In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.

“A remarkably nuanced, empathetic, and well-crafted work of journalism, [The Inevitable] explores what might be called the right-to-die underground, a world of people who wonder why a medical system that can do so much to try to extend their lives can do so little to help them end those lives in a peaceful and painless way.”—Brooke Jarvis, The New Yorker More states and countries are passing right-to-die laws that allow the sick and suffering to end their lives at pre-planned moments, with the help of physicians. But even where these laws exist, they leave many people behind. The Inevitable moves beyond margins of the law to the people who are meticulously planning their final hours—far from medical offices, legislative chambers, hospital ethics committees, and polite conversation. It also shines a light on the people who help them: loved ones and, sometimes, clandestine groups on the Internet that together form the “euthanasia underground.” Katie Engelhart, a veteran journalist, focuses on six people representing different aspects of the right to die debate. Two are doctors: a California physician who runs a boutique assisted death clinic and has written more lethal prescriptions than anyone else in the U.S.; an Australian named Philip Nitschke who lost his medical license for teaching people how to end their lives painlessly and peacefully at “DIY Death” workshops. The other four chapters belong to people who said they wanted to die because they were suffering unbearably—of old age, chronic illness, dementia, and mental anguish—and saw suicide as their only option. Spanning North America, Europe, and Australia, The Inevitable offers a deeply reported and fearless look at a morally tangled subject. It introduces readers to ordinary people who are fighting to find dignity and authenticity in the final hours of their lives.

In Living on Your Own Terms: What Is Real Rebellion?, one of the twentieth century’s greatest spiritual teachers reveals how you can resist the rules and regulations that oppose your values while retaining your own individuality. “People can be happy only in one way, and that is if they are authentically themselves. Then the springs of happiness start flowing; they become more alive, they become a joy to see, a joy to be with; they are a song, they are a dance.”—Osho Decades after the rebellions of the 1960s, new generations are again challenging and rebelling against outdated structures and values, focusing on political and economic systems and their failings. But this generation has the opportunity and responsibility to move the development of human freedom to the next level. Osho’s philosophies will support these future generations in expanding their understanding of freedom and pushing toward new systems for humanity. Osho challenges readers to examine and break free of the conditioned belief systems and prejudices that limit their capacity to enjoy life in all its richness. He has been described by the Sunday Times of London as one of the “1000 Makers of the 20th Century” and by Sunday Mid-Day (India) as one of the ten people—along with Gandhi, Nehru, and Buddha—who have changed the destiny of India. Since his death in 1990, the influence of his teachings continues to expand, reaching seekers of all ages in virtually every country of the world.

Publisher Fact Sheet The life of an explorer, amateur naturalist, philanthropist, & pioneer in the field of science.

