The Way Things Work

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Edgardo Vega Yunqué

"This sweeping drama of intimately connected families --black, white, and Latino-- boldly conjures up the ever-shifting cultural mosaic that is America. At its heart is Vidama̕ Farrell, half Puerto Rican, half Irish, who sets out in search of the father she has never known. Her journey takes her from her affluent home to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where her father Billy Farrell now lives with his second family. Once a gifted jazz pianist, Billy lost two fingers in the Vietnam War and has since shut himself off from jazz. Vidama̕ struggles to bring her father back to the world of jazz. Her quest gives her a new understanding of family, particularly through her half-sisters Fawn, a lonely young poet plagued with a secret, and Cookie, a sassy, streetsmart homegirl who happens to be "white." And when Vidama̕ becomes involved with a young African-American jazz saxophonist, she is forced to explore her own complex roots, along with the dizzying contradictions of race etched in the American psyche"--Publisher's description.

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William Trevor

"The Hill Bachelors contains a dozen new stories, set mostly but not entirely in Ireland.". "In 'Three People', an ageing father waits for the proposal for his daughter that will never come from the man who once told a lie to save her; in 'Against the Odds', a con-woman who has plied her trade across the entire Six Counties fixes this time on a widower in a small inland town; and in the poignant title-story, the youngest son returns for his father's funeral to the family hill farm to find it has become his unwelcome inheritance.". "William Trevor writes about the lonely and the sad, about those who have something to hide and those who barely have control over their lives."--BOOK JACKET.

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Alan M. Dershowitz

"The greatest danger facing the world today, says Alan M. Dershowitz, comes from religiously inspired, state-sponsored terrorist groups that seek to develop weapons of mass destruction for use against civilian targets. Dershowitz argues that organized global terrorism is a phenomenon largely of our own making and that we must and can take steps to reduce the frequency and severity of terrorist attacks.". "Analyzing recent acts of terrorism and our reaction to them, Dershowitz explains that terrorism is successful when the international community gives in to the demands of terrorists - or even tries to understand and eliminate the "root causes" of terrorism. He discusses extreme approaches to wiping out international terrorism that would work if we were not constrained by legal, moral, and humanitarian considerations. And, given that we do operate under such constraints, he offers a series of proposals that would effectively reduce the frequency and severity of international terrorism by striking a balance between security and liberty."--BOOK JACKET.

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Haiying Qi, Bo Zhao

<p><i>Cleaner Combustion and Sustainable World</i><i> </i>is the proceedings of the 7th international symposium on coal combustion which has a significant international influence. It concerns basic research on coal combustion and clean utilization, techniques and equipments of pulverized coal combustion, techniques and equipments of fluidized bed combustion, basic research and techniques of emission control, basic research and application techniques of carbon capture and storage (CCS), etc. </p><p> </p><p>Professor Haiying Qi and Bo Zhao both work at the Tsinghua University, China</p><p><p> </p><p>Professor Haiying Qi and Bo Zhao both work at the Tsinghua University, China</p>