Sima Qian's writings have influenced the Chinese for over 2,000 years and still serve as a fiscal source of historical information about China.

The ABA Journal serves the legal profession. Qualified recipients are lawyers and judges, law students, law librarians and associate members of the American Bar Association.

Mirror of Morality takes an interdisciplinary look at an important form of pictorial art produced during two millennia of Chinese imperial rule. Ideas about individual morality and state ideology were based on the ancient teachings of Confucius with modifications by later interpreters and government institutions. Throughout the imperial period, members of the elite made, sponsored, and inscribed or used illustrations of themes taken from history, literature, and recent events to promote desired conduct among various social groups. This dimension of Chinese art history has never before been broadly covered or investigated in historical context. The first half of the study examines the nature of narrative illustration in China and traces the evolution of its functions, conventions, and rhetorical strategies from the second century BCE through the eleventh century. Under the stimulus of Buddhism, sophisticated techniques developed for representing stories in visual form. While tracing changes in the social functions and cultural positions of narrative illustration, the second half of the book argues that narrative illustration continued to play a vital role in elite visual culture.

"A fresh reassessment of David Foster Wallace's entire fictional career and writing process"--

From the author of "The Courtier's Secret" comes a dazzling historical novel that takes readers into the secret and fascinating world of the legendary Murano glassmakers in 17th-century Venice.

Saint John of the Cross is one of Christianity’s greatest poets and mystics. Nevertheless, his subject matter and writing style, coupled with his use of Scholastic terminology, can make his prose difficult to understand and intimidating. Readers of The Ascent of Mount Carmel: Reflections will thank Father Marc Foley for making John’s thought accessible and refreshingly contemporary. The author shares with contemporary spiritual seekers his seasoned wisdom, gleaned from years of reading and teaching John of the Cross. He deftly weaves together insights from psychology, theology, and literature to make The Ascent of Mount Carmel both understandable and relevant to daily life.

20th anniversary sequel to a seminal book of the Jewish renewal movement. Deals with spirituality in relation to personal growth, marriage, ecology, feminism, politics and more. Outlines original ways to merge “religious” life and “personal” life today.

This book traces the evolving uses of writing to command assent and obedience in early China, an evolution that culminated in the establishment of a textual canon as the foundation of imperial authority. Its central theme is the emergence of this body of writings as the textual double of the state, and of the text-based sage as the double of the ruler. The book examines the full range of writings employed in early China, such as divinatory records, written communications with ancestors, government documents, the collective writings of philosophical and textual traditions, speeches attributed to historical figures, chronicles, verse anthologies, commentaries, and encyclopedic compendia. Lewis shows how these writings served to administer populations, control officials, form new social groups, invent new models of authority, and create an artificial language whose master generated power and whose graphs became potent objects.

An intelligent and practical guide to the Bible for anyone setting out to explore the exciting world of the Bible.

Seventeen-year-old Phil has felt like an outsider as long as he can remember. All Phil has ever known about his father is that he was Number Three on his mother’s long list—third in a series of affairs that have set Phil’s family even further apart from the critical townspeople across the river. As for his own sexuality, Phil doesn’t care what the neighbors will think; he’s just waiting for the right guy to come along. But Phil can’t remain a bystander forever. Not when he’s surrounded by his mother, Glass, who lives by her own rules and urges Phil to be equally strong; his sister, Dianne, who is abrupt and willful, with secrets to share; his uncle Gable, a restless mariner, defined by his scars; his best friend, Kat, who is generous but possessive. And finally, there is distant Nicholas, with whom Phil falls overwhelmingly in love—until he faces the ultimate betrayal and must finally find his worth . . . and place in the world.