Recently the sea has become the locus of international terrorism and transnational crime, with the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and people monopolizing the resources of governments and agencies. These threats have united otherwise disparate countries in the fight to secure the ocean's trade and traffic. Yet the effort to control maritime activity can also give rise to great tension and conflict, as in the fight over Spratley and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea and the Lomonosov Ridge in the Arctic Ocean. The dwindling of natural resources dwindle might also force the world's navies to battle over economically vital sea lanes—the growth of such forces across the world being one sign of imminent conflict. The development of military capacity always increases the possibility of abuse. The Anarchic Sea maps the terrain of modern maritime security through seven dimensions, concluding with suggestions for integrating individual components into a cohesive, more efficient protective network.

No one thinks straight. At least no one remembers straight. But ten years ago, things were different, weren’t they? Roland Barthes once wrote that color in a photograph is like make-up on a corpse. No one is fooled. In anarchic denial of convenient truths, a young international couple meet and marry on a small Mediterranean island. Ten years later, the couple separate in part due to complications with immigration laws. Following this transcontinental rupture, fragmented histories emerge in response to the woman’s encounters with a series of color snapshots. There is death here, familiar to the mourner, as the photographs issue their special powers to magically and auspiciously predict the future and simultaneously to permit the return of the dead. The woman recognizes pieces of herself as past objects indexed within photographic stills, but paradoxically, she is present, outside in this chaos trying not to fall apart. The images and their objects yawn to remind us of the reluctant destiny of all our beloved memories, bodies, and things: that is, to disintegrate. Borrowing its title from a passage in The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald, Closer to Dust is a séance, a gathering of invitees: inherently biased elegies, the images that conjured them, and the reader- viewer in attendance who is warmly invited to order these intimate fragments into cohesion.

The Third Young Master of the Lu Family, Lu Chen, had no talent in cultivation since he was a child. He was attacked while he was out and Lu Yu died to save Lu Chen. Lu Chen was charged with deliberately killing Lu Yu and was kicked out of the Lu Family. Lu Chen, who wanted to find out the truth, was hunted down after he left the Lu family. Lu Chen, who was forced into a dead forest, ate an immortal fruit to improve his body, but was possessed by his nascent soul ... Three years later, Lu Chen returned to the Lu Family and set off a huge commotion on Sky Dragon Continent. He had also officially embarked on the road of cultivation. "You asked me why I'm cultivating. At first, I wasn't clear about it, but now, I am clear that the heavens and the earth are unfair. Since the heavens and the earth are unfair, I am going to destroy the heavens and destroy the earth to create a new world for the world." [Close]

"This volume analyzes a group of Southeast Asian societies that have in common a mode of sociality that maximizes personal autonomy, political egalitarianism, and inclusive forms of social solidarity. Their members make their livings as nomadic hunter-gatherers, shifting cultivators, sea nomads, and peasants embedded in market economies. While political anarchy and radical equality appear in many societies as utopian ideals, these societies provide examples of actually existing, viable forms of "anarchy." This book documents the mechanisms that enable these societies to maintain their life-ways and suggests some moral and political lessons that those who appreciate them might apply to their own societies"--Back cover.