For centuries the people of Tibet and Mongolia have believed in the existence of Shambhala, a mythical kingdom hidden in the remote mountains of Central Asia. There, it is said, a line of enlightened kings is guarding the highest wisdom for a time when all spiritual values in the world outside will be lost in war and destruction. At that time, according to the legend, a great king will emerge from this sanctuary to defeat the forces of evil and establish a golden age. Drawing on Tibetan and Sanskrit texts, interviews with lamas in Nepal and India, and his own experiences in the Himalayas, Edwin Bernbaum gives a detailed account of this intriguing legend, examining its basis in the history and religion of the region, as well as exploring its symbolic meaning.

In the late 1980s, Edwina Currie was the second most prominent woman in British politics - after Margaret Thatcher. This second volume of her diaries begins in 1992 with her refusal to serve in John Major's government and covers her life in Parliament up to the election of Tony Blair's Labour government. It also covers her emergence as a bestselling author, commentator, broadcaster and performer.

Yefim Geller has been one of the world's foremost grandmasters over the past four decades, during which time he has established a reputation as being the leading Russian authority on opening theory. In this annotated collection of his own games, Geller shows the practical benefits of a sound understanding of opening strategy.

A luminous and insightful novel that considers the moral complexities of scientific discovery and the sustaining nature of love. A young researcher at MIT, Jane Weiss is obsessed with finding the genetic marker for Valentine’s Disease, a neurodegenerative disorder. Her pursuit is deeply personal—Valentine’s killed her mother, and she and her freewheeling sister, Laurel, could be genetic carriers; each has a fifty percent chance of developing the disease. Having seen firsthand the devastating effect Valentine’s had on her parents’ marriage, Jane is terrified she might become a burden on whomever she falls in love with and so steers clear of romantic entanglement. Then, the summer before her father’s second wedding, Jane falls hard for her future stepbrother, Willie. But Willie’s father also died from Valentine’s, raising the odds that their love will end in tragedy. When Willie bolts at a crucial moment in their relationship, Jane becomes obsessed with finding the genetic marker to the disease that threatens both their families. But if she succeeds in making history, will she and her sister have the courage to face the truth this newfound knowledge could hold for their lives? A Perfect Life is a novel of scientific and self discovery, about learning how to embrace life and love, no matter what may come. Eileen Pollack conjures a thought-provoking, emotionally resonant story of one woman’s brilliance and bravery as she confronts her deepest fears and desires—and comes to accept the inevitable and the unexpected.

The story of a Berlin cabaret singer, Frieda Bloom, and her love for Bertolt Brecht, set amidst the seedy violence of Weimar Germany. Told by Frieda, the story moves from the collapse of the Weimar, through the years of terror in Moscow, to America at the time of the McCarthy trials.

In this autobiographical novel, the author moves among the dead poets of Stalin's Russia with the poet Marina Tsvetaeva, mingling with the ghosts of writers such as Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky. The author, herself of Russian descent, reconstructs the lives and fates of Russian, often Jewish, writers during the long age of Soviet terror, re-establishing them at the heart of the European tradition.

In the Kalwa slum in Mumbai, India, where harsh conditions make is difficult for some children to study, an amazing group of women is working to make sure that kids go to school. Meet the Masala Mamas, 16 women who live in the Kalwa slum who are dedicating their lives to providing hot meals for kids in school. Every morning, they cook hundreds of meals -- hot, nutritious meals from fresh, local ingredients and aromatic spices. They cook with extra special love, care, and dedication because their customers are the most important people in the world: children.

