‘Makes the case for Annie Besant as a truly eminent Victorian, as brilliant and fearless as she was beautiful’ The Times_________London, 1877. A petite young woman stands before an all-male jury, about to risk everything. She takes a breath, and opens her defence.Annie Besant and her confidant Charles Bradlaugh are on trial for the crime of publishing a birth control pamphlet. Remarkably, Annie is defending herself against o...

From the highly praised author of The Last Days of Old Beijing, a brilliant portrait of China today and a memoir of coming of age in a country in transition.In 1995, at the age of twenty-three, Michael Meyer joined the Peace Corps and, after rejecting offers to go to seven other countries, was sent to a tiny town in Sichuan. Knowing nothing about China, or even how to use chopsticks, Meyer wrote Chinese words up and down his arms so he could hold conversat...

Journalist Michael Meyer has spent his adult life in China, first in a small village as a Peace Corps volunteer, the last decade in Beijing--where he has witnessed the extraordinary transformation the country has experienced in that time. For the past two years he has been completely immersed in the ancient city, living on one of its famed hutong in a century-old courtyard home he shares with several families, teaching English at a local elementary school--while all around him "pr...

A transcendentalist classic on social responsibility and a manifesto that inspired modern protest movementsCritical of 19th-century America’s booming commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau moved to a small cabin in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts in 1845. Walden, the account of his stay near Walden Pond, conveys at once a naturalist’s wonder at the commonplace and a transcendentalist’s yearning for spiritual truth and self-reliance. But T...

'Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' This declamation by president Ronald Reagan when visiting Berlin in 1987 is widely cited as the clarion call that brought the Cold War to an end. The West had won, so this version of events goes, because the West had stood firm. American and Western European resoluteness had brought an evil empire to its knees.Michael Meyer, in this extraordinarily compelling account of the revolutions that roiled Eastern Europe in 1989, begs to differ. Drawing ...

The Oxford History of Mexico is a narrative history of the events, institutions and characters that have shaped Mexican history from the reign of the Aztecs through the twenty-first century. When the hardcover edition released in 2000, it was praised for both its breadth and depth--all aspects of Mexican history, from religion to technology, ethnicity, ecology and mass media, are analyzed with insight and clarity. Available for the first time in paperback, the History covers every era in t...

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In the tradition of In Patagonia and Great Plains, Michael Meyer's In Manchuria is a scintillating combination of memoir, contemporary reporting, and historical research, presenting a unique profile of China's legendary northeast territory. For three years, Meyer rented a home in the rice-farming community of Wasteland, hometown to his wife's family. Their personal saga mirrors the tremendous change most of rural China is undergoing, in the form of a privately he...

**The Call of the Wild is Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Harrison Ford!Timeless tales of wolves, dogs, men, and the Wild, The Call of the Wild and White Fang are two of the world’s greatest adventure stories.**The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable backdrop for Jack London’s vivid, rousing, superbly realistic wilderness classics. The Call of the Wild features a gentle domestic dog driven by th...

Brought to you by Penguin.London, 1877. A petite young woman stands before an all-male jury, about to risk everything. She takes a breath, and opens her defence.Annie Besant and her confidant Charles Bradlaugh are on trial for the crime of publishing a birth control pamphlet. Remarkably, Annie is defending herself against obscenity charges 45 years before women can practice law in England. At a time when women were expected to be obedient, ...

This foundational coursebook offers an accessible and up-to-date introduction to all relevant areas of Teaching English. Definitions and practical examples guide the understanding and reflection of basic and advanced concepts of foreign language learning. The fully revised second edition responds to new developments in language education: (1) Recent policies from the Kultusministerkonferenz and updates of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages with its Companion Volume (2...

Leadership doesn't come with a map-but it might come with a quest.Weird is the New Normal is not your average leadership book. Blending vivid storytelling with deep insight, this one-of-a-kind narrative follows Arcanus, a wizard navigating a turbulent, enchanted world that just happens to mirror the chaos of modern leadership. Along the way, he encounters strange allies, surprising challenges, and moments of clarity that illuminate what it really means to lead with purpose....