The book is about a young mans journey beginning with a calling to follow a scientific path at age 14. His spiritual name becomes “Sengen” Smith. The book details both the scientific adventures and his struggles to stay on the path. His career draws to a close, but speculates the meaning of consciousness as it relates to God.

China’s past and present have been in a continuous dialogue throughout history, one that is heavily influenced by time and language: the temporal orientation and the linguistic apparatus used to express and solidify identity, ideas, and practices. Presenting a host of in-depth case studies, Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History argues for and demonstrates the significance of “New Sinology” by restoring the role of language/philology in the research and understanding of how modern China emerged. Reading the modern as a careful and ongoing conversation with the past renders the “new” in a different perspective. This volume is a significant step toward a new historical narrative of China’s modern history, one wherein “ruptures” can exist in tandem with continuities. The collection accentuates the deep connection between language and power—one that spans well across China’s long past—and hence the immense consequences of linguistic-related methodology to the comprehension of power structures and identity in China. Each of the essays in this volume tackles these issues, the methodological and the thematic, from a different angle but they all share the Sinological prism of analysis and the basic understanding that a much longer timeframe is required to make sense of Chinese modernity. The languages examined are diverse, including modern and classical Chinese, as well as Manchu and Japanese. Taken together they bring a spectrum of linguistic perspectives and hence a spectrum of power relations and identities to the forefront. While the essays focus on late Qing and early twentieth-century eras, they refer often to earlier periods, which are necessary to making real sense of later eras. The methodological and the thematic do not only converge, but also generate a plea for fostering and expanding this approach in current and future studies.

Born on a canal boat, Jeannecke De Hertog never would have guessed that before her 11th birthday her ideal life as the daughter of a merchant marine skipper would change from traveling the Benelux canal system to scrounging for meals and scrambling for shelter from the bombs of German Junkers. From aiding downed Allied pilots on a farm in Ghent, Belgium to tending wounded and dying soldiers as Red Cross nurses' aids, Jeannecke and her older sister Germaine grow up quickly in occupied Belgium. "We are looking for coals so that we might cook a little Christmas dinner and keep warm tomorrow," said Germaine. "You must not steal from German property," he said. "We are not stealing," blurted Jeannecke. The guard had a large gunny over his back along with his Schmeiesser pistol, which he now swung to the ground. The girls now feared the worst, so they held their hands high over their heads in an act of surrender and began to cry aloud."