Books published by Princeton University Press

An innovative way for students to hone their Chinese language skills while learning about Chinese culture Intermediate Reader of Modern Chinese is an ideal textbook for American students who have already completed two semesters of Chinese. Featuring a wealth of contemporary subject matter that will provoke lively and engaging classroom discussions, it progresses from correspondence and dialogue to short essays, encouraging speaking as well as reading practice. Topics include college life in the United States, political and social issues in contemporary China, biographies of well-known figures in Chinese intellectual history, and analyses of the Chinese Democracy Movement and the Tiananmen Square incident. This volume of Intermediate Reader of Modern Chinese contains the text. The companion volume covers vocabulary and sentence patterns, and includes exercises for each lesson.Suitable for a two-semester courseJuxtaposes traditional and simplified charactersCovers Chinese translations of foreign place namesAccustoms students to reading Chinese newspapersAudio materials are available for use with this textbook. For further information, contact the Chinese Linguistics Project at clp@princeton.edu

A personal account of-and guide to-unlocking the wildlife potential of gardens and other plots of land in lowland BritainOver the past decade, wildlife author and photographer Paul Sterry has nurtured, both through action and by doing nothing, what has become a small island of flourishing biodiversity in the half-acre garden that surrounds his north Hampshire cottage. By giving nature a free hand, and fostering habitats appropriate to this part of southeast England, he has enabled an abundance of native plant and animal species to call the garden home. This contrasts with the continued decline in biodiversity in the surrounding countryside. In this inspiring and informative book, Sterry tells the story of his own experiences in biodiversity gardening and offers detailed practical advice to anyone who wants to give nature the upper hand on their own bit of land, no matter how small.Hampshire still retains traces of its rich wildlife heritage, but changes in land use over the past half-century have had a devastating impact on local biodiversity. Against this backdrop, The Biodiversity Gardener presents a habitat-driven and evidence-based approach, describing how any gardener can unlock the wildlife potential of their plot and enjoy the satisfaction of watching it become home to a rich array of native species, including butterflies, wildflowers, grasshoppers, amphibians, and fungi.In The Biodiversity Gardener, Sterry explains the ecological imperative of adopting this approach. Collectively, biodiversity gardens could leave a lasting legacy-wildlife oases from which future generations stand a fighting chance of restoring Britain's natural heritage. The book encourages and empowers readers to create their own biological inheritance for posterity-and shows them how they can do it.

"After a modest increase in Metro fares in Santiago, Chile, last October, twenty Metro stations were simultaneously set on fire. The fare increase was the tipping point of years of social malaise. Days later there were more than a million protesters on the streets. The people of Chile were rejecting low pensions, highway tolls, school segregation, low-quality education, and poor public-health services-the result of decades of neoliberalism. Chile was the prototype for neoliberal policies, first set up under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet with the first-hand guidance of economists from the University of Chicago. Under neoliberalism Chile was long seen as an exemplary developing economy, and a testament to the power of privatization and free trade. But all was not well. Sebastian Edwards tells the story of how Chile went from being the posterchild of market-oriented reforms and capitalist modernization to a nation rocked by violence and political upheaval. He narrates the origins of neoliberalism and the role of the 'Chicago boys' in designing and implementing these reforms. He explains the tension between poverty reduction and income inequality, which led to seething discontent under the surface of strong economic numbers. The book tells the story of the signature policies first enacted in Chile that came to define the neoliberal way more broadly: the replacement of a traditional pension system with a privately managed system of individual savings accounts, openness and globalization, the fiscal rule, the taming of inflation, and austere health, education, and environmental policies. As Chile now sets out to draft a new constitution, and other countries come to terms with the same set of policies, all under the looming specter of reactionary populism, the book is an authoritative and important assessment of the success of neoliberalism at a pivotal moment in its history"--

"A highly illustrated and portable identification guide to the most common wild flowers and other plants. This innovative photographic guide covers the most common wild flowers and other plants found in Britain and Ireland, as defined by the very latest distribution maps. It is designed so that anyone faced with an unfamiliar wild plant can confidently put a name to the species or recognise that it is a less common plant needing further investigation. The identification process is based on standard botanical features that are straightforwardly described, clearly illustrated and supported by a simple visual key to families. This book can be your springboard into the wider world of botanical identification, wherever you are, and of plants both common and rare. Covers the plants most likely to be seen, including those in coastal areas: Includes more than 3,800 colour photographs, with macro images of key features when needed; Features a friendly, easy-to-use design and text written in plain English, with essential botanical terms described and illustrated"--Amazon.ca.

"This will be the first textbook on nonlinear control at the upper undergraduate level, reflecting the many updates in the field that have occurred since the 1990s. Nonlinear control is a control engineering course usually taught at the graduate level and preceded by a full semester course on nonlinear systems analysis, yet - as the authors of this textbook argue -- these tools and techniques are accessible to an undergraduate audience and practicing engineers, if presented in the right way. This book is class-tested, growing out of a third-year undergraduate course on nonlinear control and estimation for mechatronics, mechanical and electrical engineering, and mathematics students at the University of Newcastle, Australia. It is part of a trend toward reimagining the content of undergraduate control engineering curricula, to render widely-used tools and techniques accessible to students much earlier in their education, opening them up to those who will not go on to the graduate level. This alternative course sequence currently begins with the text Feedback Systems: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers by Astrèom and Murray (PUP 2008); this new project is designed to follow Astrèom and Murray in the undergraduate sequence, as a second or third year course"--

" ... Bell, neither a Chinese citizen nor a member of the Chinese Communist Party, was appointed as dean because of his scholarly work on Confucianism--but soon found himself coping with a variety of issues having little to do with scholarship or Confucius. These include the importance of hair color and the prevalence of hair-dyeing among university administrators, both male and female; Shandong's drinking culture, with endless toasts at every shared meal; and some unintended consequences of an intensely competitive academic meritocracy. As dean, he also confronts weightier matters: the role at the university of the Party secretary, the national anticorruption campaign and its effect on academia (Bell asks provocatively, "What's wrong with corruption?"), and formal and informal modes of censorship. Considering both the revival of Confucianism in China over the last three decades and what he calls "the Communist comeback" since 2008, Bell predicts that China's political future is likely to be determined by both Confucianism and Communism"--Book jacket.

"A beautifully written personal account of the discovery of late antiquity by one of the world's most influential and distinguished historians. The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the "neglected half-millennium" now known as late antiquity was in fact crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age. As he and other scholars opened up the history of the classical world in its last centuries to the wider world of Eurasia and northern Africa, they discovered previously overlooked areas of religious and cultural creativity as well as foundational institution-building. A respect for diversity and outreach to the non-European world, relatively recent concerns in other fields, have been a matter of course for decades among the leading scholars of late antiquity.Documenting both his own intellectual development and the emergence of a new and influential field of study, Brown describes his childhood and education in Ireland, his university and academic training in England, and his extensive travels, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. He discusses fruitful interactions with the work of scholars and colleagues that include the British anthropologist Mary Douglas and the French theorist Michel Foucault, and offers fascinating snapshots of such far-flung places as colonial Sudan, midcentury Oxford, and prerevolutionary Iran. With Journeys of the Mind, Brown offers an essential account of the "grand endeavor" to reimagine a decisive historical moment"--