Library Displays

The Story of Tibet is a work of monumental importance, a fascinating journey through the land and history of Tibet, with His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama as guide. Over the course of three years, journalist Thomas Laird spent more than sixty hours with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in candid, one-on-one interviews that covered His Holiness's beliefs on history, science, reincarnation, and his lifelong study of Buddhism. The Story of Tibet is His Holiness's personal look at his country's past as well as a summation of his life's work as both spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people.

This book is the first English-language study to explore the shifting political rationales and cultural practices in contemporary Trindu, a remote, nomadic and agricultural county in Yushu Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, in the far west of the People's Republic of China. The 1980s social and economic reform in China has involved limited devolution of power, the localization of fiscal responsibilities and a relaxation of many prohibitions. By then, however, many aspects of society had undergone far-reaching alterations through the upheavals of the Maoist revolutionary era. The author argues that Trindu is intimately bound up with, and has ramifications for, China's nation-state politics, and others within that nation-state, and cannot be understood without primary reference to that politics.

The true gripping story of how scientist George Schaller and four mountain men set out to save the chiru (antelope-like creatures who cannot survive captivity and who live on the high plains of Tibet) from near extinction.

In March of 1959, a 23-year-old Tibetan youth named Tenzin Gyatso burst onto the world stage. Fleeing his native country to govern in exile from India, the Dalai Lama would go on to become one of the great leaders of our time. Then, in March 2008, the diplomat, icon, and winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize was blamed for inciting violence in Tibet's traditional capital of Lhasa. As 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's rule in exile, the situation in Tibet has become more volatile than ever. Now, China must decide if it will give Tibet the right to govern itself and what the consequences will be for its economy and its place on the world stage.

South and Central Asia is a region of extraordinary cultural and environmental diversity and home to nearly one-quarter of the earth's population. Among these diverse peoples are some whose ways of life are threatened by the accelerating assault of forces of change including environmental degradation, population growth, land loss, warfare, disease, and the penetration of global markets. This volume examines twelve Asian groups whose way of life is endangered. Some are "indigenous" peoples, some are not; each group represents a unique answer to the question of how to survive and thrive on the planet earth, and illustrates both the threats and the responses of peoples caught up in the struggle to sustain cultural meaning, identity, and autonomy.

In this retelling of a Mongolian folktale a simple shepherd must pass three tests in order to marry the Khan's beautiful daughter.

With great care and judicious inclusion of noteworthy material, Gunde has provided a one-stop reference on the contributions of the Chinese and their way of life. In one volume, the essence of China--past and present--is brilliantly captured. The extensive coverage includes chapters on the land, history, and people; thought and religion; literature and art; music and dance; food and clothing; architecture and housing; family and gender; and holidays and leisure activities. The volume is further enhanced by a chronology, guide to pronunciation, glossary, suggested readings, numerous photos, and volume map.

More than 1,000 entries explore all aspects of China's past, present and future, with essay-length entries on provinces and major cities; Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and other religions; family life; calligraphy, embroidery, sculpture and other arts and crafts; folktales and mythology; martial arts, including tai chi chuan and kung fu; native animals and plants; emperors and dynasties; political movements and institutions; traditional medicine; contemporary leaders; festivals and holidays; foreign relations; language and writing; educational systems; Chinese communities around the world; and much more.

The subject of Tibet is highly controversial, and Tibet, as a political entity, is defined differently from source to source and audience to audience. The editors of this path-breaking, multidisciplinary study have gathered some of the leading scholars in Tibetan and ethnic studies to provide a comprehensive analysis of the Tibet question. "Contemporary Tibet" explores essential themes and issues concerning modern Tibet.

This groundbreaking book explores China's efforts to assimilate Tibet, in the process rewriting Tibetan history to conform to its own goals. Warren W. Smith argues that Beijing fears that any genuine autonomy or dialogue with the Dalai Lama will fuel renewed nationalism in China's Tibet, as the leadership calls its possession. Highlighting China's past and current propaganda on Tibet, the book demonstrates China's sensitivity regarding the legitimacy of its rule. In the absence of any solution, Smith advocates promoting Tibet's right to self-determination as the most viable strategy for sustaining international attention and maintaining the most essential elements of Tibetan national identity.

Ritual is one of the most pervasive religious phenomena in the Tibetan cultural world. Despite its ubiquity and importance to Tibetan cultural life, however, only in recent years has Tibetan ritual been given the attention it deserves. This is the first scholarly collection to focus on this important subject. Unique in its historical, geographical and disciplinary breadth, this book brings together eleven essays by an international cast of scholars working on ritual texts, institutions and practices in the greater Tibetan cultural world - Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Mongolia.

