What is it like to radically change your life? Writer Alec Ash meets the Chinese who are doing just this, ‘reverse migrating’ from the cities to the remote countryside of southwest China — and joins them himself, in an extraordinary and inspiring journey of self-discovery.In 2020, Alec Ash left behind his old life as a journalist in buzzy Beijing, and moved to Dali, a rural valley in China’s Yunnan province, centred around a great lake shaped like an ear and overlo...

**“Paints a telling portrait of this most restless generation raised in a system that has provided them with unprecedented personal opportunities while denying them political ones. . . . A gifted observer.”—Washington Post"Informative and often humorous . . . Presents a refreshing range of perspectives about being twenty-something in China."—Forbes“Masterfully crafted.”—**Los Ang...

Anyone who has lived in China has stories to tell. For foreigners and Chinese alike, this is a land that transforms itself every day, with something to write about on every corner. Collected in this anthology are 33 contributions, a mix of narrative non-fiction, fiction and poetry, from the writers' colony the Anthill (theanthill.org). Together, they offer glimpses into this quicksilver country-by turns funny, touching and bizarre. Whether we stay or leave, the stories remain.

“Ash’s book paints a telling portrait of this most restless generation raised in a system that has provided them with unprecedented personal opportunities while denying them political ones . . . A gifted observer.”—Washington PostIf China will rule the world one day, who will rule China? There are more than 320 million Chinese between the ages of sixteen and thirty. Children of the one-child policy, born after Mao, with no memory of the Tiananmen Square ma...

As read on BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.This is the generation that will change China. The youth, over 320 million of them in their teens and twenties, more than the population of the USA. Born after Mao, with no memory of Tiananmen, they are destined to transform both their nation and the world.These millennials, offspring of the one-child policy, face fierce competition to succeed. Pressure starts young, and their road isn't easy. Their stories are also l...

What is it like to radically change your life? Writer Alec Ash meets the Chinese who are doing just this, ‘reverse migrating’ from the cities to the remote countryside of southwest China ? and joins them himself, in an extraordinary and inspiring journey of self-discovery.In 2020, Alec Ash left behind his old life as a journalist in buzzy Beijing, and moved to Dali, a rural valley in China’s Yunnan province, centred around a great lake shaped like an ear and overlooked by the Cang ...

A tale of cave bears and comet strikes and a hundred million years of history by the bestselling author of Here on Earth: "Marvelous."— Publishers Weekly (starred review)In Europe: A Natural History, world-renowned scientist, explorer, and conservationist Tim Flannery applies the eloquent interdisciplinary approach he used in his ecological histories of Australia and North America to the story of Europe. He begins 100 million years ago, wh...

This “fun, brain-twisting book . . . will make you think” as it explores 75+ paradoxes in math, philosophy, physics, and social science (Sean Carroll, New York Times–bestselling author of Something Deeply Hidden).Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician’s purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn’t require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstr...

It’s not your father’s Ireland. Not anymore. A story of modern revolution in Ireland told by the founder of IrishCentral, Irish America magazine, and the Irish Voice newspaper.In a May 2019 countrywide referendum, Ireland voted overwhelmingly to make abortion legal; three years earlier, it had done the same with same-sex marriage, becoming the only country in the world to pass such a law by universal suffrage. Pope Francis’s visit to the ...

A thought-provoking argument that consciousness—more widespread than previously assumed—is the feeling of being alive, not a type of computation or a clever hackIn The Feeling of Life Itself, Christof Koch offers a straightforward definition of consciousness as any subjective experience, from the most mundane to the most exalted—the feeling of being alive. Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists...

"A breath of intellectual fresh air . . . [an] amusing look at how to dispel endemic pseudoscience and conspiracy theories through rational thinking." — Publishers WeeklyAliens. Ley lines. Water dowsing. Conspiracies and myths captivate imaginations and promise mystery and magic. Whether it's arguing about the moon landing hoax or a Frisbee-like Earth drifting through space, when held up to science and critical thinking, these ideas fall flat.In ...

"Tells how America, since the end of World War II, has turned away from its ideals and goodness to become a match setting the world on fire" (Seymour Hersh, investigative journalist and national security correspondent).World War II marked the apogee of industrialized "total war." Great powers savaged one another. Hostilities engulfed the globe. Mobilization extended to virtually every sector of every nation. Air war, including the terror bombing of civilians, emerg...