This book, first published in 1939, is an account of J. Gunnar Andersson’s travels in China from 1914 to 1927 while he was serving as a mining advisor to the Chinese government. Andersson discusses China’s political and economic situation at the time, including the fight for unity, and the future of the region. This book will be of interest to students of history and Asian Studies.

The question facing anyone contemplating a book on low back pain is : Why write another book? It is certainly true that there are many books on this topic addressing a wide variety of audiences. Some books are all inclusive and scholarly in nature, others are personal descriptions of diagnostic and treat ment philosophies. This book is a combination of these two extremes. It represents our views on the low back problem, supported by scientific data. Most aspects on back pain presented in t...

This book analyzes the distribution of the urban population in an industrialized country. The USA was chosen as the object of the study because it had, at the time of writing, in 1956, the largest population for which homogeneous and comparable statistics were available. The first step in the quantitative analysis of population distribution, according to the method suggested here, is the breaking up of the total population into its components: the industries in which people earn their livi...

Although relatively small, the northern countries of Scandinavia have made a disproportionately large contribution to world cinema. Indeed, some of their films are among the best known of all times, including The Seventh Seal, Dancer in the Dark, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And Scandinavian directors are also among the best known, just to mention Ingmar Bergman and Lars von Trier. But there is much more to the cinema of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland than that, and t...

"Makes a reader feel like a time traveler plopped down among men who were by turns vicious and visionary."—The Christian Science MonitorThe modern American economy was the creation of four men: Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan. They were the giants of the Gilded Age, a moment of riotous growth that established America as the richest, most inventive, and most productive country on the planet.A...

A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Winner of the Bancroft Prize. "No one has written a better book about a city…Nature's Metropolis is elegant testimony to the proposition that economic, urban, environmental, and business history can be as graceful, powerful, and fascinating as a novel." —Kenneth T. Jackson, Boston Globe

Nordic Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Film and TV by Britain's leading expert on crime fiction, Barry Forshaw, is a compact and authoritative guide to the phenomenally popular genre. The information-packed study examines and celebrates books, films and TV adaptations, from Sjöwall & Wahlöö's highly influential Martin Beck series through Henning Mankell's Wallander (subject of three separate TV series) to Stieg Larsson's groundbreaking ...

An energy industry insider delivers hard truths about the reality of fracking.Conventional wisdom has North America entering a new era of energy abundance thanks to shale gas. But has industry been honest? Cold, Hungry and in the Dark argues that declining productivity combined with increasing demand will trigger a crisis that will cause prices to skyrocket, damage the economy, and have a profound impact on the lives of nearly every North American.Re...

"Superb . . . the best one-volume economic history of the United States in a long time and, perhaps, ever." — NewsweekIn this illuminating history, John Steele Gordon tells the extraordinary story of the world's first economic superpower. He shows how the American economy became not only the world's largest, but also its most dynamic and innovative. Combining its English political inheritance with its diverse, ambitious population, the nation was able to de...

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Biography)Named of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post and the Boston GlobeMagisterial in scope, this dual biography examines two complex lives that began alike but ended on opposite sides of the century’s greatest conflict.Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, born less than a year apart, lived so close to each other that Riefenstahl could see into...

New York Times–Bestselling Author: "Should be ready by anyone who owns a microwave, or an iPod, or a table lamp, which is to say everyone." —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth ExtinctionA Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the YearCoal is still a significant source of power in the United States—and coal mining is still a deadly and environmentally destructive industry. Much of the carbon...

Often typecast as a menacing figure, Peter Lorre achieved Hollywood fame first as a featured player and later as a character actor, trademarking his screen performances with a delicately strung balance between good and evil. His portrayal of the child murderer in Fritz Lang's masterpiece M (1931) catapulted him to international fame. Lang said of Lorre: "He gave one of the best performances in film history and certainly the best in his life." Today, the Hungarian-born actor is also recogni...