It is widely believed that most Americans not only distrust but also despise China. Considering the country's violent political history, unprecedented economic rise, and growing military capabilities, China has become America's strongest market competitor and arguably the most challenging global threat to the United States.Nevertheless, a full consideration of American opinion proves the opposite to be true. Carefully analyzing all available polls and surveys, Benjamin I. Page and Tao Xie find most Americans favor peaceful engagement with China. The public view has been surprisingly coherent and consistent, changing only in response to major events and new information.While a majority of Americans are not happy that China's economy is projected to become as large as that of the United States, they are prepared to live with it. "Unfair" Chinese trade practices and their impact on American jobs and wages are a concern, along with the quality and safety of Chinese-made goods. However, Americans favor free trade with China, provided it is tempered with environmental and workplace protections. They also believe that the United States should "balance" Chinese power through alliances with neighboring countries, such as Japan. Yet they oppose military action to defend Taiwan. Page and Xie examine these opinions in relation to facts about China and in light of current U.S. debates on diplomacy and policy

"A great yarn . . . [Lustgarten] also accomplishes something more valuable: He provides insight into the seat-of-the-pants nature of many of China's massive schemes."— The Washington Post Book World When the "sky train" to Tibet opened in 2006, the Chinese government fulfilled a fifty-year plan first envisioned by Mao Zedong. As China grew into an economic power, the railway had become an imperative, a critical component of China's breakneck expansion and the final maneuver in strengthening the country's grip over this last frontier. In China's Great Train , Abrahm Lustgarten, an investigative reporter with ProPublica, explores the lives of the Chinese and Tibetans swept up in the project. He follows Chinese engineer Zhang Luxin as he makes the train's route over the treacherous mountains and permafrost possible (for now), and struggling Tibetan shopkeeper Renzin, who is caught in a boomtown that favors the Han Chinese. As the railway—the highest and steepest in the world—extends to Lhasa, their lives and communities fundamentally change, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Lustgarten offers an absorbing and provocative firsthand account of the promise and costs of the Chinese boom.

Old Europe’s new crisis. Europe, the charming continent of windmills and gondolas. But lately, Europe has become the continent of endless strikes and demonstrations, bombs on the trains and subways, radical Islamic cells in every city, and ghettos so hopeless and violent even the police won’t enter them. In Spain, a terrorist attack prompts instant capitulation to the terrorists’ demands. In France, the suburbs go up in flames every night. In Holland, politicians and artists are murdered for speaking frankly about Islamic immigration. This isn’t the Europe we thought we knew. What’s going on over there? Traveling overland from London to Istanbul, journalist Claire Berlinski shows why the Continent has lately appeared so bewildering—and often so thoroughly obnoxious—to Americans. Speaking to Muslim immigrants, German rock stars, French cops, and Italian women who have better things to do than have children, she finds that Europe is still, despite everything, in the grip of the same old ancient demons. Anyone who knows the history can sense it: There is something ugly—and familiar—in the air. But something new is happening as well. Indeed, Europe now confronts—and seems unable to cope with—an entirely new set of troubles. Tracing the ancient conflicts and newly erupting crises, Menace in Europe reveals: • Why Islamic radicalism and terrorist indoctrination flourish as Europe fails to assimilate millions of Muslim immigrants • How plummeting birthrates hurtle Europe toward economic and cultural catastrophe • Why hatred of America has become ubiquitous—on Europe’s streets, in its books, newspapers, and music, and at the highest levels of government • How long-repressed destructive instincts are suddenly reemerging • How the death of religious faith has created a hopeless, morally unmoored Europe that clings to anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and other dangerous ideologies • Why the notion of a united Europe is a fantasy and what that means for the United States In the end, these are not separate issues. Berlinski provocatively demonstrates that Europe’s political and cultural crisis mirrors its profound moral and spiritual crisis. But this is not just Europe’s problem. Menace in Europe makes clear that the spiritual void at the heart of Europe is ultimately our problem too. And America will pay a terrible price if we continue to ignore it. From the Hardcover edition.

First published in 1970, Professor Gerschenkron's theme is the contribution which the study of Russian economic history can make to the problems which have preoccupied Western historians. He first considers the way in which the case of the old Believers in Russia, who refused to support the official church but played an important entrepreneurial role in nineteenth-century economic development, bears upon Max Weber's celebrated thesis on the relations between the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. In the course of his discussion, Professor Gerschenkron provides important information on the doctrinal beliefs of this group, their social status and the extent to which they were persecuted and discriminated against by the State. His conclusion is that the persecution certainly afforded sufficient impulse to engage in profitable activities and to develop the traits Weber considered as specific features of the 'capitalist' spirit.

"This book re-evaluates the prevailing notion that Jews in medieval Christian Europe lived under an appalling regime of ecclesiastical limitation, governmental exploitation and expropriation, and unceasing popular violence. Robert Chazan argues that, while Jewish life in medieval Western Christendom was indeed beset with grave difficulties, it was nevertheless an environment rich in opportunities; the Jews of medieval Europe overcame obstacles, grew in number, explored innovative economic options, and fashioned enduring new forms of Jewish living. His research also provides a reconsideration of the legacy of medieval Jewish life, which is often depicted as equally destructive and projected as the underpinning of the twentieth-century catastrophes of antisemitism and the Holocaust. Dr Chazan's research proves that, although Jewish life in the medieval West laid the foundation for much Jewish suffering in the post-medieval world, it also stimulated considerable Jewish ingenuity, which lies at the root of impressive Jewish successes in the modern West"--

Rural Revolt in Mexico is a historical investigation of how subaltern political activity engages imperialism, capitalism, and the United States. In this volume, Daniel Nugent has gathered a group of leading scholars whose work examines the relationship of revolts by peasants and Indians in Mexico to the past century of U.S. intervention—from the rural rebellions of the 1840s through the 1910 revolution to the 1994 uprising in Chiapas. Through their studies of social movements and popular mobilization in the Mexican countryside, the contributors argue for understanding rural revolts in terms of the specific historical contexts of particular regions and peoples, as well as the broader context of unequal cultural, political, and economic relations between Mexico and the United States. Exploring the connections between external and internal factors in social movements, these essays reveal the wide range of organized efforts through which peasants and Indians have struggled to shape their own destiny while confronted by the influence of U.S. capital and military might. Originally published as a limited edition in 1988 by the Center for U. S.–Mexican Studies, this volume presents a pioneering effort by Latin Americanist scholars to sympathetically embrace and enrich work begun in Subaltern Studies between 1982 and 1987 by projecting it onto a different region of historical experience. This revised and expanded edition includes a new introduction by Daniel Nugent and an extensive essay by Adolfo Gilly on the recent Chiapas uprising.