In early fourteenth-century China, Oyuna tells her granddaughter of her girlhood in Mongolia and how love for her horse enabled her to win an important race and bring good luck to her family.

For decades preceding 1990, Mongolia's economy was supported by the Soviet Union. For the past several years the country has been undergoing extreme change in economic structure as well as social organization. The 30 women in this book discuss the changes in specific, pesonal terms but, as a counterpoint, confirm a tenacious sense of tradition. Weather conditions are extreme in Mongolia: winter temperatures hover between 30 to 40 degrees below zero. The high plateau that Mongolia sits on has preserved a uniquely Mongolian lifestyle. The women of Mongolia celebrate that lifestyle in this book, as they face an uncertain future with strength and optimism.

Ole Bruun focuses on a community of nomadic livestock herders in present-day Mongolia. He depicts their transition from a contained, Soviet-era collective to modern times and addresses the most essential conditions for their continued survival and prosperity in the age of the market: the adaptability of their own culture and working strategies, government policy, and international attention. In a vast territory such as Mongolia, infrastructure, social benefits, and other means of state support are crucial to prevent herders from sliding into a subsistence orientation, eventually leading to poverty.

This book provides a window to the life and culture of the Kazakh people who live in China. The work summarizes Kazakh political history, social organization, ethnographical aspects of nomadism, linguistics, and Chinese national policy. To this array of information, the book brings humanity and cultural depth, revealing how Kazakhs bless and obliquely curse, and how they experience life's joys and sorrows together with the fate and the work they share. We learn about their wedding customs and their poetry of marriage; about their involvement with the religion of Islam, and about their enduring habit of occasionally having recourse to the ancient rites of shamans. In brief, this book presents glimpses of Kazakh culture and life, ranging from the joys of being born and married to the sorrows of death.

This study, based on Chinese publications and archival materials as well as on recent fieldwork, provides an up-to-date treatment of Kazak history and culture, emphasizing the Kazaks in 20th-century China and, in particular, their status today as one of China's minority nationalities.

This important study explores the multifaceted Mongol experience in China, past and present. Combining insights from anthropology, history, and postcolonial criticism, Uradyn Bulag avoids romanticizing Mongols either as pacified primitive Other or as gallant resistance fighters. Rather, he portrays them as a people whose communist background and standing in China's northern borderlands has informed their political efforts to harness or confront Chinese nationalistic and political hegemony.

In Travels in the Netherworld, Bryan J. Cuevas examines a fascinating but little-known genre of Tibetan narrative literature about the délok, ordinary men and women who claim to have died, traveled through hell, and then returned from the afterlife. These narratives enjoy audiences ranging from the most sophisticated monastic scholars to pious townsfolk, villagers, and nomads. Their accounts emphasize the universal Buddhist principles of impermanence and worldly suffering, the fluctuations of karma, and the feasibility of obtaining a favorable rebirth through virtue and merit. Providing a clear, detailed analysis of four vivid return-from-death tales, including the stories of a Tibetan housewife, a lama, a young noble woman, and a Buddhist monk, Cuevas argues that these narratives express ideas about death and the afterlife that held wide currency among all classes of faithful Buddhists in Tibet.

Squeezed between powerful neighbours, for decades Mongolia played the role of buffer state. Its full independence in 1990 offered new opportunities for both economic growth and the restoration of Mongolian identity. But with a huge land area, poor infrastructure and a small population, the new republic is vulnerable and also dependent on international support.

The communist Chinese state promotes the distinctiveness of the many minorities within its borders. At the same time, it is vigilant in suppressing groups that threaten the nation's unity or its modernizing goals. In Communist Multiculturalism, Susan K. McCarthy examines three minority groups in the province of Yunnan, focusing on the ways in which they have adapted to the government's nationbuilding and minority nationalities policies since the 1980s. She reveals that Chinese government policy is shaped by perceptions of what constitutes an authentic cultural group and of the threat ethnic minorities may constitute to national interests. These minority groups fit no clear categories but rather are practicing both their Chinese citizenship and the revival of their distinct cultural identities. For these groups, being minority is, or can be, one way of being national.

