City Gate, Open Up

City Gate, Open Up PDF Author: Bei Dao
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811226441
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
A magical, impressionistic autobiography by China’s legendary poet Bei Dao In 2001, to visit his sick father, the exiled poet Bei Dao returned to his homeland for the first time in over twenty years. The city of his birth was totally unrecognizable. “My city that once was had vanished,” he writes: “I was a foreigner in my hometown.” The shock of this experience released a flood of memories and emotions that sparked Open Up, City Gate. In this lyrical autobiography of growing up—from the birth of the People’s Republic, through the chaotic years of the Great Leap Forward, and on into the Cultural Revolution—Bei Dao uses his extraordinary gifts as a poet and storyteller to create another Beijing, a beautiful memory palace of endless alleyways and corridors, where personal narrative mixes with the momentous history he lived through. At the center of the book are his parents and siblings, and their everyday life together through famine and festival. Open Up, City Gate is told in an episodic, fluid style that moves back and forth through the poet’s childhood, recreating the smells and sounds, the laughter and the danger, of a boy’s coming of age during a time of enormous change and upheaval.

The August Sleepwalker

The August Sleepwalker PDF Author: Beidao
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811211321
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
The August Sleepwalker introduces to American readers the compelling and remarkable poetry of China's foremost modern poet. Bei Dao (Zhao Zhenkai). One of the most gifted and controversial writers to emerge from the massive upheavals of contemporary China. Bei Dao both reflects and criticizes the conflicts of the Cultural Revolution of the late '60s and '70s. A youthful Red Guard whose early disillusionment with the destructiveness of the times made him an outsider. Bei Dao joined with other underground poets attempting to create an alternative literature that challenged the received orthodoxies of Maoist China. The author now lives in exile. Book jacket.

Range

Range PDF Author: David Epstein
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735214506
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The #1 New York Times bestseller that has all America talking—with a new afterword on expanding your range—as seen on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Morning Joe, CBS This Morning, and more. “The most important business—and parenting—book of the year.” —Forbes “Urgent and important. . . an essential read for bosses, parents, coaches, and anyone who cares about improving performance.” —Daniel H. Pink Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see. Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.

The Road Ahead

The Road Ahead PDF Author: Bill Gates
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
In this clear-eyed, candid, and ultimately reassuring

Why We Sleep

Why We Sleep PDF Author: Matthew Walker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501144316
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
"Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity ... An explosion of scientific discoveries in the last twenty years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now ... neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming"--Amazon.com.

Golden Gate

Golden Gate PDF Author: James Ponti
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1534414967
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
In this second installment in the New York Times bestselling series from Edgar Award winner James Ponti, the young group of spies returns for another international adventure perfect for fans of Spy School and Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls. After thwarting a notorious villain at an eco-summit in Paris, the City Spies are gearing up for their next mission. Operating out of a base in Scotland, this secret team of young agents working for the British Secret Intelligence Service’s MI6 division have honed their unique skills, such as sleight of hand, breaking and entering, observation, and explosives. All of these allow them to go places in the world of espionage where adults can’t. Fourteen-year-old Sydney is a surfer and a rebel from Bondi Beach, Australia. She’s also a field ops specialist for the City Spies. Sydney is excited to learn that she’ll be going undercover on the marine research vessel the Sylvia Earle. But things don’t go exactly as planned, and while Sydney does find herself in the spotlight, it’s not in the way she was hoping. Meanwhile, there’s been some new intel regarding a potential mole within the organization, offering the spies a lead that takes them to San Francisco, California. But as they investigate a spy who died at the Botanical Gardens, they discover that they are also being investigated. And soon, they’re caught up in an exciting adventure filled with rogue missions and double agents! This mission is hot! The City Spies are a go!

Factfulness

Factfulness PDF Author: Hans Rosling
Publisher: Flatiron Books
ISBN: 125012381X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster PDF Author: Bill Gates
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385546149
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

A Gate at the Stairs

A Gate at the Stairs PDF Author: Lorrie Moore
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307273210
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From “one of the most acute and lasting writers of her generation” (The New York Times) comes a piercing novel of race, class, love, and war in America. Twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the daughter of a gentleman farmer, has come to a university town as a student. When she takes a job as a part-time nanny for a mysterious and glamorous family, she finds herself drawn deeper into their world and forever changed. “An indelible portrait of a young woman coming of age in the Midwest in the year after 9/11…. Moore has written her most powerful book yet.” —The New York Times

旧雪

旧雪 PDF Author: Beidao
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811211833
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : zh-CN
Pages : 100

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Book Description
Most of the poems in Bei Dao's new collection Old Snow were written while the author was aboard. After obtaining a passport in 1985, he was finally able to accept the many invitations he had received to take part in poetry reading in Europe and America over the next few years, often accompanied by his wife, the painter Shao Fei, and their daughter, Tiantian.