In The Confucian-Legalist State, Dingxin Zhao offers a radically new analysis of Chinese imperial history from the eleventh century BCE to the fall of the Qing dynasty. This study first uncovers the factors that explain how, and why, China developed into a bureaucratic empire under the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE. It then examines the political system that crystallized during the Western Han dynasty, a system that drew on China's philosophical traditions of Confucianism and Legalism. Despite great changes in China's demography, religion, technology, and socioeconomic structures, this Confucian-Legalist political system survived for over two millennia. Yet, it was precisely because of the system's resilience that China, for better or worse, did not develop industrial capitalism as Western Europe did, notwithstanding China's economic prosperity and technological sophistication beginning with the Northern Song dynasty. In examining the nature of this political system, Zhao offers a new way of viewing Chinese history, one that emphasizes the importance of structural forces and social mechanisms in shaping historical dynamics. As a work of historical sociology, The Confucian-Legalist State aims to show how the patterns of Chinese history were not shaped by any single force, but instead by meaningful activities of social actors which were greatly constrained by, and at the same time reproduced and modified, the constellations of political, economic, military, and ideological forces. This book thus offers a startling new understanding of long-term patterns of Chinese history, one that should trigger debates for years to come among historians, political scientists, and sociologists.

Using real stories with quantitative reasoning skills enmeshed in the story line is a powerful and logical way to teach biology and show its relevance to the lives of future citizens, regardless of whether they are science specialists or laypeople.” —from the introduction to Science Stories You Can Count On This book can make you a marvel of classroom multitasking. First, it helps you achieve a serious goal: to blend 12 areas of general biology with quantitative reasoning in ways that will make your students better at evaluating product claims and news reports. Second, its 51 case studies are a great way to get students engaged in science. Who wouldn’t be glad to skip the lecture and instead delve into investigating cases with titles like these: • “A Can of Bull? Do Energy Drinks Really Provide a Source of Energy?” • “ELVIS Meltdown! Microbiology Concepts of Culture, Growth, and Metabolism” • “The Case of the Druid Dracula” • “As the Worm Turns: Speciation and the Maggot Fly” • “The Dead Zone: Ecology and Oceanography in the Gulf of Mexico” Long-time pioneers in the use of educational case studies, the authors have written two other popular NSTA Press books: Start With a Story (2007) and Science Stories: Using Case Studies to Teach Critical Thinking (2012). Science Stories You Can Count On is easy to use with both biology majors and nonscience students. The cases are clearly written and provide detailed teaching notes and answer keys on a coordinating website. You can count on this book to help you promote scientific and data literacy in ways to prepare students to reason quantitatively and, as the authors write, “to be astute enough to demand to see the evidence.”

In 1903, a small western town—Newcastle, Wyoming—struggles to overcome its remembered violent past of Indian wars and fighting outlaws and enter the new, modern 20th century. Arrayed against this good intent is the fresh reality of vigilante action and a lynching triggered by a gruesome murder and a distrust of civil justice, and ultimately, the final consequential Battle of Lightning Creek. That lesser-known skirmish flared in November of that fateful year as a surprising encore on Wyoming soil pitting townspeople stirred up by a hectoring town father against young Sioux from the Pine Ridge Reservation on a sanctioned fall hunt. Based largely on real incidents, the events in this book are viewed through the eyes of a precocious adolescent and his adoptive father who, the son of the army’s contracted storekeeper at Fort Laramie before the destruction of the buffalo, and partly raised and acculturated by Indians, is the local pariah.

This is a unique history of what in the 1980s was the world’s largest association in the media field. However, the IOJ was embroiled in the Cold War: the bulk of 300,000 members were in the socialist East and developing South. Hence the collapse of the Soviet-led communist order in central-eastern Europe in 1989–91 precipitated the IOJ’s demise. The author – a Finnish journalism educator and media scholar – served as President of the IOJ during its heyday. In addition to a chronological account of the organization, the book includes testimonies by actors inside and outside the IOJ and comprehensive appendices containing unpublished documents.