- Table View
- List View
At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China
by Edward Wong&“This book&’s power comes from Wong&’s broad sense of the patterns of Chinese history, reflected in the lives of a father and son, and from his ability to toggle effortlessly between the epic and the intimate.&” —Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic&“Edward Wong&’s exquisite family chronicle achieves a level of humane illumination that only one of America&’s finest reporters on China could deliver. In tracing his father&’s journey—from Hong Kong to Xinjiang to America—Wong gives us a profound story of modern China itself. Anyone who once was absorbed by the power of Wild Swans will savor this meditation on memory, history, and belonging.&” —Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition, winner of the National Book AwardOne of Foreign Policy&’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024An epic story of modern China that weaves a riveting family memoir with vital reporting by the New York Times diplomatic correspondentThe son of Chinese immigrants in Washington, DC, Edward Wong grew up among family secrets. His father toiled in Chinese restaurants and rarely spoke of his native land or his years in the People&’s Liberation Army under Mao. Yook Kearn Wong came of age during the Japanese occupation in World War II and the Communist revolution, when he fell under the spell of Mao&’s promise of a powerful China. His astonishing journey as a soldier took him from Manchuria during the Korean War to Xinjiang on the Central Asian frontier. In 1962, disillusioned with the Communist Party, he made plans for a desperate escape to Hong Kong.When Edward Wong became the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, he investigated his father&’s mysterious past while assessing for himself the dream of a resurgent China. He met the citizens driving the nation&’s astounding economic boom and global expansion—and grappling with the vortex of nationalistic rule under Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader since Mao. Following in his father&’s footsteps, he witnessed ethnic struggles in Xinjiang and Tibet and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. And he had an insider&’s view of the world&’s two superpowers meeting at a perilous crossroads.Wong tells a moving chronicle of a family and a nation that spans decades of momentous change and gives profound insight into a new authoritarian age transforming the world. A groundbreaking book, At the Edge of Empire is the essential work for understanding China today.
At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China
by Edward WongWhen New York Times correspondent Edward Wong arrived in Beijing in 2008, he had a hopeful view of a coming Chinese century. Nearly sixty years earlier, his father held a similarly optimistic vision - and joined the People's Liberation Army to further Mao's revolution. But both men were forced to confront the hard realities of CommunistParty rule.Drawing on family interviews and his reporting, Edward Wong unveils the continuous inner history of China under Xi Jinping and Mao. But the parallel journeys of father and son also illustrate startling shifts over the decades.With beautiful writing, sweeping narrative, and news-breaking insight into contemporary China, At the Edge of Empire is required reading for anyone looking to understand global politics in the 21st century. Edward Wong takes the reader straight into the heart of the Hong Kong protests, the upheavals in Xinjiang and the halls of power in Beijing and Washington.
At the Edge of Law: Emergent and Divergent Models of Legal Professionalism
by Andrew FrancisFollowing significant changes in the legal profession since the 1980s, how do new organizational forms and actors at the edge of the law impact upon our understanding of the changing nature of the core values of mainstream legal professionalism? This methodological approach brings together a series of case studies built on original empirical research and focuses on those operating at the margins of legal professionalism in England and Wales. Also including comparative material on the US and Canada, the issues discussed are relevant for common law countries more generally and the analysis reveals the ways in which an increasingly fluid, fragmented and heterogeneous legal profession is responding to the challenges it faces in the early twenty-first century.
At the Edge of Sight: Photography and the Unseen
by Shawn Michelle SmithThe advent of photography revolutionized perception, making visible what was once impossible to see with the human eye. In At the Edge of Sight, Shawn Michelle Smith engages these dynamics of seeing and not seeing, focusing attention as much on absence as presence, on the invisible as the visible. Exploring the limits of photography and vision, she asks: What fails to register photographically, and what remains beyond the frame? What is hidden by design, and what is obscured by cultural blindness? Smith studies manifestations of photography's brush with the unseen in her own photographic work and across the wide-ranging images of early American photographers, including F. Holland Day, Eadweard Muybridge, Andrew J. Russell, Chansonetta Stanley Emmons, and Augustus Washington. She concludes by showing how concerns raised in the nineteenth century remain pertinent today in the photographs of Abu Ghraib. Ultimately, Smith explores the capacity of photography to reveal what remains beyond the edge of sight.
