The Flying Book

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Fritz Blackwell

With a population second only to China's and the birthplace of Hinduism and Buddhism, it is hard to dispute India's central role in both the history of Asian culture and in the defining position it enjoys today. Although India has grabbed media attention for its armed conflict with Pakistan, it is a nation perhaps more notable for its internal diversity and challenges than for a single external conflict.India: A Global Studies Handbook unites the geography, history, culture, notable people, and events into a wide-ranging yet concise work that brings this fascinating land to the page. Of interest to academic and general audiences, this volume presents an uncomplicated look at the varied, bustling nation of India. From geography that includes the Himalayas to a cultural fabric built upon the often-criticized caste system, India remains a land of mystery and intrigue.

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Barbara Sturken Peterson and James Glab

When the federal government deregulated the airlines in the late 1970s, the new freedom was supposed to herald an era of competition that would result in lower airfares, more airlines, and increased benefits for air travelers. Instead, deregulation led to chaotic and ever-changing fares, an industry dominated by three giant U.S. airlines, and deteriorating service. In Rapid Descent, Barbara Sturken Peterson and James Glab, two veteran airline industry reporters, trace the unraveling of the airline industry during fifteen years of deregulation. The initial promise of deregulation - which led to the founding of the famous People Express and other maverick airlines - was soon undone, in part by chance events such as the air traffic controllers' strike in 1981. Large airlines created powerful computer reservation systems, hub-and-spoke route networks, and other innovations that allowed them to crush smaller rivals, a trend that snowballed into a wave of mergers and bankruptcies in the mid- to late 1980s. Informative and lively, Rapid Descent profiles many of the colorful characters whose names became synonymous with the airline industry, like Carl Icahn, the arbitrager who bought TWA and found out it was a lot harder to run an airline than it was to acquire one; Bob Crandall, the hard-charging executive who piloted American Airlines to the top of the competitive heap; and Frank Lorenzo, the former head of several airlines, whose highly publicized battles with labor earned him a reputation as America's most hated boss.

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Wang Tao

Presents the political and cultural history of China from early human fossil remains to modern times. Includes a time line relating events in China to events in the rest of the world.

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Simon Haines

How do human beings experience themselves? I "have" my emotions, passions or feelings, my ideas, thoughts or reasons, my memories or dreams; I "make" decisions and choices: but what is this "I" which does the "having" and the "making"? Sometimes philosophers make this question explicit in their work. But often they don't, and poets hardly ever do. If we read some of the greatest works of poetry and philosophy in the Western world, the Iliad, Antigone, the Divine Comedy, Coriolanus, the Confessions, the Meditations, the Republic, Mark's Gospel, the Epistle to the Romans, the Prince, we usually find Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Augustine, Plato or Machiavelli simply working with a conception of the "self". For many of them this "I" is something like a nucleus, an inner point out of which decisions and reasoning just issue forth: the feelings, memories etc. are all "outside" it, like a kind of envelope. And other people have equivalent centres of self. But for other writers there is no nucleus of this kind; all the passions, ideas, memories and reasons together, even the decisions and choices, just are the self. I am my emotions, ideas and decisions. To an extent I also am other selves; they and their passions and ideas are not always so distinct from me and mine. This book explores a dozen or more of these great works to see which writer thinks which, and why this might be important.