It is not possible to fully understand contemporary politics between China and the Dalai Lama without understanding what happened--and why--during the 1950s. In a book that continues the story of Tibet's history that he began in his acclaimed A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State, Melvyn C. Goldstein critically revises our understanding of that key period in midcentury. This authoritative account utilizes new archival material, including never before seen documents, and extensive interviews with Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama, and with Chinese officials. Goldstein furnishes fascinating and sometimes surprising portraits of these major players as he deftly unravels the fateful intertwining of Tibetan and Chinese politics against the backdrop of the Korean War, the tenuous Sino-Soviet alliance, and American cold war policy.

China's 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities form about 9 per cent of the Chinese population, with over 100 million people, and occupy over 60 per cent of China's territory. They are very diverse, and the degree of modernization among them varies greatly. This book examines the state of China's ethnic minorities at a time when ethnic affairs and globalization are key forces affecting the contemporary world. It considers the fields of policy, economy, society and international relations, including the impact of globalization and outside influences.

In Governing China's Multiethnic Frontiers, leading scholars examine the Chinese government's administration of its ethnic minority regions, particularly border areas where ethnicity is at times a volatile issue and where separatist movements are feared. Seven essays focus on the Muslim Hui, multiethnic southwest China, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. Together these studies provide an overview of government relations with key minority populations, against which one can view evolving dialogues and disputes.

China is a multinational country with a population of more than one billion. There are 56 identified ethnic groups, as well as other unidentified groups, many of which have been isolated for hundreds or even a thousand years. Among them, some of the unidentified groups are even t aware of their own origins. Different ethnic groups live in various natural conditions, thus creating different civilizations. This book provides a wealth of material for the studies of anthropology, ethlogy and human population genetics. Especially, through the vivid pictures taken at the places where ethnic groups live, readers can see their cultural and anthropological characteristics. The book should be of interest to historians and others interested in the Chinese nationalities.

This brilliant work shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Based on years of research and access to a rich trove of public and private documents, including the diaries of gay men living in New York at the turn of the century, this book is a fascinating look at a gay world that was not supposed to have existed. This book was selected by Robin Henry, Department of History

After completing the final version of his general theory of relativity in November 1915, Albert Einstein wrote a book about relativity for a popular audience. His intention was "to give an exact insight into the theory of relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics." The book remains one of the most lucid explanations of the special and general theories ever written. This book was selected by Mark Schneegurt, Department of Biological Sciences.

In his landmark study, Darwin theorized that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. These ideas flew in the face of long-held beliefs, and the book immediately became one of the most controversial scientific works in history--and it still remains so today. Now, for the first time, Darwin's classic is fully and handsomely illustrated with more than 350 illustrations and photos, many of them in brilliant color, along with reproductions of his journal and excerpts from his personal papers. This title was selected by Chris Rogers, Department of Biological Sciences.

The Scent of Apples, the first collection of poems of Robert Frost in Croatian translation, contains hundreds of poems from one of the most popular and influential American poets, from all nine of his collections. Frost's poetry in form is quite traditional - his innovation was intertwining rhythm and meter using everyday speech. This title was chosen by Kimberly Engber, Department of English.

James H. Schmitz is best known as a writer of "space opera", and for his strong female characters who didn't conform to the "damsel in distress" stereotype typical of science fiction of the time. This collection includes some of his better-known short stories, including "Grandpa," "Balanced Ecology," and "Goblin Night." This title was selected by Virginia Williams, University Libraries.

"I believe we can change the world if we start talking to one another again." With this simple declaration, Margaret Wheatley proposes that people band together with their colleagues and friends to create the solutions for real social change, both locally and globally, that are so badly needed. Such change will not come from governments or corporations, she argues, but from the ageless process of thinking together in conversation. Turning to One Another encourages this process. This book was selected by Victoria Mosack, School of Nursing.

Outstanding look at how organizations really work. Explains and supports the idea of "sensemaking," that we act first, and then form our ideas and opinions based on our actions, rather than vice versa. Describes organizing as an iterative, ongoing, messy process of trial and error. This title was selected by Jean Patterson, Department of Educational Leadership.

Virtually any random process developing chronologically can be viewed as a time series. In economics, closing prices of stocks, the cost of money, the jobless rate, and retail sales are just a few examples of many. Developed from course notes and extensively classroom-tested, Applied Time Series Analysis includes examples across a variety of fields, develops theory, and provides software to address time series problems in a broad spectrum of fields. This book was chosen by Chu-Ping C. Vijverberg, Department of Philosophy.

Published in 1967, Maurice Meisner’s Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism is a classic both as an intellectual history and as a study of the early years of the Chinese Communist Party. As Meisner states, his work is in part “a study of the intellectual evolution of China’s first Marxist” and “a study of the early reception and transformation of Marxist ideas in China.” This title was selected by Xifuen Lu, Department of Philosophy.

