A study of Irish women taking a more visible role in contemporary society and the obstacles they are facing along the way.

One year before the protests in Tiananmen Square, Rosemary Mahoney participated in a teaching exchange between Harvard and Hangzhou University. At Hangzhou she was able to overcome her students' usual rigidity and achieve a rare and intimate glimpse of their culture and their attitudes. This remarkable memoir captures both the dreams and the grim realities her Chinese students faced within the confines of an oppressive political regime.

An "enlightening but also very funny" (Paul Theroux) account of one woman's personal quest to find the roots of belief among modern religious pilgrims.

Mahoney recalls her summer as a domestic servant for the famous playwright.

Transformation of Education Policy deals with internalization processes in education policy and their impact on national policy making. It investigates national responses to the PISA study for secondary education and the Bologna study for tertiary education.

Once in a while a travel book comes along that pushes at the boundaries of the genre. Quondam: Travels in a Once World does exactly that, asking us to re-imagine the relevance and potential of travel--in this case, an epic, true-grit expedition by bike through the heart of Africa without the umbilical cord of technology, when being on your own meant exactly that. A superb observer and story-teller, John Devoy recounts his adventure in an imaginative and captivating style that has won the admiration of Dervla Murphy and Ted Simon, two writers who have left their own indelible marks on the literature of travel.