Prince Prisdang Chumsai (1852–1935) served as Siam's first diplomat to Europe during the most dramatic moment of Siam’s political history, when its independence was threatened by European imperialism. Despite serving with patriotic zeal, he suffered irreparable social and political ruin based on rumors about fiscal corruption, sexual immorality, and political treason. In Bones around My Neck, Tamara Loos pursues the truth behind these rumors, which chased Prisdang out of Siam. Her book recounts the personal and political adventures of an unwitting provocateur who caused a commotion in every country he inhabited.Prisdang spent his first five years in exile from Siam living in disguise as a commoner and employee of the British Empire in colonial Southeast Asia. He then resurfaced in the 1890s in British Ceylon, where he was ordained as a Buddhist monk and became a widely respected abbot. Foreigners from around the world were drawn to this prince who had discarded wealth and royal status to lead the life of an ascetic. His fluency in English, royal blood, acute intellect, and charisma earned him importance in international diplomatic and Buddhist circles. Prisdang’s life journey reminds us of the complexities of the colonial encounter and the recalibrations it caused in local political cultures. His drama offers more than a story about Siamese politics: it also casts in high relief the subjective experience of global imperialism. Telling this history from the vantage point of a remarkable individual grounds and animates the historical abstractions of imperialism, Buddhist universalism, and the transformation of Siam into a modern state.

In Bones around My Neck, Tamara Loos recounts the personal and political adventures of Prince Prisdang Chumsai (1852-1935), who served as Siam's first diplomat to Europe during the most dramatic moment of Siam's political history.

A fascinating look at a scientific discovery that changed the world. Through an engaging text and numerous photographs and illustrations, Carla Killough McClafferty tells the history of the X-ray, from its discovery to its uses today. The story begins in 1895, when Wilhelm Roentgen accidentally saw the bones of his own hand while experimenting with cathode rays in his laboratory in Germany. His gift to science led to an amazing revolution in medicine, but not without a terrible price: it was only through many scientists' injuries and deaths that the dangers of X-ray exposure were revealed. McClafferty's chronicle also covers such things as the use of X-rays in examining fine art and identifying forgeries; the study of Egyptian mummies by X-rays; and X-ray use in everything from astronomy to paleontology, from airplane manufacture to the familiar dentist's office. McClafferty writes with an infectious excitement about her subject, with plenty of humor and respect for her intended young audience.

These twelve dazzling stories from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — the Orange Broadband Prize–winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun — are her most intimate works to date. In these stories Adichie turns her penetrating eye to the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Nigeria and the United States. In “A Private Experience,” a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman, and the young mother at the centre of “Imitation” finds her comfortable life in Philadelphia threatened when she learns that her husband has moved his mistress into their Lagos home. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection is a resounding confirmation of Adichie’s prodigious literary powers.

A rendition of a traditional African American spiritual.

She may be a Mississippi belle, but Sarah Booth Delaney is no pampered daddy’s girl. Unwed and over thirty, Sarah has her own set of problems--like coping with regular hauntings by her great-great-grandmother’s nanny, a busybody of a ghost who’s set on marrying her off to the first suitor who comes calling. But when an old friend is in trouble, Sarah Booth doesn’t hesitate to get involved. Splintered Bones Eulalee McBride has confessed to murdering her husband...and she wants Sarah to dig up the dirt on the violent scalawag to prove he got what he deserved. Sarah Booth suspects that her friend is lying through her pearly whites...but why? There’s certainly no lack of suspects in Zinnia, Mississippi, including Bud Lynch, a horse trainer who arouses killer lust in the town’s women. As Sarah Booth begins to put together the pieces of the case, a killer is preparing to strike again. And this time it could send one late-blooming southern sleuth into an early grave.