These notes were developed for a graduate-level course on the theory and numerical solution of nonlinear hyperbolic systems of conservation laws. Part I deals with the basic mathematical theory of the equations: the notion of weak solutions, entropy conditions, and a detailed description of the wave structure of solutions to the Riemann problem. The emphasis is on tools and techniques that are indispensable in developing good numerical methods for discontinuous solutions. Part II is devoted to the development of high resolution shock-capturing methods, including the theory of total variation diminishing (TVD) methods and the use of limiter functions. The book is intended for a wide audience, and will be of use both to numerical analysts and to computational researchers in a variety of applications. It was selected for this display by Tianshi Lu, Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

The saga of a brutal, bloody, bewildering year in the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit, this book has been described as "interior reporting at its finest," by the Associated Press, and is an Edgar Award winner and the basis for the popular television series of the same title. This title was selected by Chris Ronen.

The classic motivational parable that shows you how to make your own opportunities in life, updated for the modern reader by bestselling business author Alan Axelrod. Ever since its first printing by William Randolph Hearst in 1921,The Go-Getter has inspired employees and entrepreneurs to take initiative, increase their productivity, and excel against the odds. This version updates the tale to address today's most pressing work issues. In a time when jobs are tight and managers are too busy for mentoring, how can you maintain positive energy, take control of your career, and prepare yourself to ace the tests that come your way? By applying the timeless lessons in this compulsively readable parable, employees at all levels can learn to rekindle the go-getter in themselves. This title was chosen by Brogan N. Miller.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity -- principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates. This book was selected by Derek Meyer.

Zadie Smith describes this work as "a deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly." One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years due largely to initial audiences' rejection of its strong black female protagonist, Hurston's classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature. It was selected for inclusion in this display by Brooke Barlow.

America is in trouble. We face four major challenges on which our future depends, and we are failing to meet them--and if we delay any longer, soon it will be too late for us to pass along the American dream to future generations. In That Used to Be Us, Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, offer both a wake-up call and a call to collective action. They analyze the four challenges we face and spell out what we need to do now to sustain the American dream and preserve American power in the world. This title was chosen for this exhibit by Malcolm S. Johnson.

Written by a former WSU Communications professor and titan of the Kansas newspaper industry, this title includes his most popular and columns. It was chosen for inclusion by Ragini Venkatasubban.

An epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present. The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption, and it is also about the power of fathers over sons-their love, their sacrifices, their lies. This title was included on the recommendation of Bria Cherney.

In 1955, Tobias Schneebaum disappeared into the depths of the Peruvian Amazon. He had no guide, no map and the vague instruction to keep the river on his right. A year later he emerged from the jungle ... naked, covered in body paint, and a modern-day cannibal. Now, 45 years after his original visit, he is reunited with the very tribesmen he both loved and who gave him nightmares for nearly half a century.

Father Gerard A. Zegwaard, MSC, spent a large part of his life in Netherlands New Guinea and Indonesia. On 6 June 1996, then retired and living in Rotterdam, he handed Gertrudis Offenberg a folder stuffed full of myths and legends of the Asmat and Mimika Papuans, asking whether they might be worked up into a book. Amoko - In the Beginning is the remarkable book of his stories. The book only covers those myths collected prior to the Indonesian takeover of Netherlands New Guinea in 1962. The commentaries and descriptions of others also cover the period prior to that year, ensuring a homogeneous context.

This book presents a collection of some of the finest woodcarvings of the Asmat, a people who inhabit the coastal swamp forest of southwest New Guinea.

Famed French explorer Herve de Maigret, whose first expedition to New Guinea resulted in the documentary "The sky above, the mud below," returns to this twilight world thirty years after he first made contact with the cannibal tribes in the remote mountain regions. Now de Maigret returns and hopes to gain a final glimpse into the meaning behind primitive practices before they disappear from the modern world.

An international group of explorers set out to cross the most dangerous, uncharted jungles of Dutch New Guinea.

Questions about the meanings of non-western art keep intriguing western art-observers. Working towards understanding these meanings, Pauline van der Zee here compares the art, symbolism and mythology of two Papua people—the Kamoro and Asmat. Art as a medium of contact with ancestors is a recent comparative research focusing on the related, yet different, artistic expressions of Asmat and neighboring Kamoro. The approach taken here emphasizes relationships between art, rituals and mythology. Artifacts perform in rituals and rituals, according to native beliefs, were introduced by mythical heroes. Combining cultural information embedded in myths and rituals with an investigation of various design elements and comparing Asmat and Kamoro data, results in innovative interpretations resonating the intrinsic ambiguity of art.

