In the Unwalled City takes its title from Epicurus, who wrote: “Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death, we human beings all live in an unwalled city.” This affecting book—which weaves prose memoir with poetry—explores that feeling of being open to attack—in this case the pain of grief after Robert Cording’s thirty-one-year-old son Daniel died. To borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, here is “a grief observed,” encompassing not only the big questions but also the impact of grief on daily life. For a poet like Cording, one form that grief takes is that of speaking to his son. In “Afterlife,” Cording has a vision of his son replying: “let the emptiness remain empty . . . Stop writing down / everything you think I’m telling you. / This is your afterlife, not mine.” At the heart of In the Unwalled City is a series of questions: How does loss change a person? How does one chart a new life that both acknowledges a son’s death and still finds a way back to delight? How does one now live fully in the unwalled city?

The Babylonia Talmud is an immense collection of laws, practices, and customs of the Jewish people, edited in its present form in the fifth century. Tractate Megilla (literally, ‘scroll’) concerns a deep exegesis of the history and customs of the holiday of Purim, when the Jewish people in ancient Persia were saved through the intervention of Queen Esther at the last minute from extermination by the wicked Haman. It is a holiday of gaiety and commemoration. The Talmud is often extremely difficult to understand, and tractate Megilla is no exception. The Whole Megilla is an effort to explain the text, page by page, for interested readers. It affords the reader an opportunity to capture the flavor of the Talmud and follow the notoriously demanding text.

The City is the best, funniest, saddest, and most thought-provoking compilation ever assembled on the urban scene. James A. Clapp has arranged more than three thousand quotations—epigrams, epithets, verses, proverbs, scriptural references, witticisms, lyrics, literary references, and historical observations—on urban life from antiquity until the present. These quotes are drawn from the written and spoken words of more than one thousand writers throughout history. This volume, with contributions from speakers, poets, song writers, politicians philosophers, scientists, religious leaders, historians, social scientists, humorists, architects, journalists, and travelers from and to many lands is designed to be used by writers, speechmakers, students, and scholars on cities and urban life. Clapp's text is striking for its sharp contrasts of urban and rural life and the urbanization process in different historical times and geographical areas. This second edition includes four hundred new entries, updated birth dates and occupations of quoted authors, and an expanded and updated introduction and preface. Clapp also added new introduction pages for each section containing pictures and unique quotations. The indexes have also been expanded to include more subjects and cities. The scope of this book is international, including entries on most major and many minor cities of the world. It is noteworthy for its pleasures as well as its insights.

The City is the best, funniest, saddest, and most thought-provoking compilation ever assembled on the urban scene. James A. Clapp has arranged more than three thousand quotations--epigrams, epithets, verses, proverbs, scriptural references, witticisms, lyrics, literary references, and historical observations--on urban life from antiquity until the present. These quotes are drawn from the written and spoken words of more than one thousand writers throughout history. This volume, with contributions from speakers, poets, song writers, politicians philosophers, scientists, religious leaders, historians, social scientists, humorists, architects, journalists, and travelers from and to many lands is designed to be used by writers, speechmakers, students, and scholars on cities and urban life. Clapp's text is striking for its sharp contrasts of urban and rural life and the urbanization process in different historical times and geographical areas. This second edition includes four hundred new entries, updated birth dates and occupations of quoted authors, and an expanded and updated introduction and preface. Clapp also added new introduction pages for each section containing pictures and unique quotations. The indexes have also been expanded to include more subjects and cities. The scope of this book is international, including entries on most major and many minor cities of the world. It is noteworthy for its pleasures and as well as its insights.

Xu Xi, one of Hong Kong's preeminent novelists, examines the lives of four of the city's residents amid the tension and uncertainties leading up to the 1997 handover to China.

The city is an ambiguous symbol in the Bible. The founder of the first city is the murderer, Cain. The city of Jerusalem is the place chosen by God, yet is also a place of wrong-doing and injustice. Jesus seems to have largely avoided cities except Jerusalem, where he was crucified. 'The City in Biblical Perspective' examines the archaeological and social background of the urban biblical world and explores the implications of the deliberate ambiguities in the biblical text. The book aims to deepen our understanding of both the biblical and the contemporary city by asking how the Bible's complex understanding of the city can illuminate our own ever more urban time.

In 1918, the Italian-Americans of New York, the Yupik of Alaska, and the Persians of Mashed had almost nothing in common except for a virus -- one that triggered the worst pandemic of modern times and had a decisive effect on twentieth-century history. The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth -- from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi, and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people, it exists in our memory as an afterthought to World War I. In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted -- and often permanently altered -- global politics, race relations and family structures, while spurring innovation in medicine, religion and the arts. It was partly responsible, Spinney argues, for pushing India to independence, South Africa to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war. It also created the true "lost generation." Drawing on the latest research in history, virology, epidemiology, psychology and economics, Pale Rider masterfully recounts the little-known catastrophe that forever changed humanity.

Preliminary Material -- INTRODUCTION: WRITING RACE AND ASIA-PACIFIC MOBILITIES - CONSTRUCTIONS AND CONTESTATIONS /Robbie B.H. Goh -- VIVAN SUNDARAM'S “AMRITA”: TOWARDS A STYLE OF THE BODY /Tania Roy -- THE RETURN OF THE SCIENTIST: ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE AND GLOBAL TRIBALISM IN AMITAV GHOSH'S THE HUNGRY TIDE AND THE CALCUTTA CHROMOSOME /Robbie B.H. Goh -- ETHNICITY AND THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN DIASPORA IN LI-YOUNG LEE'S THE WINGED SEED /Walter S.H. Lim -- NARRATING RACE, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY IN R.K. NARAYAN'S THE PAINTER OF SIGNS /Chitra Sankaran -- CHINESE ETHNICITY IN POST-REFORMATION INDONESIAN WOMEN'S FICTION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TWO NOVELS BY AYU UTAMI AND DEWI LESTARI /Harry Aveling -- RESI(G)NIFYING THE CHINESE AND FILIPINO IN CINEMATIC NARRATIVES /Caroline S. Hau -- PERFORMING ETHNICITY, ETHNICIZING HISTORY: THE EURASIANS OF SINGAPORE IN REX SHELLEY'S THE SHRIMP PEOPLE /Lily Rose Tope -- PERFORMING THE SELF: RACE AND IDENTITY IN TWO HONG KONG ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PLAYS /Kwok-Kan Tam -- BORDER CROSSING: PLACE, IDENTITY AND DIS/LOCATION OF THE SELF IN XU XI'S THE UNWALLED CITY /Terry Siu-Han Yip -- HYBRID BROWN GAIJIN IS A “DISTINGUISHED ALIEN” IN SAKOKU JAPAN /Julie Mehta -- UGLY AMERICANS AND LITTLE BROWN BROTHERS: SPECTACLES OF IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY PHILIPPINE DRAMA /Judy Celine Ick -- DISAPPEARING RACE: NORMATIVE WHITENESS AND CULTURAL APPROPRIATION IN AUSTRALIAN REFUGEE NARRATIVES /Wenche Ommundsen -- RACE IN ASIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH: ETHNIC, NATIONAL AND COSMOPOLITAN REPRESENTATIONS /Agnes S.L. Lam -- NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS -- INDEX.