The most ambitious work of fiction by a writer widely considered the most important novelist working in China today In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flowerbeds and false reports fly. Conspiracies abound in a community that normalizes paranoia and suspicion. Some try to flee—whether to a mysterious gambling bordello or to ancestral homes that can only be reached underground through muddy caves, sewers, and tunnels. Others seek out the refuge of Nest County, where traditional Chinese herbal medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self. Each life is circumscribed by buried secrets and transcendent delusions. Can Xue's masterful love stories for the new millennium trace love's many guises—satirical, tragic, transient, lasting, nebulous, and fulfilling—against a kaleidoscopic backdrop drawn from East and West of commerce and industry, fraud and exploitation, sex and romance.

Hollywood is facing unprecedented challenges – and is changing rapidly and radically as a result. In this major new study of the contemporary film industry, leading film historian Tino Balio explores the impact of the Internet, declining DVD sales and changing consumer spending habits on the way Hollywood conducts its business. Today, the major studios play an insignificant role in the bottom lines of their conglomerate parents and have fled to safety, relying on big-budget tentpoles, franchises and family films to reach their target audiences. Comprehensive, compelling and filled with engaging case studies (TimeWarner, DreamWorks SKG, Spider Man, The Lord of the Rings, IMAX, Netflix, Miramax, Sony Pictures Classics, Lionsgate and Sundance), Hollywood in the New Millennium is a must-read for all students of film studies, cinema studies, media studies, communication studies, and radio and television.

In preparing the report, Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millenium , the AASC made use of a series of panel reports that address various aspects of ground- and space-based astronomy and astrophysics. These reports provide in-depth technical detail. Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millenium: An Overview summarizes the science goals and recommended initiatives in a short, richly illustrated, non-technical booklet.

An internationally renowned expert on near-death experiences (NDEs) presents her discovery of "millennial children"--and their insightful message of hope. Line drawings.

Latinos in the New Millennium is a comprehensive profile of Latinos in the United States: looking at their social characteristics, group relations, policy positions and political orientations. The authors draw on information from the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS), the largest and most detailed source of data on Hispanics in America. This book provides essential knowledge about Latinos, contextualizing research data by structuring discussion around many dimensions of Latino political life in the US. The encyclopedic range and depth of the LNS allows the authors to appraise Latinos' group characteristics, attitudes, behaviors and their views on numerous topics. This study displays the complexity of Latinos, from recent immigrants to those whose grandparents were born in the United States.

Globalization, population growth, and resource depletion are drawing increased attention to the importance of common resources such as forests, water resources, and fisheries. It is critical that these resources be governed in an equitable and sustainable way. The Commons in the New Millennium presents cutting-edge research in common property theory and provides an overview and progress report on common property research. The book analyzes new problems that owners, managers, policy makers, and analysts face in managing natural commons. It examines recent findings about the physical characteristics of the commons, their complexity and interconnectedness, and the role of social capital. It also provides empirical studies and suggestions for sustainable development. The topics discussed include the role of financial, political, and social capital in deforestation, community efforts to gain political influence in Indonesia, the Maine lobster industry, outcomes of the implementation of individual transferable quotas in New Zealand and Iceland fisheries, and design of multilateral emissions trading for regional air pollution and global warming.

Most non-Central Americans think of the narrow neck between Mexico and Colombia in terms of dramatic past revolutions and lauded peace agreements, or sensational problems of gang violence and natural disasters. In this volume, the contributors examine regional circumstances within frames of democratization and neoliberalism, as they shape lived experiences of transition. The authors--anthropologists and social scientists from the United States, Europe, and Central America--argue that the process of regions and nations "disappearing" (being erased from geopolitical notice) is integral to upholding a new, post-Cold War world order--and that a new framework for examining political processes must be accessible, socially collaborative, and in dialogue with the lived processes of suffering and struggle engaged by people in Central America and the world in the name of democracy.