The Asmat live in an alluvial swamp in the south of Irian Jaya, the western half of the island of Papua New Guinea. Through this swamp flows a complex matrix of rivers and streams that floods the land in times of highest tides. Within this environment, remarkable ritual objects were developed by the people that powerfully expressed their culture which, in certain areas, required head hunting and cannibalism to placate ancestral spirits. This book is about the peoples and artifacts found in this region.

Tobias Schneebaum here tells the remarkable story of his four years among the Asmat of New Guinea, a jungle-dwelling people rumored to have killed Michael Rockefeller. Instead of ferocious cannibals, Schneebaum found a regal, gentle people who freely accepted him and initiated him into a way of life no outsider had ever seen before.

For all those interested in Oceanic art, or ethnographic art in general Bisj poles are long, figuratively-carved tree trunks from the southwest of New Guinea. The poles serve as a memorial for the deceased and have been named for the ritual of which they form the centre, the bisj. This ritual has to do with the cycle of life and death and 'in former times' with head-hunting and actions of revenge. Through pacification and Christianization of the Asmat, these practices were banned and ethnologists feared that the associated rituals and woodcarving art would, as a result, disappear. The resulting collection is a celebration of this dying art form, gathering together photographs and text on both the ritual and the art form.

A book about the cravings of the Asmat people of the Irian Jaya (now Papua).

In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi's "most-everything girl," might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting, carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds--and into the hearts of families impossible to forget.

Winner of the 2012 National Book Award for Poetry. To read David Ferry's Bewilderment is to be reminded that poetry of the highest order can be made by the subtlest of means. The passionate nature and originality of Ferry's prosodic daring works astonishing transformations that take your breath away. In poem after poem, his diction modulates beautifully between plainspoken high eloquence and colloquial vigor, making his distinctive speech one of the most interesting and ravishing achievements of the past half century.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and a finalist for the National Book Award! From the PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author of the critically acclaimed short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, comes Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. A razor-sharp satire set in Texas during America's war in Iraq, it explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad. Ben Fountain's remarkable debut novel follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders.

In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned 3 continents. In Great Britain and the United States, Soviet spies worked their way into the scientific community; in Norway, a commando force slipped behind enemy lines to attack German heavy-water manufacturing; and deep in the desert, one brilliant group of scientists was hidden away at a remote site at Los Alamos. This is the story of the plotting, the risk-taking, the deceit, and genius that created the world's most formidable weapon. This is the story of the atomic bomb. Bomb is a 2012 National Book Awards finalist for Young People's Literature. Bomb is a 2012 Washington Post Best Kids Books of the Year title. Bomb is a 2013 Newbery Honor book.

Domingo Martinez lays bare his interior and exterior worlds as he struggles to make sense of the violent and the ugly, along with the beautiful and the loving. Partly a reflection on the culture of machismo and partly an exploration of the author's boyhood spent in his sister's hand-me-down clothes, this book delves into the enduring and complex bond between Martinez and his deeply flawed, but fiercely protective older brother. It features a cast of memorable characters, including his gun-hoarding, former farmhand Gramma and "The Mimi's," two of his older sisters who for a short, glorious time, manage to transform themselves from poor Latina adolescents into upper-class white girls. Martinez delves into the complicated relationships between extended family and the inner conflicts that result when the desire to Americanize clashes with the inherent need to defend one's manhood in an aggressive, archaic patriarchal farming culture. He provides a real glimpse into a society where children are traded like commerce, physical altercations routinely solve problems, drugs are rampant, sex is often crude, and people depend on the family witch doctor for advice. Charming, painful, and enlightening, it examines the traumas and pleasures of growing up in South Texas, and the often terrible consequences when two very different cultures collide on the banks of a dying river.

The compelling tale of a girl who must save a group of bonobos-and herself-from a violent coup The Congo is a dangerous place, even for people who are trying to do good. When Sophie has to visit her mother at her sanctuary for bonobos, she's not thrilled to be there. It's her mother's passion, and Sophie would rather have nothing to do with it. But when revolution breaks out and their sanctuary is attacked, she must rescue the bonobos and hide in the jungle. Together, they will fight to keep safe, to eat, and to survive. In this new compelling adventure, Eliot Schrefer asks readers what safety means, how one sacrifices to help others, and what it means to be human.

