Restless Valley

This award-winning foreign correspondent’s vivid account of Central Asia’s recent history “reads like a novel but is the stuff of hard-won journalism” (Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan). Here are the stories of two revolutions, a massacre of unarmed civilians, a civil war, a drug-smuggling highway, brazen corruption schemes, contract hits, and larger-than-life characters who may be villains, heroes, or possibly both. Restless Valley is a gripping, contemporary chronicle of Central Asia from a veteran journalist with extensive experience in the region. Both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have struggled with the challenges of post-Soviet, independent statehood, and both became entangled in America’s Afghan campaign when the United States built military bases within their borders. Meanwhile, the region was becoming a key smuggling hub for Afghanistan’s booming heroin trade. Through the eyes of local participants—the powerful and the powerless—Shishkin reconstructs how Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have ricocheted between extreme repression and democratic strivings; how alliances with the United States and Russia have brought mixed blessings; and how Stalin’s legacy of ethnic gerrymandering continues to incite conflict today. “The weird, the strange, the corrupt, and the grand are all evident . . . [Shishkin] relentlessly pursues and then tells the stories of the most corrupt and powerful and also the most sincere and admirable characters who inhabit these mountains.” —Ahmed Rashid, The New York Review of Books

DIV A reporter’s vivid account of Central Asia’s wild recent history—violent in the extreme and rife with characters both heroic and corrupt /div

In this volume, Fein presents highly emotional Middle English lyrics to a new audience of students and teachers of the Middle Ages. These Middle English poems, drawn widely from two hundred years of literary tradition, lead readers in devotion to God by invoking an emotional response to God's love. In this meditative tradition, readers would be brought closer to intellectually understanding God through their affective responses. With its copious footnotes, introductions, and glosses, this volume is ideal for classes on medieval spirituality and English lyrical poetry alike.

Fengshui master Eva Wong breaks it down for beginners. This easy-to-use, fengshui 101 guide to the ancient practice will give you invaluable advice as you choose or build a home—and bring positive, healthy energy to your existing home, office, or garden. Enhance the energy of your home, workplace, or garden using the principles of the Taoist art of fengshui. This primer will teach you to bring harmonizing, beneficial energy into any space. Taoist arts master Eva Wong introduces readers to the powerful traditional system of fengshui. It is not simply a list of directives for arranging interiors for good luck—it is the art of reading the patterns of the universe and living in harmony with the environment. Bedrooms with good fengshui maximize health and minimize illnesses. Home offices with good fengshui facilitate business vision and accumulation of wealth. Even garages, driveways, and gardens can affect our health, livelihood, and the way we interact with the world. Whether you are buying, renting, or renovating a home—or you want to change the atmosphere and energy of the home you are in—Wong will teach you to identify and work with the possibilities and limitations of your space. In this concise book, Wong explains the essential principles and guidelines of fengshui; offers tips for home buyers, including architectural positives and negatives, and neighborhood perks and challenges; shows you how to assess your indoor and outdoor spaces; and much more As the owner of a construction and engineering business, Wong’s recommendations are practical, safe, and economical.

In Making Uzbekistan, Adeeb Khalid chronicles the tumultuous history of Central Asia in the age of the Russian revolution. He explores the complex interaction between Uzbek intellectuals, local Bolsheviks, and Moscow to sketch out the flux of the situation in early-Soviet Central Asia. His focus on the Uzbek intelligentsia allows him to recast our understanding of Soviet nationalities policies. Uzbekistan, he argues, was not a creation of Soviet policies, but a project of the Muslim intelligentsia that emerged in the Soviet context through the interstices of the complex politics of the period. Making Uzbekistan introduces key texts from this period and argues that what the decade witnessed was nothing short of a cultural revolution.

Mainland China businesses are going global, transforming the country from a manufacturing export platform into an overseas investment powerhouse. China Goes Global is the most thorough and up-to-date empirical analysis of the accelerating effort of Chinese companies to go global by investing overseas. It details the overall trends of this activity with respect to its sectors, channels, overseas targets, and particular firms, along the role of Chinese Government policy in facilitating business enterprise globalization. The book offers readers an enterprise level of view outward expansion by Chinese firms that is focused not only on the big-names, but also less well-known, but equally important trailblazing enterprises. In doing so it offers practical suggestions on how firms can tackle the challenges encountered when expanding outward.

Environmental conditions do not exist in a vacuum. They are influenced by science, politics, history, public policy, culture, economics, public attitudes, and competing priorities, as well as past human decisions. In the case of Central Asia, such Soviet-era decisions include irrigation systems and physical infrastructure that are now crumbling, mine tailings that leach pollutants into soil and groundwater, and abandoned factories that are physically decrepit and contaminated with toxic chemicals. Environmental Crises in Central Asia highlights major environmental challenges confronting the region’s former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. They include threats to the Caspian and Aral seas, the impact of climate change on glaciers, desertification, deforestation, destruction of habitat and biodiversity, radioactive and hazardous wastes, water quality and supply, energy exploration and development, pesticides and food security, and environmental health. The ramifications of these challenges cross national borders and may affect economic, political, and cultural relationships on a vast geographic scale. At the same time, the region’s five governments have demonstrated little resolve to address these complex challenges. This book is a valuable multi-disciplinary resource for academics, scholars, and policymakers in environmental sciences, geography, political science, natural resources, mass communications, public health, and economics.