A behind-the-scenes profile of the Chinese NBA star and the factors that drove his career reveals how his basketball player parents were brought together by Chinese officials intent on creating Olympic athletes, his role as a corporate pitchman, and the struggle between China and America over his NBA draft, in an account that simultaneously traces the life of fellow athlete Wang Zhizhi. 50,000 first printing.

In 2002, Yao Ming became the NBA's first foreign #1 draft pick and a media sensation. Sports writer Ric Bucher was the only American reporter with unrestricted access to Yao's first year in the NBA. Now available in paperback, Yao: A Life in Two Worlds captures Yao's private story and traces his remarkable journey from Chinese success story to international icon. Whether winning over skeptical teammates, or treading lightly with ever-watchful Chinese officials, Yao reveals the many challenges he has faced with delicacy and humor. Spanning sports, politics, business, and popular culture, Yao's fascinating memoir reveals the humble, profoundly likeable young man behind the myth.

From the former New York Times Beijing bureau chief comes a closely observed story of a struggling Chinese basketball team and its quixotic, often comical attempt to make the playoffs by copying the American stars of the NBA. When the worst professional basketball team in China, the Shanxi Brave Dragons, hired former NBA coach Bob Weiss to improve its fortunes, the team's owner, Boss Wang, promised that Weiss would be allowed to Americanize his players by teaching them "advanced basketball culture." That promise would be broken from the moment Weiss landed in China. As we follow this team of colorful oddballs on a fascinating road trip through modern China, we see Weiss learn firsthand what so many other foreigners there have discovered: that changing China happens only when and how China wants to be changed.

"A major contribution to the study of global events in times of global media. Owning the Olympics tests the possibilities and limits of the concept of 'media events' by analyzing the mega-event of the information age: the Beijing Olympics. . . . A good read from cover to cover." —Guobin Yang, Associate Professor, Asian/Middle Eastern Cultures & Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University From the moment they were announced, the Beijing Games were a major media event and the focus of intense scrutiny and speculation. In contrast to earlier such events, however, the Beijing Games are also unfolding in a newly volatile global media environment that is no longer monopolized by broadcast media. The dramatic expansion of media outlets and the growth of mobile communications technology have changed the nature of media events, making it significantly more difficult to regulate them or control their meaning. This volatility is reflected in the multiple, well-publicized controversies characterizing the run-up to Beijing 2008. According to many Western commentators, the People's Republic of China seized the Olympics as an opportunity to reinvent itself as the "New China"---a global leader in economics, technology, and environmental issues, with an improving human-rights record. But China's maneuverings have also been hotly contested by diverse global voices, including prominent human-rights advocates, all seeking to displace the official story of the Games. Bringing together a distinguished group of scholars from Chinese studies, human rights, media studies, law, and other fields, Owning the Olympics reveals how multiple entities---including the Chinese Communist Party itself---seek to influence and control the narratives through which the Beijing Games will be understood. digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.

In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.

A sharply observed, hilarious account of Troost's adventures in China- a complex, fascinating country with enough dangers and delicacies to keep him, and readers, endlessly entertained.

The book was selected as one of STRATEGY + BUSINESS Best Business Books of 2008. The book was also selected by Leadershipnow.com as one of The Best Leadership Books of 2008. One of the worlds most influential living management thinkers, Charles Handy has year-after-year been listed alongside business gurus including Peter Drucker and Tom Peters in the prestigious Thinkers 50 list. His views on management and life have inspired and enlightened others for decades. Now, in Myself and Other More Important Matters, the bestselling author of books including The Age of Unreason shares his special brand of wisdom, giving readers uncommon insight into business and careers...as well as the choices we all have to make in our lives. Handy draws on the lessons of his own experience to help readers move beyond the facts they learned in business school and reflect on their own individual management style. With the philosophical elegance and eloquence Warren Bennis has described as his trademark, Handy discusses how one should develop ones career goals in line with personal values and sense of ethics. Handy entertainingly recounts what hes discovered along his own international journey: from lessons his father taught him growing up in Ireland to what he learned in Borneo in his days working for Royal Dutch Shell to Italy, where he bought and fixed up an old house in Tuscany all the way to America, where recent corporate scandals have shaken our understanding of what is ethical and acceptable. Throughout the book, Handy asks us to look at the role of work in our life, and what we truly find fulfilling. It is hard to imagine a better or wiser guide to work and lifes big questions.