At the Edge of Space: The X-15 Flight Program
by Milton O. ThompsonIn At the Edge of Space, Milton O. Thompson tells the dramatic story of one of the most successful research aircraft ever flown. The first full-length account of the X-15 program, the book profiles the twelve test pilots (Neil Armstrong, Joe Engle, Scott Crossfield, and the author among them) chosen for the program. Thompson has translated a highly technical subject into readable accounts of each pilot's participation, including many heroic and humorous anecdotes and highlighting the pilots' careers after the program ended in 1968.
At the Edge of Summer: A Novel
by Jessica BrockmoleThe acclaimed author of Letters from Skye returns with an extraordinary story of a friendship born of proximity but boundless in the face of separation and war. Luc Crépet is accustomed to his mother's bringing wounded creatures to their idyllic château in the French countryside, where healing comes naturally amid the lush wildflowers and crumbling stone walls. Yet his maman's newest project is the most surprising: a fifteen-year-old Scottish girl grieving over her parents' fate. A curious child with an artistic soul, Clare Ross finds solace in her connection to Luc, and she in turn inspires him in ways he never thought possible. Then, just as suddenly as Clare arrives, she is gone, whisked away by her grandfather to the farthest reaches of the globe. Devastated by her departure, Luc begins to write letters to Clare--and, even as she moves from Portugal to Africa and beyond, the memory of the summer they shared keeps her grounded. Years later, in the wake of World War I, Clare, now an artist, returns to France to help create facial prostheses for wounded soldiers. One of the wary veterans who comes to the studio seems familiar, and as his mask takes shape beneath her fingers, she recognizes Luc. But is this soldier, made bitter by battle and betrayal, the same boy who once wrote her wistful letters from Paris? After war and so many years apart, can Clare and Luc recapture how they felt at the edge of that long-ago summer? Bringing to life two unforgettable characters and the rich historical period they inhabit, Jessica Brockmole shows how love and forgiveness can redeem us. Praise for Jessica Brockmole's Letters From Skye "A remarkable story of two women, their loves, their secrets, and two world wars [in which] the beauty of Scotland, the tragedy of war, the longings of the heart, and the struggles of a family torn apart by disloyalty are brilliantly drawn."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Tantalizing . . . sure to please readers who enjoyed other epistolary novels like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society."--Stratford Gazette "An absorbing and rewarding saga of loss and discovery."--Kate Alcott, author of The Dressmaker "A sweeping and sweet (but not saccharine) love story."--USA Today "[A] dazzling little jewel."--Richmond Times-Dispatch "A captivating love story that celebrates the power of hope."--Vanessa Diffenbaugh, author of The Language of FlowersFrom the Hardcover edition.
At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds (Science Essentials #32)
by Dan HooperA new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang—and how research into these moments continues to revolutionize our understanding of our universeScientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: we still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history.Taking readers into the remarkable world of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary and perplexing questions that scientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how we are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang and test promising theories for how and why our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter. We may be poised to finally discover how dark matter was formed during our universe’s first moments, and, with new telescopes, we are also lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it.Wrestling with the mysteries surrounding the initial moments that followed the Big Bang, At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its origin.
At the Edge of Uncertainty: 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise
by Michael BrooksThe bestselling author of Free Radicals takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the most controversial areas of modern science The atom. The Big Bang. DNA. Natural selection. All are ideas that have revolutionized science--and all were dismissed out of hand when they first appeared. The surprises haven't stopped in recent years, and in At the Edge of Uncertainty, bestselling author Michael Brooks investigates the new wave of radical insights that are shaping the future of scientific discovery. Brooks takes us to the extreme frontiers of what we understand about the world. He journeys from the observations that might rewrite our story of how the cosmos came to be, through the novel biology behind our will to live, and on to the physiological root of consciousness. Along the way, he examines how it's time to redress the gender imbalance in clinical trials, explores how merging humans with other species might provide a solution to the shortage of organ donors, and finds out whether the universe really is like a computer or if the flow of time is a mere illusion.
