Much has been made about how the New China has become an economic juggernaut in today's world while civil liberties and basic freedoms remain constricted. We know where the aging leadership has taken and is taking China, but what about the very young? What are they like?When JoAnn Dionne arrived in Guangzho, she came prepared to live and teach elementary school in a Communist country. She expected to see soldiers in the streets, people in grey Mao suits, and lineups to buy toilet paper. Instead she found the world's oldest country, throwing itself headlong into the future. She found traffic jams and 24/7 constructions, neon lights and smog, shopping malls and modern high-rises. And then she met the people who would live in that future — her students. Along with crisp insights into Chinese culture as seen through the eyes of a North American, Dionne provides a funny, often poignant glimpse of a nation undergoing rapid transformation. Views: 27
History can be a very useful tool in understanding why we and those we must deal with think and react in certain ways. But in the wrong hands it can be dangerous and used to foster a sense of grievance or a desire for revenge. Eminent historian Margaret MacMillan is fascinated by the power of history in our thinking. In The Uses and Abuses of History, she points out some of the traps that we can fall into when assessing the present in light of the past. Views: 27
Inoue Yasushi (1907-1991) received numerous awards for his writing, including the prestigious Akutagawa Prize and the Japan Art Academy Award, and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature. His novels include such popular works as The Roof Tile of Tempyo, Lou-Lan, Wind and Waves, and Journey Beyond Samarkand. Joshua Fogel is Canada Research Chair and professor of history at York University in Toronto. He specializes in the history of Sino-Japanese relations and has taught at Harvard University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Views: 27
Rushmore McKenzie returns with a too-personal case that leads him up the legendary Highway 61 in the latest in this awardwinning seriesRushmore McKenzie is a former cop, current millionaire, and an occasional unlicensed P.I. who does favors for friends. Yet he has reservations when his girlfriend's daughter asks him to help her father Jason Truhler, the ex-husband of McKenzie's girlfriend, and a man in serious trouble. En route from St. Paul to a Canadian blues festival on Highway 61, he met a girl, blacked out, and awoke hours later in a strange motel, with the girl's murdered body on the floor. Slipping away unnoticed and heading home, he thought he'd got away--until he started getting texts with photos of the body and demands for blackmail payments he couldn't pay. McKenzie soon finds that Truhler was set up in a modified honey trap, designed to blackmail him. But Truhler's version wasn't exactly the truth either. And McKenzie now finds himself trapped in the middle... Views: 27
