"Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders announced a comprehensive program of economic reform, backed up by governance changes. The degree of boldness indicates that after 35 years of world-beating economic performance, China's development model is obsolete and urgently in need of replacement. To justify the risks, President Xi quoted an impassioned plea for policy modernization by his predecessor Deng Xiaoping: the only way to avoid a dead end - a blind alley - is to deepen reform at home and opening to the world. Despite this clarion call, observers have found several reasons to wonder what shape the reforms will take and whether the reform program will set China's economy on a new path to sustained growth and bolster its trade and investment relationships. Avoiding the Blind Alley: China's Economic Overhaul and Its Global Implications offers new insights on the changing profile and prospects of what will soon be the world's largest economy. The report clarifies the ambitions of China's economic reform program, assesses the progress China has made in implementing reforms, and forecasts the economic impacts the program will have on China and the world."--Extracted from Asia Society Policy Institute website.

College students in the United States are becoming increasingly incapable of differentiating between proven facts delivered by scientific inquiry and the speculations of pseudoscience. In an effort to help stem this disturbing trend, From Atoms to Galaxies: A Conceptual Physics Approach to Scientific Awareness teaches heightened scientific acuity a