At the Edge of the Haight
by Katherine SeligmanThe 10th Winner of the 2019 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, Awarded by Barbara Kingsolver &“What a read this is, right from its startling opening scene. But even more than plot, it&’s the richly layered details that drive home a lightning bolt of empathy. To read At the Edge of the Haight is to live inside the everyday terror and longings of a world that most of us manage not to see, even if we walk past it on sidewalks every day. At a time when more Americans than ever find themselves at the edge of homelessness, this book couldn&’t be more timely.&”—Barbara Kingsolver, author of Unsheltered and The Poisonwood Bible Maddy Donaldo, homeless at twenty, has made a family of sorts in the dangerous spaces of San Francisco&’s Golden Gate Park. She knows whom to trust, where to eat, when to move locations, and how to take care of her dog. It&’s the only home she has. When she unwittingly witnesses the murder of a young homeless boy and is seen by the perpetrator, her relatively stable life is upended. Suddenly, everyone from the police to the dead boys&’ parents want to talk to Maddy about what she saw. As adults pressure her to give up her secrets and reunite with her own family before she meets a similar fate, Maddy must decide whether she wants to stay lost or be found. Against the backdrop of a radically changing San Francisco, a city which embraces a booming tech economy while struggling to maintain its culture of tolerance, At the Edge of the Haight follows the lives of those who depend on makeshift homes and communities. As judge Hillary Jordan says, &“This book pulled me deep into a world I knew little about, bringing the struggles of its young, homeless inhabitants—the kind of people we avoid eye contact with on the street—to vivid, poignant life. The novel demands that you take a close look. If you knew, could you still ignore, fear, or condemn them? And knowing, how can you ever forget?&”
At the Edge of the Orchard
by Tracy ChevalierFrom internationally bestselling author Tracy Chevalier, a riveting drama of a pioneer family on the American frontier1838: James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck - in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. They and their five children work relentlessly to tame their patch of land, buying saplings from a local tree man known as John Appleseed so they can cultivate the fifty apple trees required to stake their claim on the property. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle. James loves the apples, reminders of an easier life back in Connecticut; while Sadie prefers the applejack they make, an alcoholic refuge from brutal frontier life. 1853: Their youngest child Robert is wandering through Gold Rush California. Restless and haunted by the broken family he left behind, he has made his way alone across the country. In the redwood and giant sequoia groves he finds some solace, collecting seeds for a naturalist who sells plants from the new world to the gardeners of England. But you can run only so far, even in America, and when Robert's past makes an unexpected appearance he must decide whether to strike out again or stake his own claim to a home at last. Chevalier tells a fierce, beautifully crafted story in At the Edge of the Orchard, her most graceful and richly imagined work yet.
At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise That Saved the Union
by Robert V. ReminiIn 1850, America hovered on the brink of disunion. Tensions between slave-holders and abolitionists mounted, as the debate over slavery grew rancorous. An influx of new territory prompted Northern politicians to demand that new states remain free; in response, Southerners baldly threatened to secede from the Union. Only Henry Clay could keep the nation together.At the Edge of the Precipice is historian Robert V. Remini's fascinating recounting of the Compromise of 1850, a titanic act of political will that only a skillful statesman like Clay could broker. Although the Compromise would collapse ten years later, plunging the nation into civil war, Clay's victory in 1850 ultimately saved the Union by giving the North an extra decade to industrialize and prepare. A masterful narrative by an eminent historian, At the Edge of the Precipice also offers a timely reminder of the importance of bipartisanship in a bellicose age.
