China's Futures cuts through the sometimes confounding and unfounded speculation of international pundits and commentators to provide readers with an important yet overlooked set of complex views concerning China's future: views originating within China itself. Daniel Lynch seeks to answer the simple but rarely asked question: how do China's own leaders and other elite figures assess their country's future?Many Western social scientists, business leaders, journalists, tech...

The Taiwan Strait conflict threatens to shatter the global economy and draw the world into war. What makes this increasingly heated perpetual standoff so uniquely intractable?Forging Enmity in the Taiwan Strait explains the conflict as an existential collision between political communities expressing collective identities that are bedrock mutually exclusive. For the Chinese Community Party, Taiwan’s autonomy sabotages the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation.” For the...

How do you encompass all the worlds of the imagination? Within fantasy’s scope lies every possible impossibility, from dragons to spirits, from magic to gods, and from the unliving to the undying. In Fearsome Journeys, master anthologist Jonathan Strahan sets out on a quest to find the very limits of the unlimited, collecting twelve brand new stories by some of the most popular and exciting names in epic fantasy from around the world.With original fiction from Scot...

“That’s true according to the law of the country,” answered the king.The wicked men then said, “We saw Daniel in his room, and there he knelt down and prayed to God three times. He did this for three days in a row.”When Darius heard this he was disappointed that he had signed such a cruel law because Daniel was a good man and president. He couldn’t sleep that night, and in the morning the wicked governors and presidents came to him, and they reminded him of the new rule, an...

A Critical Companion to David Lynch builds on the vast debate of one of the most discussed and researched directors of the present era, with commercial and critical success across multiple mediums and genres. This edited volume provides a wide-ranging exploration of Lynch’s films, practices, and collaborations, with nineteen original chapters examining themes including narrativity, aesthetics, artistry, sound, experimentation, metafiction, and patriarchy from the disciplinary pers...

How globalized information networks can be used for strategic advantageUntil recently, globalization was viewed, on balance, as an inherently good thing that would benefit people and societies nearly everywhere. Now there is growing concern that some countries will use their position in globalized networks to gain undue influence over other societies through their dominance of information and financial networks, a concept known as weaponized interdependence....

The coastal ocean comprises the semi-enclosed seas on the continental shelf, including estuaries and extending to the shelf break. This region is the focus of many serious concerns, including coastal inundation by tides, storm surges or sea level change; fisheries and aquaculture management; water quality; harmful algal blooms; planning of facilities (such as power stations); port development and maintenance; and oil spills. This book addresses modeling and simulation of the transport, evo...

From the Mexican American War and through the Civil War Era, Mexican and US social hierarchies collided in Southern California, transforming the character of Los Angeles from Mexican-Californian to "American." Influencing this transition in unexpected ways were three men of color: a Californio general turned legislator; a formerly enslaved barber; and a Mexico City-born politician and historian. In Dancing with Manifest Destiny: Elite Men of Color and the Making of American Los Angeles...

Earning a higher salary rarely solves financial stress; in fact, it usually exacerbates it. As our income grows, so do our tastes, leading to an invisible phenomenon known as lifestyle creep. We upgrade our cars, our homes, and our wardrobes, entirely trapping ourselves in a high-stress cycle where we must work relentlessly just to maintain an inflated baseline of consumption. Intentional Wealth provides a roadmap for escaping this exhausting financial treadmill. True wealth is not measure...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.There are toxic people in our lives who have done us emotional harm and are holding us back from who we can and want to be. Toxic people all have characteristics in common. It is crucial we recognize them and learn to deal with them.Toxic people are manipulative, controlling, self-centered, destructive and insecure. Their insecurity drives them to put others down. They shame us and fill us with guilt if we don’t...

A fundamental critique of the current property regime, calling for radical social and political change.In The Abuse of Property, Daniel Loick offers a multifaceted philosophical critique of the concept of property, broadly understood. He argues that property should not be the dominant framework in which human beings regulate the use of things, that property is not the same as use. Property rights, in his view, are not conditions of freedom or justice, but ...

The fight for civil rights was at the forefront of inspirational, high-octane movements that took 20th century America by storm. It was a long time coming, to say the least, and yet, while some headway was made, progress was difficult and painfully slow. The historic advancements achieved during the Reconstruction Era were reversed by the Jim Crow law, a hideous set of statutes that enforced racial segregation. Although some of the most “progressive” northern states outwardly opposed those...