Widely recognized experts present the first comparative analysis of recent developments among six Eastern and Western nations concerning population aging and its consequences. Chapters focus on demographic trends, sociocultural contexts, and policy implications. Nations selected as case studies include: the Peopleís Republic of China, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The editors and contributors call attention to the varied trajectories and effects of population aging in culturally diverse societies that are often at different stages or on different paths of economic development. Such analyses bring into sharper focus those conditions that are unique, or similar, and emphasize the ways in which cultural stereotypes of aging and the elderly complicate our understanding of the effects of world-wide population aging.

Pearl Buck tells the heart-seaching and tender story of a young Chinese girl's troubled acceptance of an alien way of life, with all its sorrows and rewards.

Covers the period of the Chmielnicki Massacre and the Thirty Years War, and the movement of impoverished Jewish refugees into Western Europe. Migration has been a major factor in the life of the Jewish people throughout the two and a half millennia of their dispersion. And yet, the history of the Jewish migratory movements has not been fully explored in Jewish history. While the Jewish migratory movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and especially immigration to the New World, have attracted the attention of scholars, earlier such movements did not. In the present book I propose to discuss such a movement of an earlier period, that from Eastern Europe to the countries of the West, from its inception at the beginning of the seventeenth century to the dissolution of the old Polish commonwealth. Since this book deals with the history of a Jewish migratory movement, it should be understood that unless otherwise indicated, the terms emigrants, immigrants, and migrants refer to Jews

Kath Weston draws upon fieldwork and interviews conducted in the San Francisco Bay area to explore the ways in which gay men and lesbians are constructing their own notions of kinship by drawing on the symbolism of love, friendship and biology. Conventional views of family have depicted gays and lesbians as exiles from the realm of kinship. In recent decades, however, gay men and lesbians have increasingly portrayed themselves as people who seek not only to maintain ties with blood or adoptive relatives but also to establish families of their own.

The East in the West reassesses Western views of Asia. Traditionally many European historians and theorists have seen the societies of the East as 'static' or 'backward'. Jack Goody challenges these assumptions, beginning with the notion of a special Western rationality which enabled 'us' and not 'them' to modernise. He then turns to book-keeping, which several social and economic historians have seen as intrinsic to capitalism, arguing that there was in fact little difference between East and West in terms of mercantile activity. Other factors said to inhibit the East's development, such as the family and forms of labour, have also been greatly exaggerated. This Eurocentrism both fails to explain the current achievements of the East, and misunderstands Western history. The East in the West starts to redress the balance, and so marks a fundamental shift in our view of Western and Eastern history and society.

How many people have migrated from central and Eastern Europe since the 1989 revolutions? Are fears of mass migration from eastern Europe well-founded? What are the causes and effects, in both the sending and receiving countries, of such population movements? What are the policy reactions in the East and the West and how is this phenomenon likely to develop and to be regulated over the near future? These are some of the key questions addressed in this book by sixteen east and west European experts on international migration.

Unmasking Administrative Evil discusses the overlooked relationship between evil and public affairs, as well as other fields and professions in public life.

When a sudden storm destroys Charles' ship and he is presumed dead, Rose believes something sinister is at work and she sets off on a perilous journey, with the fate of the entire world at stake.