At the Edge of the Universe
by Shaun David HutchinsonFrom the author of We Are the Ants and The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes the heartbreaking story of a boy who believes the universe is slowly shrinking as things he remembers are being erased from others’ memories.Tommy and Ozzie have been best friends since the second grade, and boyfriends since eighth. They spent countless days dreaming of escaping their small town—and then Tommy vanished. More accurately, he ceased to exist, erased from the minds and memories of everyone who knew him. Everyone except Ozzie. Ozzie doesn’t know how to navigate life without Tommy, and soon he suspects that something else is going on: that the universe is shrinking. When Ozzie is paired up with new student Calvin on a physics project, he begins to wonder if Calvin could somehow be involved. But the more time they spend together, the harder it is for him to deny the feelings developing between them, even if he still loves Tommy. But Ozzie knows there isn’t much time left to find Tommy—that once the door closes, it can’t be opened again. And he’s determined to keep it open as long as it takes to get his boyfriend back.
At the Edge of the Wall: Public and Private Spheres in Divided Berlin (Contemporary European History #26)
by Hanno HochmuthLocated in the geographical center of Berlin, the neighboring boroughs of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg shared a history and identity until their fortunes diverged dramatically following the construction of the Berlin Wall, which placed them within opposing political systems. This revealing account of the two municipal districts before, during and after the Cold War takes a microhistorical approach to investigate the broader historical trajectories of East and West Berlin, with particular attention to housing, religion, and leisure. Merged in 2001, they now comprise a single neighborhood that bears the traces of these complex histories and serves as an illuminating case study of urban renewal, gentrification, and other social processes that continue to reshape Berlin.
At the Edge of the Woods (A Lew Ferris Mystery #3)
by Victoria HoustonSomeone is murdering pickleball players in Loon Lake and Sheriff Ferris is on the hunt for their killer in Victoria Houston&’s third nail-biting Lew Ferris mystery, perfect for fans of Marc Cameron and Nevada Barr.When a local pickleball player is shot in the head while practicing at an abandoned tennis court with his partner-slash-lover, Sheriff Lew Ferris suspects that the bullet was a stray shot from hunters in the area. It&’s not until a second player–the first victim&’s mistress and pickleball partner–is killed that Sheriff Ferris realizes this is no hunting accident. Someone is hunting people, and it&’s up to her to find out who.With the first victim&’s crazed widow breathing down Lew&’s neck, there&’s no room to breathe, let alone to find time to appreciate the beautiful Loon Lake fall and go fishing. Adding to Sheriff Ferris&’ difficulties are three pickleball players convinced someone has targeted them, someone who will do anything, even murder, to frighten them away from the courts where they play – but why?Who is really at risk? The pickleball players, or Lew and the people close to her?
At the Edge of the World
by Kari JonesMaddie and Ivan have been friends forever. They go to school together, surf, party, and hang out all the time. Ivan eats at Maddie's house almost every day. <P><P> But all is not well in Ivan's world, and as control of his life slips farther away from him, Maddie agonises over her role in his life. Ivan fears the fallout if the people in his community discover what he's been hiding, but Maddie thinks telling his secret will help him. <P><P> As Maddie struggles to figure out her own post-high-school path, she worries about how to deal with the things she knows about Ivan's life. Is she a keeper of his secrets? Should she help him hide what's going on in his family? Or should she tell someone and get help? What does betrayal look like when your best friend is in trouble?
At the Edge: Alpha Crew Part 1 (Alpha Crew #1)
by Laura GriffinDive into Part One of this heart-pounding romantic suspense story, which continues in Edge of Surrender: Alpha Crew Part Two!When Emma Wright’s government plane goes down over the Philippine jungle, she’s forced to survive alone until an ultra-elite SEAL team goes in after her. As the leader of Alpha Crew, Ryan Owen is no stranger to challenges, but he’s never tackled anything quite like this sexy, smart, and resourceful woman. The mission is to get Emma home safely, but danger is everywhere, and Ryan’s unexpected desire for Emma could be a deadly distraction. Back home in California, Ryan’s mission is over—but Emma’s has just begun. She knows her plane crash was no accident, and she’s determined to uncover the truth about what happened—even if her quest for answers puts her at risk. Torn between duty and desire, Ryan searches for a way win Emma’s heart while protecting her from an invisible enemy who wants her dead. The thrilling conclusion to this Alpha Crew romance is just weeks away!
