Journalist Alex Harney shows how China is able to offer such amazingly low prices to the rest of the world. What she has discovered is a brutal world in which intense pricing pressure from Western companies combines with corruption and a lack of transparency to exact an unseen toll in human misery and environmental damage. Despite a decade of monitoring, foreign businessmen all too often have no idea of the conditions under which goods they buy are...

"A themed collection of stories of refugees from around the world who have converged on Minneapolis, collected and told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet"-- Provided by publisher.

An illuminating study of the American struggle to comprehend the meaning and practicalities of death in the face of the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War. During the war, approximately 620,000 soldiers lost their lives. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be six million. This book explores the impact of this enormous death toll from every angle: material, political, intellectual, and spiritual. Historian Faust delineates the...

Explores the nature of human relationships, finding that humans are "wired to connect," and bringing together the latest research in biology and neuroscience to reveal how one's daily encounters shape the brain and affect the body. "Humans have a built-in bias toward empathy, cooperation and altruism, provided we develop the social intelligence to nurure these capabilities in ourselves and others.

"In 2006, Shadid, an Arab-American raised in Oklahoma, was covering Israel's attack on Lebanon when he heard that an Israeli rocket had crashed into the house his great-grandfather built, his family's ancestral home. Not long after, Shadid (who had covered three wars in the Middle East) realized that he had lost his passion for a region that had lost its soul. He had seen too much violence and death; his career had destroyed his marriage. Seeking...

With the publication of Liberty Tree, acclaimed historian Alfred F. Young presents a selection of his seminal writing as well as two provocative, never-before-published essays. Together, they take the reader on a journey through the American Revolution, exploring the role played by ordinary women and men (called, at the time, people out of doors) in shaping events during and after the Revolution, their impact on the Founding generation of the new...

Examines hunger as a political, spiritual and social force in the world through the experiences of the people who choose it as a means of expression and those whose fates leave no other choice. Fasting, hunger strikes and global starvation are discussed.

Running down “do-gooders” has become a popular pastime in recent years. Journalists and academics alike have lampooned and criticized philanthropists and big donors for their charitable activities, which are often characterized as a means of self-aggrandisement or tax evasion. Yet, it is widely acknowledged that philanthropy—from the establishment of Carnegie libraries in the nineteenth century to the recent global health interventions of the...

"Offers readers a compelling look into the lives, challenges, and successes of Central American immigrants. Additional features include a Fast Facts page, a timeline, informative photo captions, critical-thinking questions, primary source quotes and accompanying source notes, a phonetic glossary, additional resources for further study, and an index"--Provided by the publisher.

"From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the 'Terrible Year' by Victor Hugo, Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans--then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French Army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris....Sebastian Smee shows, it was against the backdrop of these tumultuous times that the Impressionist...