Foreign Mud -- the phrase means "opium" in Chinese -- is a history of the commercial and diplomatic events that lead to the Anglo/Chinese Opium War of 1839-1842, when England attacked China to open up the latter to British trade. Author Collis tells the story with dry humor and copious quotes from contemporary Chinese and British documents, which document the cynicism and incomprehension reigning on both sides of the conflict. According to the back cover, historian A.J. P. Taylor called Foreign Mud: "A wholly admirable book, admirable as a work of history and admirable as a literary entertainment." For once the blurbs are right.

Many readers--not just history buffs--will find The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784-1844 fascinating and enlightening. Jacques M. Downs' comprehensive study of American merchants involved in the China trade during the first sixty years of U.S.-China relations, published in 1997 after a lifetime of exhaustive research, is now the definitive work on this topic. The Golden Ghetto is divided into three sections: (1)an account of the American community at Canton [or Guangzhou] under the restrictive Canton System established by Chinese officialdom to buffer the Central Kingdom from the potential harm of foreign activity and influence; (2) a detailed study of American firms and some 200 merchants involved in the China trade over six decades; and (3) an exploration of the path to the first Sino-American treaty--the 1844 Treaty of Wanghsia [Wangxia] negotiated by lawyer, politician, and diplomat Caleb Cushing after the Opium War (1839-42). Focusing on individual actions and attitudes--which Downs has culled from a wealth of sources including letters, diaries, and company histories--his presentation takes on a personal tone, occasionally reading more like a novel than a work of history. At the heart of his account is American trade in tea and silk, and increasingly in opium in the early 19th century. Downs does not mince words in condemning opium traders regardless of their nationality and the deleterious effects of the opium enterprise, but at the same time he explains how opium trade profits came to form the financial bedrock of the foreign community at Canton. He argues persuasively that American merchants with direct personal experience in China, and to a lesser extent missionaries, had a significant influence on official U.S. China policy. Readers familiar with U.S.-China relations in the 20th and early 21st centuries, and in particular with the proliferation of American business interests in China in the past two decades and with the political implications thereof, will find that Downs' study resonates with contemporary as well as historical relevance.

This book is a history of the first attempt at modernity by a government in China. This is not to say there was no economic or social progress before the Republican Revolution, he's using the term "modernist" specifically to mean a government imbued with a particular worldview, reflected in discourse and practice, that is derived largely from intellectual trends during and after the 18th century European Enlightenment. The major elements are the cult of progress, belief in man as an active agent in contructing the world, and a belief that a scientific outlook can solve problems and create a rational order.

The key element in achieving modernity, according to this vision, and thus a goal of all the 20th century modernists--whether neo-Monarchists, republicans, the Nationalist or Communist Parties--is the construction of a unified cohesive social body. They thought that only after achieving this could society be reshaped in the necessary rational way. Interestingly, the author points out that neither Chinese nor Japanese language had a word for "society", in the post-European Enlightenment sense, and one had to be assigned this meaning (shehui), and it quickly took root in intellectual circles.

So how did the early parliamentary republicans, Sun Yat-Sen, and Chiang Kai-Shek (who brought the largely failed republican experiment to an end in 1927) attempt to go about achieving this cohesive unity and order in society? This forms the bulk of this book.

Why Canton? The author explains "The choice of Canton as a case study...is in part dictated by the fact that it was the site of [the first modernist] government. It is also my belief that only through the detailed and textured history of a locality can one have a sense of the life of the people, and the effects of the larger forces which shaped their milieu. This book is hence an exploration of how the lives of the inhabitants of a city intersected with the efforts of a group of modernist elites to reorder the realm."

So this book not only develops a thesis about modernity, but is also an important and detailed social history of Canton in the early 20th century (including the late Qing period).

Two areas that get special attention are the lives of workers and the attempts by the Guomindang (Nationalist Party) and the Communist Party (then working under the umbrella of the Guomindang), to mobilize labor, seen as an important step in reshaping society. But as the author shows, workers were a heterogeneous group, and didn't always follow the path desired by state and intellectual elites. This is perhaps not terribly different from how workers reacted to a different form of elite mobilization during the Cultural Revolution; see Elizabeth Perry "Proletarian Power: Shanghai During the Cultural Revolution". This leads the author to a larger point, that modernity usually cannot be imposed according to elite visions alone, but is "negotiated, contested, or even subverted by the newly mobilized constituents, as the history of Canton clearly demonstrates".

This book could be placed with other books to form a rich history of Canton:

'Heaven is High and the Emperor Far Away: Merchants and Mandarins in Old Canton' by Valery M. Garrett

'Canton under communism; programs and politics in a provincial capital, 1949-1968' by Ezra F. Vogel

'Socialist Welfare in a Market Economy: Social Security Reforms in Guangzhou, China' by Yongxin Zhou, Nelson Chow, Yeubin Xu

As the author notes, given the often conflicting interests between Guangdong province and Beijing today, "a closer look at the social history of a key southern urban center sheds some light on the tensions inherent in the process of national reconstruction."

This is a great view into the spanish lifestyle of the early past. The father greatly depicts the role of supreme authority in the household. It contains similarities to americans such as politics and social situations. This is an excelent book if you want to know how the spanish lifestyle truly is. I highly recommend it.

This is a very good book on Zuerich during one of its more turbulent and innovative periods. At this time (summer '98) the German version of this book "Geld und Geist - Zuerich im Zeitalter des Liberalismus" is still widely available.

This book is a good introduction to graphics programming in Windows.

This book is well written with many good examples. The included CD-Rom is a tremendous advantage!

