Madmen and Other Survivors: Reading Lu Xun's Fiction puts the short stories written by this outstanding Chinese writer between 1918 and 1926 into a broad context of Modernism. The fiction of Lu Xun (1881–1936) deals with the China moving beyond the 1911 Revolution. He asks about the possibilities of survival, and what that means, even considering the possibility that madness might be a strategy by which that is possible. Such an idea calls identity into question, and Lu Xun is read here as a writer for whom that is a wholly problematic concept. The book makes use of critical and cultural theory to consider these short stories in the context of not only Chinese fiction, but in terms of the art of the short story, and in relation to literary modernism. It attempts to put Lu Xun into as wide a perspective as possible for contemporary reading. To make his work widely accessible, he is treated here in English translation.

As William, Hannah, Marshall, and the assemblage of survivors blend together to become a Co-op farm community, cattle and horses begin to arrive - thanks to Hannah's Talents. Crops are planted, and hunting parties ride on horseback. Judica has a litter of pup. Penny and Tom's first child arrives, and many speculate about whose child Jennifer carries. Though radio contacts, the Memphis farm survivors learn that the Chinese Army has advanced across the western half of the US killing any American survivors they find. As the threat approaches the Mississippi River, William, Hannah, and the survivors begin to speculate about what can be done. Enemy scouts begin to threaten other survivors in the area, so William leads a select few of his Talented people in early morning raids. Tom and Marshall soon have to use the jet to destroy all the bridges that span the Mississippi to slow the Red Army's advance. An equally Talented nameless nemesis arrives to terrorize the co-op, stealing Marshall's soul, but Hannah and her women thwart that plan. After their successful attack on 3 Chinese tanks, the now-desperate leadership team must determine how the 20+ survivors can safely escape. But... Where can they escape to?

Bringing together leading critics and literary scholars, A New Vocabulary for Global Modernism argues for new ways of understanding the nature and development of twentieth-century literature and culture. Scholars have largely understood modernism as an American and European phenomenon. Those parameters have expanded in recent decades, but the incorporation of multiple origins and influences has often been tied to older conceptual frameworks that make it difficult to think of modernism globally. Providing alternative approaches, A New Vocabulary for Global Modernism introduces pathways through global archives and new frameworks that offer a richer, more representative set of concepts for the analysis of literary and cultural works. In separate essays each inspired by a critical term, this collection explores what happens to the foundational concepts of modernism and the methods we bring to modernist studies when we approach the field as a global phenomenon. Their work transforms the intellectual paradigms we have long associated with modernism, such as tradition, antiquity, style, and translation. New paradigms, such as context, slum, copy, pantomime, and puppets emerge as the archive extends beyond its European center. In bringing together and reexamining the familiar as well as the emergent, the contributors to this volume offer an invaluable and original approach to studying the intersection of world literature and modernist studies.

As random citizens begin exhibiting unexplained murderous berserker violence, Tom Laker, a Vietnam vet-turned-Catskills constable, is trapped as he strivesto keep martial law in a world where there is no order. "Exciting, compulsivereading!"--Stephen King.

A "sad and corrupt" age, a period of "crisis" and "upheaval"—what T.S. Eliot famously summed up as "the panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history." Modernism has always been characterized by its self-conscious sense of suffering. Why, then, was it so obsessed with laughter? From Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Bergson and Freud to Pirandello, Beckett, Hughes, Barnes, and Joyce, no moment in cultural history has written about laughter this much. James Nikopoulos investigates modernity’s paradoxical relationship with mirth. Why was the gesture we conventionally associate with happiness deemed the only sensible way of responding to a world, as Max Weber wrote, that had been "disenchanted of its gods?" In answering these questions, Nikopoulos also delves into our ongoing relationship with laughter. He looks to contemporary research in emotion and evolutionary theory, as well as to the two-thousand-plus-year history of the philosophy of humor, in order to propose a novel way of understanding laughter, humor, and their complicated relationships with modern life. The Stability of Laughter explores how art unsettles the simplifications we revert to in our attempts to make sense of human history and social interaction.

As William Martin's presence unnerves the survivors at the university's abandon faculty house, Hannah's former lover, Marshall Roberts arrives with a disturbing proclamation. That same night, William viciously attacks Marshall, angrily throwing lightning bolts at the man. Hannah intervenes and stops it. Psychically manipulating Marshall to be elsewhere, while squelching Hannah's protests, William uses his persuasion Talent to force her to "jump the broom" with him. Despite being "married", William practices celibacy as the household struggles to survive an extraordinarily harsh winter. Marshall and Hannah quietly continue their friendship. As supplies dwindle and others hunt for wild game, Hannah's greenhouse thrives until the survivors' hydroelectric source freezes over, and they are forced to caravan south through 10-foot walls of snow.

China’s legal system is vast and complex, and robust scholarship on the subject is difficult to obtain. Inside China’s Legal System provides readers with a comprehensive look at the system including how it works in practice, theoretical and historical underpinnings, and how it might evolve. The first section of the book explains the Communist Party’s utilitarian approach to law: rule by law. The second section discusses Confucian and Legalist views on morality, law and punishment, and the influence such traditional Chinese thinking has on contemporary Chinese law. The third section focuses on the roles of key players (including judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and legal academics) in the Chinese legal system. The fourth section offers Chinese legal case studies in civil, criminal, administrative, and international law. The book concludes with a comparison of China’s fundamental governing and legal principles with those of the United States, in such areas as checks and balances, separation of powers, and due process. Uses extensive legal materials and historical documents generally unavailable to Western based academics Gives insider knowledge, including first-hand experience teaching law, and close involvement with judges, attorneys, and law professors in China Analyses legal issues from historical and cultural perspectives holistically