At the Edge: Riding for My Life
by Danny MacAskill'I've already had my nine lives on the bike...'Danny MacAskill lives on the edge. The cyclist is legendary for his YouTube viral videos like 'The Ridge': nerve-jangling blurs of stunts and speed over towering buildings and mountain peaks. His life is one of thrills, bloody spills and millions of online hits.It hasn't been an easy ride. Fear, stress and the 'what if?' factor circle every trailblazing trick, which require imagination, daredevil techniques and movie-making smarts. He has spent his life pushing the extremes; somehow, he's still around to tell the tale.In this unflinching memoir of mayhem, Danny shares his anarchic childhood on the Isle of Skye and early days as a street trials rider, takes us behind the scenes of his training and videos, and reveals what it takes to go beyond the next level - both mentally and physically.Join Danny for a nerve-shredding ride. Just be sure to bring a crash helmet.
At the Edges of Citizenship: Security and the Constitution of Non-citizen Subjects
by Kate HepworthProposing a new, dynamic conception of citizenship, this book argues against understandings of citizenship as a collection of rights that can be either possessed or endowed, and demonstrates it is an emergent condition that has temporal and spatial dimensions. Furthermore, citizenship is shown to be continually and contingently reconstituted through the struggles between those considered insiders and outsiders. Significantly, these struggles do not result in a clear division between citizens and non-citizens, but in a multiplicity of states that are at once included within and excluded from the political community. These liminal states of citizenship are elaborated in relation to three specific forms of non-citizenship: the ’respectable illegal, the ’intimate foreigner’ and the ’abject citizen’. Each of these modalities of citizenship corresponds to either the figure of the clandestino/a or the nomad as invoked in the 2008 Italian Security Package and a second set of laws, commonly referred to as the ’Nomad Emergency Decree’. Exploring how this legislation affected and was negotiated by individuals and groups who were constituted as ’objects of security’, author Kate Hepworth focuses on the first-hand experience of individuals deemed threats to the nation. Situated within the field of human geography, the book draws on literature from citizenship studies, critical security studies and migration studies to show how processes of securitisation and irregularisation work to delimit between citizens and non-citizens, as well as between legitimate and illegitimate outsiders.
At the Edges of Liberalism
by Steven E. AschheimThe essays in this volume seek to confront some of the charged meeting points of European - especially German - and Jewish history. All, in one way or another, explore the entanglements, the intertwined moments of empathy and enmity, belonging and estrangement, creativity and destructiveness that occurred at these junctions.
At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators
by Jean MaA free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.Many recent works of contemporary art, performance, and film turn a spotlight on sleep, wresting it from the hidden, private spaces to which it is commonly relegated. At the Edges of Sleep considers sleep in film and moving image art as both a subject matter to explore onscreen and a state to induce in the audience. Far from negating action or meaning, sleep extends into new territories as it designates ways of existing in the world, in relation to people, places, and the past. Defined positively, sleep also expands our understanding of reception beyond the binary of concentration and distraction. These possibilities converge in the work of Thai filmmaker and artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who has explored the subject of sleep systematically throughout his career. In examining Apichatpong’s work, Jean Ma brings together an array of interlocutors—from Freud to Proust, George Méliès to Tsai Ming-liang, Weegee to Warhol—to rethink moving images through the lens of sleep. Ma exposes an affinity between cinema, spectatorship, and sleep that dates to the earliest years of filmmaking, and sheds light upon the shifting cultural valences of sleep in the present moment.