Ensures that you have a fundamental understanding of the language of graphics and then leads you through increasingly more complex graphics application. If you want to learn API programming, I can't think of a better book to get you started.

This is 1 of the 2 tour guides I recommend for Hong Kong besides Fodor's. As a local who grew up and used to live in Hong Kong, I was both surprised and excited about how much foreigners can dig deep through this city. Post-colonial Hong Kong still preserves the heart-beat of Chinese heritage underneath the burgeoning veneer of high-tech development and finances.

The official airline of Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific unveiled its newest operation logo couple of years back with slogan "Heart of Asia". The Hong Kong Tourist Association (HKTA) strived to revive tourism that was correlated with the regionwide stock market plunge in 1997 by launching the campaign "Hong Kong: City of Life" in 1998 to attract visitors. Featured was a 7-day-6-night package from the US including airfare and hotel for $899 including tax.

Dubbed "Heart of Asia" and "City of Life", this volume of "Hong Kong Handbook" will surely be your pocket guide to explore this exotic capital of Asia. The book included history and remarkable events associated with this newest Chinese SAR (Special Administrative Region), along with its rich mixed cultures and lifestyles.

In addition to the usual tips on fine dining, hotels from 5-star to no-star, shopping bargains and transportation, this handbook devotes incredible amount of pages on almost all the districts within the city. It would be a tremendous loss for any Hong Kong visitor to stay in central (downtown) area and the usual tourist spot like The Peak, Ocean Park and Po Lin Monastery. This handbook guides you to local areas like Mongkok, Yaumatei, and even outlying islands Po Toi Island, Tung Ping Chau, and Cheung Chau. One of the preserved wildlife area, Sai Gung Peninsula, is illustrated with lucid photos. You might wish to allocate 3-4 days hiking through the trails that provides panoramic view of the South China Sea.

The Hong Kong Handbook offers more than just a packaged tour can satisfy. You might completely stay away from urban areas and venture through monasteries or explore one of the biggest man-made water reservoir Plover Cove. The border with mainland is just 15 miles from the main financial center. The guide would be a must-have for those who wish to see the other side of Hong Kong.

Anyone planning a trip to Hong Kong would be wise to pick up a copy of this book. I recently returned from a two-week exploration of the SAR, and I found this book to be invaluable. Not only did it give me maps and all the essentials, but it gave me insight into the people and culture that surrounded me. The only thing I found lacking was the glossary of Chinese phrases.

While the book is older than some, and may be in some regards a bit out of date (hint to publisher - bring out a revised version), for instance some of the restaurants no longer exist, I found this to be the best book (and I brought many with me). The recommendations are solid, the highlighted points of interest are the most consistant (and often off-beat) and the essays and comments are the best (this is the only book for instance that explained why bamboo is used as scaffolding),

I'm half way through this book. Based on what I have read, this book is good for someone new to OO design and possibly not familiar with C++ either. But if you have read Bjarne Stroustrup's "The C++ Programming Language" and the Gamma et al's "Design Patterns" book, you won't gain much new from it. Moreover, it is sometimes not very acurate. For example, when talking about the difference between malloc() and new, the authors failed to point out that new calls object constructors while malloc() does not, which is perhaps the most important difference. Overall, this book is good for beginners for getting a general view of programming methodologies, OO and C++. But if you think you have known the basics, this book is not for you.

I find this book to be a valuable reference for teaching my own college C++ programming class. Many object-oriented topics which are largely ignored by other authors are nicely covered in this text, making it a super first reference for any future C++ programmer. The real world treatment of object-oriented design and analysis is appreciated, from the educator's perspective.

Mr. Sanchez is my instructor at Montana State University Northern (Great Falls Campus) and I used much of this book in Programming II in C++ class. It is slated to be the text of our System Analysis and Design course and I'm delighted. This book starts with the basic concepts of Object Orientation in C++, builds an easy to follow foundation, and then expands on the more advanced topics of Models and Patterns in C++, a topic that has only been poorly written about prior to the introduction of this book. This book is well worth your time and money if you want to become an advanced C++ programmer.

The reason that this book is so very fascinating has to do less with the subject than the author. It is a fine book to be sure, full of helpful and interesting information, but the author, John Quentin Feller, is far more intriguing. Feller was arrested in the early 90's because he was one of the most accomplished and compulsive art thieves in American history. He did 'research' in 8 major museums and stole from them. He didn't do it for monetary gain, though - he would 'donate' the pieces to other museums! Really, really interesting guy.

This is a beautiful museum catalog of the Peabody Museums's famille rose porcelain collection. Many nice color illustrations of a wonderful collection. There are also a lot of black and white illustrations that are a little hard to make out. This is not a history of famille rose as such although there is a lot of historical information embedded in it. It is also not a collecting guide or price guide.

Daughters of the Canton Delta provides the reader with a great deal of interesting information regarding marriage practices and the struggle of women in the Canton Delta. Unfortuantely, Stockard seems to have trouble writing concisely. Sentences are often repeaded multiple times before she feels her point has been appropriately conveyed. This makes for somewhat of a frusterating read.

Daughters of the Canton Delta is not only one of my favorite anthropology texts, but it stands alone as a great read. Although the author went to a great deal of research and fieldwork, each chapter reads easily and quickly. It makes a great classroom text or bedside reading. This book provides the perfect opportunity for someone who doesn't have much experience with good anthropology (research and study), but wants to. I'd also highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in asian cultures in general, there are many practices or aspects of marriage revealed in this book that I imagine even many inhabitants of South China don't know.