Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004, edited by Steven Pinker, is another "provocative and thoroughly enjoyable [collection] from start to finish" (Publishers Weekly). Here is the best and newest on science and nature: the psychology of suicide terrorism, desperate measures in surgery, the weird world of octopuses, Sex Week at Yale, the linguistics of click languages, the worst news about cloning, and much more.

The highest purpose of storytelling is to shift the perception of what's possible in the universe. The writing process is not mysterious. It is not uncontrollable. You just think it is. This book can help. David Gerrold, award-winning screenwriter and novelist, gives advice for would-be science fiction and fantasy writers, covering such topics as setting, plot, character, and dialogue, as well as the mechanics of grammar, tense, sentence structure, and paragraph transition... and why the heck you're writing at all.

As a kid, Noam Chomsky handed out the Daily Mirror at his uncle's newsstand on 72nd Street, inadvertently finding himself in a buzzing intellectual and political hub for European immigrants in New York. Iranian human rights Nobelist Shirin Ebadi and her husband signed their own legal contract, attempting to restore equality to their marriage after the Iranian Revolution effectively erased the legal rights of women. Elizabeth Warren set out to expose those frauds declaring bankruptcy and taking advantage of the system-only to discover, in her research, a very different story of hard-working middle-class families facing economic collapse in the absence of a social safety net. While studying at Oxford, a young Tariq Ali made a bet with a friend that he could work the Vietnam War into every single answer on his final exams. In this rousing, thoughtful, often funny, and always inspiring volume, a diverse and impressive group of thinkers reflect on those formative experiences that shaped their own political commitments. A fascinating new window into the revealing links between the personal and the political, Political Awakenings will engage readers across generations.

In this selection of Goodman's best writing, she makes sense out of the ethical, personal, and cultural dilemmas that define these times. "Ellen Goodman is a voice of reason in the cacophony of modern media".--The Kansas City Star.

Whether we're aware of it or not, we spend much of our time in this globalised world in the act of translation. Language is a big part of it, of course, as anyone who has fumbled with a phrasebook in a foreign country will know, but behind language is something far more challenging to translate: culture. As a traveller, a mistranslation might land you a bowl of who-knows-what when you think you asked for noodles, and mistranslations in international politics can be a few steps from serious trouble. But translation is also a way of entering new and exciting worlds, and forging links that never before existed. Linda Jaivin has been translating from Chinese for more than thirty years. While her specialty is subtitles, she has also translated song lyrics, poetry and fiction, and interpreted for ABC film crews, Chinese artists and even the English singer Billy Bragg as he gave his take on socialism to some Beijing rockers. In Found in Translation she reveals the work of the translator and considers whether different worldviews can be bridged. She pays special attention to China and the English-speaking West, Australia in particular, but also discusses French, Japanese and even the odd phrase of Maori. This is a free-ranging essay, personal and informed, about translation in its narrowest and broadest senses, and the prism - occasionally prison - of culture. "About six years ago, President George W. Bush was delivering a speech at a G8 summit, when, made impatient by the process of translation, he interrupted his German interpreter: 'Everybody speaks English, right?' ..." Linda Jaivin, Found in Translation Linda Jaivin is the author of novels, stories, plays and essays. Her books include the China memoir The Monkey and the Dragon and the novels Eat Me and A Most Immoral Woman. In 1992 she co-edited the acclaimed anthology of translations New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices. She has also subtitled many films, including Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, Zhang Yimou's Hero and Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster.

It's a spoof..... It's a look into today's tomorrow. In 1944 and 1946 Hugo Gernsback was publishing an electronics magazine that was titled Radio-Craft. You may or may not remember it. During this time, that same Hugo Gernsback send to many friends, associates, advertisers and others he deemed worthy, his forward looking little mini-magazines, which were takeoffs on his own publication. The first one, Mini Radio Craft, doubled was issued as a promotion for the Electronic Distribution Show. The second one, Radio-Cracy served as his 1944 Christmas Card. Both are fun, both predict things to come, and both are assembled here for those of us who did not have the honor of being on his mailing list. Enjoy!!!