After several years in Europe, author Cecilia Kochanowski returns to the United States with her husband and two daughters. Sadly resigning themselves to the fact that they cannot afford to return to a Manhattan home¿and while wasted on jet lag¿Kochanowski manages to buy a faded yellow cottage in a sleepy village nestled in the Hudson Valley. When moving day actually comes, Kochanowski wishes it away, even though she spent months anticipating the momentous occasion. All aspects of the move back to the States are a shock: the commute to work is long, the local varmints voracious, and the cottage nearly blows up from a gas leak only five days after the family moves in. Though a product of the American suburbs, Kochanowski quickly realizes that she no longer remembers how to live in the country of her birth¿even less so than her Polish husband. Will their newly purchased but aging house ever feel like home? As they negotiate their prejudice against their new home, the family confronts the village zoning board, a cowboy plumber, and a coven of petty bureaucrats on their chaotic odyssey of home renovation, uninformed gardening, and sporadic child rearing in the witty memoir Plumbersutra A string of...observations on such suburban conundrums as first-time home buying, commuting, buying an SUV, roof-remodeling and, of course, plumbers. Kochanowski takes obvious delight in turning her wry eye to the unique priorities of the 'burbs, having just moved there from Manhattan's Upper West Side. Breezily insular, Plumbersutra traces her lateral shift from entitled urbanite to entitled suburbanite who's gone native even while preserving the threads of her detached irony. The characters assisting in and standing in the way of her American Dream-Janusz, her dutiful Polish husband, less a stranger to these circumstances than she; her crabby neighbor; her fellow train commuters; her maverick plumber, Dave-are, for the most part, skillfully rendered and often genuinely funny, and her glee in setting up punchlines and delivering zingers is infectious. -Kirkus Discoveries

In this life-changing book, acclaimed Buddhist teacher Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche shows how to free yourself from being a victim of your emotions by gaining the awareness and understanding that will help you harness their power. Emotions bring color and meaning to our lives, but they can also put us on an exhausting rollercoaster ride that takes us to blissful peak states, the depths of delusion and despair, and everything in between. It is only by learning to relate to our emotions skillfully that we benefit from their richness and glean wisdom, rather than letting them control us. Emotions get their power from a simple but deep-seated source: our lack of self-knowledge. When we bring awareness to our experience of emotions, something truly amazing happens—they lose their power to make us miserable. In this book, Rinpoche leads us through the three steps of his Emotional Rescue Plan. Mindful Gap is the practice of creating a safe distance between you and your emotions, which gives you the psychological space to work with their energy. Clear Seeing involves recognizing the bigger picture. Last, Letting Go is the practice of releasing stressful physical and emotional energy through exercise, relaxation, and awareness. With each step, we become increasingly familiar with the inner workings of our emotions, seeing straight to the heart of anger, fear, passion, jealousy, and pride. With time and practice, instead of leading us astray, our emotions become our guide towards living a more compassionate, creative, and fulfilling life.

Winners of the Paul Ehrlich Prize The dramatic story of the married scientists who founded BioNTech and developed the first vaccine against COVID-19. Nobody thought it was possible. In mid-January 2020, Ugur Sahin told Özlem Türeci, his wife and decades-long research partner, that a vaccine against what would soon be known as COVID-19 could be developed and safely injected into the arms of millions before the end of the year. His confidence was built upon almost thirty years of research. While working to revolutionize the way that cancerous tumors are treated, the couple had explored a volatile and overlooked molecule called messenger RNA; they believed it could be harnessed to redirect the immune system's forces against any number of diseases. As the founders of BioNTech, they faced widespread skepticism from the scientific community at first; but by the time Sars-Cov-2 was discovered in Wuhan, China, BioNTech was prepared to deploy cutting edge technology and create the world’s first clinically approved inoculation for the coronavirus. The Vaccine draws back the curtain on one of the most important medical breakthroughs of our age; it will reveal how Doctors Sahin and Türeci were able to develop twenty vaccine candidates within weeks, convince Big Pharma to support their ambitious project, navigate political interference from the Trump administration and the European Union, and provide more than three billion doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to countries around the world in record time. Written by Joe Miller—the Financial Times’ Frankfurt correspondent who covered BioNTech’s COVID-19 project in real time—with contributions from Sahin and Türeci, as well as interviews with more than sixty scientists, politicians, public health officials, and BioNTech staff, the book covers key events throughout the extraordinary year, as well as exploring the scientific, economic, and personal background of each medical innovation. Crafted to be both completely accessible to the average reader and filled with details that will fascinate seasoned microbiologists, The Vaccine explains the science behind the breakthrough, at a time when public confidence in vaccine safety and efficacy is crucial to bringing an end to this pandemic.

'Nathan Law's agonising account of China's ruthless takeover of Hong Kong provides a terrible insight into Beijing's ambitions - the world needs to read this.' - Jon Snow 'In Freedom, Nathan Law paints a deeply personal portrait of sheer courage... An essential and timely read.' - Speaker Nancy Pelosi What does it mean to be truly free? And can any of us be free until all of us are? Nobel Peace Prize nominee Nathan Law has experienced first-hand the shocking speed with which our freedom can be taken away from us, as an elected politician arrested simply for speaking his mind. He remembers what it is like to lack freedom - and his father's precarious three-day escape from China in a small rowing boat. When authoritarianism makes gains around the world, demanding our silence as the price of doing business, it poses a challenge to democracy everywhere. In this passionate rallying cry, Law argues that we must defend our freedom now or face losing it for ever. 'Now we all need to stand firm to defend our freedoms, to ensure truth is not determined by dictators. We are born free and as equals. As long as we believe in that, no one can take it away from us.'

Experts in gender, politics, media studies, and anthropology discuss the impact of economic reform and globalization on Chinese women in family businesses, management, the professions, the prostitution industry and domestic service.