Sensing the need for fresh ideas in advocacy, and the importance of making animal-rights theory relevant in a time of biotechnology, rapid extinctions and climate change, On Their Own Terms: Bringing Animal-Rights Philosophy Down to Earth challenges us to think of ourselves and other conscious beings in new ways. This book takes the creative and necessary step of calling for a merging of ecological awareness and animal advocacy. It asks us to imagine and appreciate the dignity of free communities of animals thriving in their habitats. As a society shifts to respect animals on their terms, its judges and lawmakers will stop regarding the environment as props and scenery on the stage of humanity¿s drama. They will begin to take the interests of all its living inhabitants seriously. This work explains why the shift is within humanity¿s reach, and how it will come through an animal-advocacy movement that¿s no longer limited to generating pity for Earth¿s other beings, or looking for ways to show how cruel we are to them, or taking steps to make their controlled lives less stressful. On Their Own Terms is an invitation to a movement that can ensure the triumph of animals¿ natural freedom and power, and a practical handbook for the advocate who takes up the challenge.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE BOSTON GLOBE, BOOKLIST, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS • From acclaimed historian Richard Norton Smith comes the definitive life of an American icon: Nelson Rockefeller—one of the most complex and compelling figures of the twentieth century. Fourteen years in the making, this magisterial biography of the original Rockefeller Republican draws on thousands of newly available documents and over two hundred interviews, including Rockefeller’s own unpublished reminiscences. Grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, Nelson coveted the White House from childhood. “When you think of what I had,” he once remarked, “what else was there to aspire to?” Before he was thirty he had helped his father develop Rockefeller Center and his mother establish the Museum of Modern Art. At thirty-two he was Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime coordinator for Latin America. As New York’s four-term governor he set national standards in education, the environment, and urban policy. The charismatic face of liberal Republicanism, Rockefeller championed civil rights and health insurance for all. Three times he sought the presidency—arguably in the wrong party. At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in 1964, locked in an epic battle with Barry Goldwater, Rockefeller denounced extremist elements in the GOP, a moment that changed the party forever. But he could not wrest the nomination from the Arizona conservative, or from Richard Nixon four years later. In the end, he had to settle for two dispiriting years as vice president under Gerald Ford. In On His Own Terms, Richard Norton Smith re-creates Rockefeller’s improbable rise to the governor’s mansion, his politically disastrous divorce and remarriage, and his often surprising relationships with presidents and political leaders from FDR to Henry Kissinger. A frustrated architect turned master builder, an avid collector of art and an unabashed ladies’ man, “Rocky” promoted fallout shelters and affordable housing with equal enthusiasm. From the deadly 1971 prison uprising at Attica and unceasing battles with New York City mayor John Lindsay to his son’s unsolved disappearance (and the grisly theories it spawned), the punitive drug laws that bear his name, and the much-gossiped-about circumstances of his death, Nelson Rockefeller’s was a life of astonishing color, range, and relevance. On His Own Terms, a masterpiece of the biographer’s art, vividly captures the soaring optimism, polarizing politics, and inner turmoil of this American Original. Praise for On His Own Terms “[An] enthralling biography . . . Richard Norton Smith has written what will probably stand as a definitive Life. . . . On His Own Terms succeeds as an absorbing, deeply informative portrait of an important, complicated, semi-heroic figure who, in his approach to the limits of government and to government’s relation to the governed, belonged in every sense to another century.”—The New Yorker “[A] splendid biography . . . a clear-eyed, exhaustively researched account of a significant and fascinating American life.”—The Wall Street Journal “A compelling read . . . What makes the book fascinating for a contemporary professional is not so much any one thing that Rockefeller achieved, but the portrait of the world he inhabited not so very long ago.”—The New York Times “[On His Own Terms] has perception and scholarly authority and is immensely readable.”—The Economist

In a historical period of international and global frames of literary investigation, In Their Own Terms is a timely and valuable contribution to cross-cultural forms of dialogue between non-American modes of analysis and US American literary studies. It is a wide-ranging and provocative look into American literary historiography that engages readers in analytical examinations of US literary histories considered landmarks in their field, from the early nineteenth-century work of Samuel L. Knapp to the newly completed Cambridge volumes. It focuses on texts that have had a decisive influence in constructing dominant understandings of American literature, its various genres, significant historical periods, and major writers, both inside and outside the United States. For the first time, this work compares and contrasts the tradition of US literary historiography with Italian histories of American literature. Characterized as they are by the particularities of the Italian cultural scene, these histories have always been conversant with US literary historiography, beginning with Gustavo Strafforello in 1884 and continuing in Agostino Lombardo's most recent series. In Their Own Terms cogently argues that American literary histories, regardless of the different critical and theoretical principles on which they are based, have invariably played an important role in national cohesion and in articulating an autonomy that is cultural as well as academic.

Youth Learning On Their Own Terms convincingly shows how developing a respect and understanding of the youth-initiated creative practices that occur outside schools can offer educators the opportunity to directly influence their teaching in schools by making classroom spaces personally meaningful and rigorous for both students and teachers.

This volume utilizes the cross-cultural, historical and ethnographic perspective of anthropology to illuminate the intrinsic connections of race, class and gender. The author begins by discussing the manner in which her experience as a participant observer led her to research and write about various aspects of African-American women's experiences. She goes on to provide a critical analysis of the new scholarship on African-American women, and explores issues of race, class and gender in the arenas of work, kinship and resistance.

The volume brings together approaches to different elements of Arabic-Islamic civilization, mainly in the areas of linguistics, literature, literary theory, and prosody, but also including religion, ritual, economics, and zoology. Contributions also touch upon the adjacent areas of the Old Iranian, Persian, Greek and Byzantine written traditions. Some take as their points of departure specific Arabic words (cat, giraffe) or morphemes; others explore literary genres, subgenres (oration, ode, macaronic poem, travel narrative) or figures within them (the trickster, the devil). Cultural concepts such as wishing, gift-giving or discourse are treated, as are aspects of broader phenomena, such as the role of gender in dream interpretation or the relative merits of luxury goods and mass-produced commodities.