"This book combines Chinese painting techniques with twenty-four solar terms of traditional Chinese culture. According to the sequence of the four seasons--spring, summer, autumn, and winter--natural scenes are refined into a series of charming ink paintings. Following the tutorials in this book, you can complete beautiful ink and wash paintings in just a few strokes. You will also learn about the culture surrounding the solar terms, which has been...

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of food journalist Pollan's thesis. Humans used to know how to eat well, he argues, but the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused and distorted by food industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape dense with bad advice and foods that are not "real."...

"A thrilling blend of contemporary travelogue and historical narrative about the Alps from 'a graceful and passionate writer' (Washington Post). For centuries the Alps have seen the march of armies, the flow of pilgrims and Crusaders, the feats of mountaineers and the dreams of engineers--and some 14 million people live among their peaks today. In The Alps, Stephen O'Shea takes readers up and down these majestic mountains, journeying through their...

Thom Hartmann, the most popular progressive radio host in America... looks at the real history of guns in America and what we can do to limit both their lethal impact and the power of the gun lobby... Hartmann examines how guns have played important roles throughout American history, from early European settlement to the Revolutionary War and Manifest Destiny, through the use of Slave Patrols in the Deep South (which became the "well-regulated militias"...

These selections from the many writings of Thomas Sowell over a period of a half century cover social, economic, cultural, legal, educational, and political issues. The topics range from late-talking children to "tax cuts for the rich," baseball, race, war, the role of judges, medical care, and the rhetoric of politicians.

"Historians have long engaged in passionate debate about collective memory and the building of national identities. Alan Gordon focuses on one national hero - Jacques Cartier - to explore how notions about the past have been created, passed on through the generations, and used to present particular ideas about the world in English- and French-speaking Canada. He reveals that the cult of celebrity surrounding Cartier by the mid-nineteenth century reflected...