Traces the author's year-long attempt to earn a competitor's spot at the PGA Tour Qualifying School, an endeavor marked by such challenges as crash diets, sports psychiatrists, and obscure tournaments.
Presents the author's selection of his best short stories, as well as a new piece, in a collection that includes "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary," "Mono No Aware" and "The Waves."
In PAPER TIGER the Chinese journalist and intellectual Xu Zhiyuan paints a portrait of the world's second-largest economy via a thoughtful and wide-ranging series of mini essays on contemporary Chinese society. Xu Zhiyuan describes the many stages upon which China's great transformation is taking place, from Beijing's Silicon district to a cruise down the Three Gorges; he profiles China's dissidents, including Liu Xiaobo, Ai Weiwei and Chen Guangcheng; and explores lesser-known stories of scandals that rocked China but which most people outside that country did not hear about – and which shed troubling light on China's dark heart. Xu Zhiyuan understands his homeland in a way no foreign correspondent ever could. PAPER TIGER is a unique insider's view of China that is measured and brave, ambitious in scope and deeply personal.
This book provides an in-depth study of China's information technology (IT) industry and policy in the 21st century, and explores the connection between China's financial system and technological development outcomes.
The author examines the process of social life and the relationship of myth, popular formula, and the mystery genre to social psychology. The book presents social construction of reality theory as a methodology upon which the structure of mass-mediated popular fiction can be examined, postulating definitions of myth and formula and advancing a new language of literary analysis that acknowledges the socially defining, democratizing experience of popular fiction. Social-psychological analysis is focused on the mystery genre and examines its taxonomy, including the supernatural, fiction noir, gangster, thief, thriller, and detective formulas.
Paper Tiger is a small concise picture of my thirteen years spent contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Starting with securing weapons of mass destruction in Southern Iraq to giving away billions of US tax dollars while leading teams in Hillary's army. This book was written in the most sarcastic manner; as sarcasm was my endurance formula for the incompetence of leadership provided to us in mission accomplishment. If the enemy ever knew how much we improvised and the illusions we created, then we would all be getting our heads lopped off on the Internet.
This work recounts the recent evolution of the Venezuelan economy and details the consequences of new policies designed to tackle the nation's deepest economic crisis. It also explains the failed military coup in February 1992 that threatened Venezuela and analyzes why it occurred.