This collection by African American poet Tim Seibles explores a range of poetic form, including lyric, ode, narrative, and mystical. Like a "fast animal," the poet's voice can swiftly change direction and tone as he crisscrosses between present and past.

In the National Book Award winning Goblin Secrets, a boy joins a theatrical troupe of goblins to find his missing brother.

National Book Award Finalist 2012. In this blistering collection of lyric poems, Cynthia Huntington gives an intimate view of the sexual revolution and rebellion in a time before the rise of feminism. Heavenly Bodies is a testament to the duality of sex, the twin seductiveness and horror of drug addiction, and the social, political, and personal dramas of America in the 1960s.

In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy’s gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment; and a moving story of how we got here.

In spring 2011, Anthony Shadid was one of four New York Times reporters captured in Libya, cuffed and beaten, as that country was seized by revolution. When he was freed, he went home. Not to Boston or Beirut--where he lives-- or to Oklahoma City, where his Lebanese-American family had settled and where he was raised. Instead, he returned to his great-grandfather's estate, a house that, over three years earlier, Shadid had begun to rebuild. House of Stone is the story of a battle-scarred home and a war correspondent's jostled spirit, and of how reconstructing the one came to fortify the other. In this poignant and resonant memoir, the author of the award-winning Night Draws Near creates a mosaic of past and present, tracing the house's renewal alongside his family's flight from Lebanon and resettlement in America. In the process, Shadid memorializes a lost world, documents the shifting Middle East, and provides profound insights into this volatile landscape.House of Stone is an unforgettable meditation on war, exile, rebirth, and the universal yearning for home.

National Book Award Finalist TIME Magazine's #1 Nonfiction Book of 2012 A New York Times Notable Book A Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2012 Best Nonfiction of 2012: The Wall Street Journal, The Plain Dealer In the much-anticipated follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. Iron Curtain describes how, spurred by Stalin and his secret police, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. Drawing on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time, Applebaum portrays in chilling detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. As a result the Soviet Bloc became a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in these electrifying pages.

Acclaimed poet Susan Wheeler, whose last individual collection predicted the spiritual losses of the economic collapse, turns her attention to the most intimate of subjects: the absence or loss of love.

This National Book Award nominee from two-time finalist Patricia McCormick is the unforgettable story of Arn Chorn-Pond, who defied the odds to survive the Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979 and the labor camps of the Khmer Rouge. Based on the true story of Cambodian advocate Arn Chorn-Pond, and authentically told from his point of view as a young boy, this is an achingly raw and powerful historical novel about a child of war who becomes a man of peace.

An urgent and timely collection by one of America's most inventive and accessible poets. In Night of the Republic, Alan Shapiro takes us on an unsettling night tour of America's public places;a gas station restroom, shoe store, convention hall, and race track among others;and in stark Edward Hopper like imagery reveals the surreal and dreamlike features of these familiar but empty night spaces. Shapiro finds in them not the expected alienation but rather an odd, companionable solitude rising up from the quiet emptiness.

How do you find someone who doesn't want to be found? A girl searches for her missing addict brother while confronting her own secrets in this darkly lyrical novel. Rachel has always idolized her older brother Micah. He struggles with addiction, but she tells herself that he's in control. And she almost believes it. Until the night that Micah doesn't come home. Rachel's terrified-and she can't help but feel responsible. She should have listened when Micah tried to confide in her. And she only feels more guilt when she receives an anonymous note telling her that Micah is nearby and in danger. With nothing more to go on than hope and a slim lead, Rachel and Micah's best friend, Tyler, begin the search. Along the way, Rachel will be forced to confront her own dark secrets, her growing attraction to Tyler...and the possibility that Micah may never come home.

The Round House won the National Book Award for fiction. One of the most revered novelists of our time--a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life--Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family. Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich's The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction--at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.

From the award-winning author, a stunning collection that celebrates the haunting, impossible power of love. On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In a New Jersey laundry room, a woman does her lover's washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball bat and glove. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness--and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses. In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, these stories lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that "the half-life of love is forever."

Volume four (A Passage of Power) is the winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.

A novel written by a veteran of the war in Iraq, The Yellow Birds is the harrowing story of two young soldiers trying to stay alive. "The war tried to kill us in the spring." So begins this powerful account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. Bound together since basic training when Bartle makes a promise to bring Murphy safely home, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes actions he could never have imagined. With profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on mothers and families at home, The Yellow Birds is a groundbreaking novel that is destined to become a classic.