandfather, Dr. Ni-Fu Cheng, a man she believed had died years ago. But Dr. Cheng had made the most remarkable discovery of all—he discovered the secret to long life.Dr. Cheng shares his knowledge with Lili, unknowingly putting her in danger. As greedy and unscrupulous men vie for control of the most earth-shattering discovery of the century, Lili will become a pawn in a deadly international game.From California, to Hong Kong, to Macao, to Seoul, to mainland China, the race is on for the ultimate prize—the rabbit in the moon.

    Twenty-five contemporary stories from five cultures far different from our own bring us the distinct flavours and sights, values and conflicts of modern Africa, China, India, Japan, and Latin America. But against the totally foreign and exotic backdrops, the powerful dramas and relationships that come to life are universal and instantly familiar. Bringing together the works of writers as diverse as Bessie Head, Lu Wenfu, Mahasweta Devi, Yuko Tsushima, and Luisa Valenzuela, this unique collection of world literature expands our cultural horizons."This collection of contemporary multi-cultural fiction includes stories by: Bessie Head * Charles Mungoshi * Ngugi wa Thiong'o * Wang Anyi * Ding Ling * Wang Meng * Chen Rong * Lu Wenfu * Anita Desai * Mahasweta Devi * Ruth Prawer Jhabvala * R. K. Narayan * Khushwant Singh * Kobo Abe * Sawako Ariyoshi * Yasunari Kawabata * Yukio Mishima * Yuko Tsushima  * Carlos Fuentes * Luisa Valenzuela * Nadine Gordimer * Isabel Allende