At the Eleventh Hour: Reflections, Hopes and Anxieties at the Closing of the Great War, 1918
by Hugh Cecil Peter H. LiddleFollowing on from the highly acclaimed Facing Armageddon and Passchendaele in Perspective, At the Eleventh Hour recognises that a world was ending in November 1918, and by international collaboration on the 80th Anniversary we learn through this book, what it was like to experience the transition from war to peace. Distinguished historians brilliantly convey a sense of immediacy as the Armistice is recreated and analysed.The reader will not just acquire new areas of information, he will have some of the existing knowledge which he thought was soundly held, strikingly challenged in the pages of this superbly illustrated book.
At the End of Every Day: A Novel
by Arianna ReicheThis haunting debut novel—perfect for fans of Mona Awad, Karin Tidbeck, and Julia Armfield—is a &“wild genre-and-mind-bending ride&” (Laura Sims, author of Looker) about a loyal employee at a collapsing theme park questioning the recent death of a celebrity visitor, the arrival of strange new guests, her boyfriend&’s erratic behavior, and ultimately her own sanity.Delphi has spent years working at a vast and iconic theme park in California after fleeing a trauma in her rural hometown. But following the disturbing death of a beloved Hollywood starlet on the park grounds, Delphi is tasked with shuttering it for good. Meanwhile, two siblings with ties to the park exchange letters, trying to understand why people who work there have been disappearing. Before long, they learn that there&’s a reason no one is meant to see behind its carefully guarded curtain… What happens when the park empties out? And what happens when Delphi, who seems remarkably at one with it, is finally forced to leave? Simultaneously &“a smart and surprising escape room of a novel&” (Matt Bell, author of Appleseed) about the uncanny valley, death cults, optical illusions, and the enduring power of fantasy, Reiche&’s debut is a mind-bending teacup ride through an eerily familiar landscape, where the key to it all is what happens at the end of every day.
At the End of Everything
by Marieke NijkampThe Hope Juvenile Treatment Center is ironically named. No one has hope for the delinquent teenagers who have been exiled there; the world barely acknowledges that they exist. <p><p>Then the guards at Hope start acting strange. And one day...they don't show up. But when the teens band together to make a break from the facility, they encounter soldiers outside the gates. There's a rapidly spreading infectious disease outside, and no one can leave their houses or travel without a permit. Which means that they're stuck at Hope. And this time, no one is watching out for them at all. <p><p>As supplies quickly dwindle and a deadly plague tears through their ranks, the group has to decide whom among them they can trust and figure out how they can survive in a world that has never wanted them in the first place.
At the End of Life
by Francine Prose Lee GutkindWhat should medicine do when it can't save your life?The modern healthcare system has become proficient at staving off death with aggressive interventions. And yet, eventually everyone dies--and although most Americans say they would prefer to die peacefully at home, more than half of all deaths take place in hospitals or health care facilities.At the End of Life--the latest collaborative book project between the Creative Nonfiction Foundation and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation--tackles this conundrum head on. Featuring twenty-two compelling personal-medical narratives, the collection explores death, dying and palliative care, and highlights current features, flaws and advances in the healthcare system.Here, a poet and former hospice worker reflects on death's mysteries; a son wanders the halls of his mother's nursing home, lost in the small absurdities of the place; a grief counselor struggles with losing his own grandfather; a medical intern traces the origins and meaning of time; a mother anguishes over her decision to turn off her daughter's life support and allow her organs to be harvested; and a nurse remembers many of her former patients.These original, compelling personal narratives reveal the inner workings of hospitals, homes and hospices where patients, their doctors and their loved ones all battle to hang on--and to let go.
At the End of Property: Patents, Plants and the Crisis of Propertization
by Veit BraunRecent decades have witnessed the creation of new types of property systems, ranging from data ownership to national control over genetic resources. This trend has significant implications for wealth distribution and our understanding of who can own what. This book explores the idea of ownership in the realm of plant breeding, revealing how plants have been legally and materially transformed into property. It highlights the controversial aspects of turning seeds, plants and genes into property and how this endangers the viability of the seed industry. Examining ownership not simply as a legal concept, but as a bundle of laws, practices and technologies, this is a valuable contribution that will interest scholars of intellectual property studies, the anthropology of markets, science and technology studies and related fields.