In Restless Nation, James M. Jasper isolates a narrative that lies very close to the core of the American character. From colonial times to the present day, Americans have always had a deep-rooted belief in the "fresh start"—a belief that still has Americans moving from place to place faster than the citizens of any other nation.

South Africa's rainbow nation has become a restless nation. Citizens are faced with poor service delivery and corruption, while a new bling culture has infected both politics and business. William Gumede takes a fearless look at these and other burning issues which threaten the South African democracy: leadership battles within the ANC, attacks on the constitution, black economic empowerment strategies which only benefit a few, racism and moral bankruptcy.

As the twenty-first century dawns, China stands at a crossroads. The largest and most populous country on earth and currently the world's second biggest economy, China has recently reclaimed its historic place at the center of global affairs after decades of internal chaos and disastrous foreign relations. But even as China tentatively reengages with the outside world, the contradictions of its development risks pushing it back into an era of insularity and instability -- a regression that, as China's recent history shows, would have serious implications for all other nations. In Restless Empire, award-winning historian Odd Arne Westad traces China's complex foreign affairs over the past 250 years, identifying the forces that will determine the country's path in the decades to come. Since the height of the Qing Empire in the eighteenth century, China's interactions -- and confrontations -- with foreign powers have caused its worldview to fluctuate wildly between extremes of dominance and subjugation, emulation and defiance. From the invasion of Burma in the 1760s to the Boxer Rebellion in the early 20th century to the 2001 standoff over a downed U.S. spy plane, many of these encounters have left Chinese with a lingering sense of humiliation and resentment, and inflamed their notions of justice, hierarchy, and Chinese centrality in world affairs. Recently, China's rising influence on the world stage has shown what the country stands to gain from international cooperation and openness. But as Westad shows, the nation's success will ultimately hinge on its ability to engage with potential international partners while simultaneously safeguarding its own strength and stability. An in-depth study by one of our most respected authorities on international relations and contemporary East Asian history, Restless Empire is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the recent past and probable future of this dynamic and complex nation.

Foreword by Richard Dillon. Between 1842 and 1853, John C. Fremont led five expeditions across the trans-Mississippi West. While the success of his early journeys gained him acclaim as a national hero, his later missions ended in tragedy and ultimately a court-martial. Historian Ferol Egan focuses on Fremont’s explorations, providing a vivid portrait of a courageous man in an emerging young nation.

"No one seems to be happy with the present. That loathing of the present is understandable. The present moment, in modern life, is hard to love, or even to grasp. For the modern present is a state of constant motion. Perpetual moral, social, and psychic revolution is the price we pay for our unprecedented liberty, equality, and prosperity. Though we rightly prize those great political goods, having our world turned upside down every morning makes us all of us uneasy and some of us miserable. We exacerbate our unease by our failure to recognize it. With our ritual insistence that we are perfectly content to "go with the flow," we deny even the existence of our disquiet. We refuse to see what time it is, and we refuse to see ourselves"--

The first novel from Madagascar ever to be translated into English, Naivo’s magisterial Beyond the Rice Fields delves into the upheavals of the nation’s precolonial past through the twin narratives of a slave and his master’s daughter. Fara and her father’s slave, Tsito, have shared a tender intimacy since her father bought the young boy who’d been ripped away from his family after their forest village was destroyed. Now in Sahasoa, amongst the cattle and rice fields, everything is new for Tsito, and Fara at last has a companion to play with. But as Tsito looks forward toward the bright promise of freedom and Fara, backward to a twisted, long-denied family history, a rift opens that a rapidly shifting political and social terrain can only widen. As love and innocence fall away, their world becomes defined by what tyranny and superstition both thrive upon: fear. With captivating lyricism and undeniable urgency, Naivo crafts an unsentimental interrogation of the brutal history of nineteenth-century Madagascar as a land newly exposed to the forces of Christianity and modernity, and preparing for a violent reaction against them. Beyond the Rice Fields is a tour de force about the global history of human bondage and the competing narratives that keep us from recognizing ourselves and each other, our pasts and our destinies.

The metropolis is a site of endless making and unmaking. From the attempt to imagine a 'city-symphony' to the cinematic tradition that runs from Walter Ruttmann to Terence Davies, Restless Cities traces the idiosyncratic character of the metropolitan city from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first-century megalopolis. With explorations of phenomena including nightwalking, urbicide, property, commuting and recycling, this wide-ranging new book identifies and traces the patterns that have defined everyday life in the modern city and its effect on us as individuals. Bringing together some of the most significant cultural writers of our time, Restless Cities is an illuminating, revelatory journey to the heart of our metropolitan world.

The author, who is in his twenties and fluent in Chinese, intimately examines the future of China through the lens of the Jiu Ling Hou—the generation born after 1990—exploring through personal encounters how his Chinese peers feel about everything from money and marriage to their government and the West

The story of the man who transformed The Wall Street Journal and modern media In 1929, Barney Kilgore, fresh from college in small-town Indiana, took a sleepy, near bankrupt New York financial paper—The Wall Street Journal—and turned it into a thriving national newspaper that eventually was worth $5 billion to Rupert Murdoch. Kilgore then invented a national weekly newspaper that was a precursor of many trends we see playing out in journalism now. Tofel brings this story of a little-known pioneer to life using many previously uncollected newspaper writings by Kilgore and a treasure trove of letters between Kilgore and his father, all of which detail the invention of much of what we like best about modern newspapers. By focusing on the man, his journalism, his foresight, and his business acumen, Restless Genius also sheds new light on the Depression and the New Deal. At a time when traditional newspapers are under increasing threat, Barney Kilgore's story offers lessons that need constant retelling.