Eleanor Farjeon first met Edward Thomas in the late autumn of 1912, when her brother invited him to tea. It was the beginning of a deep friendship between the painfully shy 31-year-old woman and the reserved writer known for his prose works and literary criticism. Though he died at the Battle of Arras in April 1917, it was a friendship which for Eleanor did not end with his death, but lived beyond it in his letters, and his poems, many of which Edward had sent to her from the trenches of the First World War for her comments. This double memoir uses Edward's letters and Eleanor's diaries and linking commentary to provide an extraordinarily candid account of their developing friendship, and of the enthusiasms they shared - both loved walking, and it was during this period that Edward first found his way into poetry. Edward was often deeply depressed, a man who found in nature something fundamental and ideal, a soldier-poet who wrote about the war in a new way, but Eleanor also shows us another side to his character, capturing moments of joy and humour. She also offers a unique account of Thomas's development as a poet, including the momentous meeting in 1913 with the American poet Robert Frost, whose encouragement led to Thomas's first poems. Thomas describes for her his family, his friendships with other writers, D H Lawrence among them, and also provides an exceptionally detailed account of his experiences in the First World War with the Artists' Rifles. Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years, was widely acclaimed on its first publication in 1958 - this second edition, published on the 80th anniversary of Thomas's death, has an introduction by Anne Harvey, a selection of Eleanor's sonnets 'To E.T.', and 'Walking Tom', a hitherto little-known poem about Edward written by Clifford Bax and Herbert Farjeon. Also included are eight pages of black and white photographs.

Anthony grew up in the loveliest place in the world - his father called it the Eye of the Earth. But to Anthony, the 'eye of the earth' was the old mill-pond near his home - a place of mystery and enchantment. Anthony's childhood was full of happy moments, and sometimes strange ones, for he had been touched with magic as soon as he was born. When, as a man, he returned to his childhood home, there waiting for him were memories of his childhood - Mother Skip the Witch, the man who could hear the trees grow - and there, too, was the mill-pond in which all the fragments of his life were held as if in a kaleidoscope... A beautiful and timeless collection of stories - perfect for bedtime reading.

A lazy girl becomes the king's bride by implying that she had woven twelve skeins of cloth when actually she had eaten twelve dumplings. Incorporates the story of Tom Tit Tot.

For much of her career, Elfriede Jelinek has been maligned in the press for both her unrelenting critique of Austrian complicity in the Holocaust and her provocative deconstructions of pornography. Despite this, her central role in shaping contemporary literature was finally recognized in 2004 with the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The committee acknowledged Jelinek's groundbreaking work that offers a "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power." Although she is an internationally recognized playwright, Jelinek's work is difficult to find in English, which makes this new volume, which includes Rechnitz: The Exterminating Angel and The Merchant's Contracts , all the more valuable. In Rechnitz , a chorus of messengers reports on the circumstances of the massacre of 180 Jews, an actual historical event that took place near the Austrian/Hungarian border town of Rechnitz. More than a docu-drama, this work explores the very transmission of historic memory and has been called Jelinek's best performance text to date. In The Merchant's Contracts , Jelinek brings us a comedy of economics, where the babble and media spin of spectators leave small investors alienated and bearing the brunt of the economic crisis. In the age of the global economy, Jelinek turns the story of a merchant of Vienna into a universal comedy of errors, making this her most accessible work. Along with an extensive introduction by the translator that both contextualizes and analyzes the two brilliant texts, a DVD of performances of both plays accompanies this volume. Available for the first time in English, this is a collection that testifies to the power and universality of Jelinek's work.

In recent years, billions of dollars (and euros, yen, and other currencies) have been spent by wireless services providers to acquire the radio frequency spectrum needed to offer so-called "Third Generation" (3G) mobile services. These services include high-speed data, mobile Internet access and entertainment such as games, music and video programs. Indeed, as voice communications are substituted by data communications, software -rather than terminals or networks- has become the driver of the wireless industry. Meanwhile, services are becoming increasingly specialized. Why has the road to multimedia cellular been so difficult? These benefits of the mobile Internet have come with the costs of a massive transition that has coincided with the bust of stock markets and the technology segments worldwide, controversial and costly license auctions in several lead markets, dated or mistaken regulatory policies, the clash between the early hype and the pioneering realities of the mobile Internet. But these are generalities that barely scratch the surface. The devil is in the details. And it is these details that Competition for the Mobile Internet addresses.

This book addresses the views and moral dilemas of prominent Jewish thinkers and leaders such as Rabbi Leo Baeck, doctor Victor Frankl, and Rabbi Issachar Teichthal. The book also presents the authors own reflections on the problem of "Justification of the religion" and faith after Auschwitz.

Razia is excited when her grandfather tells her there's a school for girls being built in their Afghan village. At last, girls will have the same opportunity to be educated as boys. ?Every night I fell asleep dreaming about going to school like my brothers, ? she says. Her grandfather wants Razia to enroll in the school. He remembers a time, before the wars and the Taliban, when educated women in Afghanistan became doctors, government workers and journalists, and how this made families and the country stronger. Razia knows, however, that she will need permission from her father and her oldest brother, Aziz, in order to be allowed to attend the school. She begs her grandfather, ?Please, Baba gi, ask Baba and Aziz if I may go. I must go.? But will her grandfather's words be enough to convince the younger men of the value of an education for Razia? Inspired by real-life Razia Jan's experiences when she built the Zabuli Education Center outside of Kabul, Afghanistan, author Elizabeth Suneby uses a fictionalized story to deftly personalize the plight of many children around the world who are not being educated. The layered, mixed-media illustrations by Suana Verelst add contextual details about life in an Afghan village. This book works perfectly for a social studies lesson on global cultures. Extra resources include an overview of children worldwide who do not attend school, the story of the real Razia Jan, a glossary of Dari words found in the text and activity suggestions.

This volume is the author's take on the best-selling dating guide, The Rules. Chapter headings include Have Pets, When All Else Fails, Talk to God and Don't Clear the Table at a Dinner Party Unless the Men Get Up to Help Too.

Executive Functions in Health and Disease provides a comprehensive review of both healthy and disordered executive function. It discusses what executive functions are, what parts of the brain are involved, what happens when they go awry in cases of dementia, ADHD, psychiatric disorders, traumatic injury, developmental disorders, cutting edge methods for studying executive functions and therapies for treating executive function disorders. It will appeal to neuropsychologists, clinical psychologists, neuroscientists and researchers in cognitive psychology.

Reflecting the burgeoning academic interest in issues of nation, race, gender, sexuality, and other axes of identity, Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media brings all of these concerns under the same umbrella, contending that these issues must be discussed in relation to each other. Communities, societies, nations, and even entire continents, the book suggests, exist not autonomously but rather in a densely woven web of connectedness. To explore this complexity, the editors have forged links between usually compartmentalized fields (especially media studies, literary theory, visual culture, and critical anthropology) and areas of inquiry-particularly postcolonial and diasporic studies and a diverse set of ethnic and area studies. This book, which links all these issues in suggestive ways, provides an indispensable guide for students and scholars in a wide variety of disciplines. Essays in this groundbreaking volume include Julianne Burton-Carvajal on ethnic identity in Lone Star ; Manthia Diawara on diasporic documentary; Hamid Naficy on independent transnational film genres; Robyn Wiegman on whiteness studies; Faye Ginsburg on indigenous media; and Jennifer Gonzßles on race in cyberspace; Ana M. Lopez on modernity and Latin American cinema; and Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan on Warrior Marks and multiculturalism and globalization.

A multivoiced collection of essays and images grounded in a relational feminism of diverse communities. This multivoiced collection of essays and images presents the perspectives of activists, scholars, artists, and curators from a broad range of constituencies. Challenging traditional disciplinary and cultural boundaries, the book moves beyond any unified feminist historical narrative to present a "relational" feminism of diverse communities, affiliations, and practices. The texts/images partake of many genres: reflective essay, testimonial dialogue, performance piece, digital collage, prose poem, and photomontage. Forging connections between usually compartmentalized areas of knowledge and of activism, the volume helps us to envision alternative epistemologies and imaginative alliances. Copublished with the New Museum of Contemporary Art.