The neighbours in Shanghai's most beautiful neighbourhood, the Former French Concession, lead their daily lives, but underneath the surface lurk the troubles of the past, lost love, betrayal, existences destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, dreams, Covid-19 and Jing Zhang, the neighbourhood cat with a love for Philosophy and an understanding of the frailties of his human friends.

An illuminating portrait of how Shanghai’s Catholic community surged back to life after the Cultural Revolution—and of a Church divided between allegiance to the Vatican and loyalty to the Communist party-state.

During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese state sought to eradicate religious life throughout the country. But by 1978, two years after the death of Mao Zedong, the Communist Party under Deng Xiaoping cautiously embraced the revival of religion. At the same time, in Rome, the newly elected Pope John Paul II made a point of renewing outreach to China. Paul P. Mariani tracks the fate of Chinese Catholicism in the wake of these transformative leadership changes, focusing on the influential Catholic community in Shanghai.

Even as Chinese Catholicism came back to life in the 1980s, the way forward was hardly an easy one. Earlier policies of the 1950s had fractured the Catholic community into a state-approved “patriotic” church that answered to the government and an underground church loyal to Rome. Even after the Cultural Revolution, Mariani shows, this divide remained firmly intact. The resulting tensions were on vivid display in Shanghai, owing to the leadership of the Jesuit priest Louis Jin Luxian. Formerly a member of the underground church, Jin realigned with the state church during the revival and was consecrated bishop of Shanghai without papal approval in 1985. Bishop Jin used his position to revitalize the local Catholic community, but his cooperation with the party put him ever at odds with underground church leaders.

Sensitive to the ideals, compromises, and disappointments of Catholics on both sides of the rift, China’s Church Divided reveals how the community navigated the irreconcilable differences between a worldwide Church centered in Rome and a regime wary of foreign spiritual authority.

This book is a guide to DevOps and software delivery: that is, a guide to the numerous tools and techniques that are required to take that application code and run it and maintain it in production, where it can generate value for your users and your company on an ongoing basis. This includes going through all the modern practices for deploying applications and microservices to the cloud, managing your infrastructure as code, automating your software delivery lifecycle in a CI/CD pipeline, configuring networking, setting up data stores, and hooking up monitoring.

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • The heartrending story of twin sisters torn apart by China’s one-child policy and the rise of international adoption—from the author of the National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy

“Remarkable . . . Barbara Demick movingly traces this history of overseas Chinese adoptions and their ripple effects on both sides of the Pacific.”—The Wall Street Journal

On a warm day in September 2000, a woman named Zanhua gave birth to twin girls in a small hut behind her brother’s home in China’s Hunan province. The twins, Fangfang and Shuangjie, were welcome additions to her family but also not her first children. Living under the shadow of China’s notorious one-child policy, Zanhua and her husband decided to leave one twin in the care of relatives, hoping each toddler on their own might stay under the radar. But, in 2002, Fangfang was violently snatched away. The family worried they would never see her again, but they didn’t imagine she could be sent as far as the United States. She might as well have been sent to another world.

Following stories she wrote as the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, Barbara Demick embarks on a journey that encompasses the origins, shocking cruelty, and long-term impact of China’s one-child rule; the rise of international adoption and the religious currents that buoyed it; and the exceedingly rare phenomenon of twin separation. Today, Esther—formerly Fangfang—lives in Texas, and Demick brings to vivid life the Christian family that felt called to adopt her, unaware that she had been kidnapped. Through Demick’s indefatigable reporting, will the long-lost sisters finally reunite—and will they feel whole again?

A remarkable window into the volatile, constantly changing China of the last half century and the long-reaching legacy of the country’s most infamous law, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove is also the moving story of two sisters torn apart by the forces of history and brought together again by their families’ determination and one reporter’s dogged work.

“Excellent . . . entrancing and disturbing . . . [Demick] is one of our finest chroniclers of East Asia. . . . [Her] characters are richly drawn, and her stories, often reported over a span of years, deliver a rare emotional wallop.”—The New York Times

Learn how to manage Kubernetes clusters and application configurations with Argo CD, the easy-to-use open source GitOps engine. With this practical book, development teams will quickly gain a foundational understanding of Argo CD for deploying and managing containerized applications - without having to be a Kubernetes expert, and without needing full access to an existing Kubernetes environment.With the adoption of Kubernetes, the ability to effectively manage platform configurations has become a paramount concern. Authors Andrew Block from Red Hat and Christian Hernandez from Akuity show you how to apply GitOps practices with Argo CD to manage one or even thousands of Kubernetes environments with confidence. You'll start with a basic understanding of the Argo CD technology and quickly learn how to achieve faster and more secure deployments.With this book, you will:Learn the basics of applying GitOps principles to your Kubernetes environmentsUse Argo CD to manage Kubernetes configurations as well as the applications you deploy to the platformManage the configurations of a single Kubernetes cluster or thousands of clustersDeploy Kubernetes resources using tools such as Kustomize and HelmUnderstand the importance of managing sensitive material and resources

Grounded in both English- and Chinese-language sources, The Judicial System of China is a systematic study of Chinese courts after Xi Jinping took power and thoroughly reformed its judiciary. It draws upon extensive empirical scholarship in both Chinese and English languages, complementing it with fresh research based on court statistics, public opinion polling, and interviews with judges, lawyers, and litigants. The book addresses a range of timely subjects, including how Chinese courts have come to their present shape, how decisions are made on civil, criminal, and administrative cases, and what explains the behaviour of the judges. It documents not only the institutional rules, but also the behavioral patterns of the judges and other players revolving around the courts. This book presents a governance model for understanding the operation of the Chinese court system. The courts have two overarching characteristics under this model: supporting the state's goals of policy implementation and legitimacy enhancement. The various policies that the courts are tasked with implementing and the approaches the courts use for enhancing the judiciary's legitimacy--and by extension, that of the state--have played key roles in the courts' evolution. The model sheds light on the rationales that have underlain the changes in the system over time. Engaging extensively with the literature in law and politics, law and society, and institutional economics, The Judicial System of China provides readers with a deeper understanding of the inner workings and day-to-day realities of the Chinese judicial system.

Drawing from her experience at Google and Meta, Dr. Marily Nika delivers the definitive guide for product managers building AI and GenAI powered products. Packed with smart strategies, actionable tools, and real-world examples, this book breaks down the complex world of AI agents and generative AI products into a playbook for driving innovation to help product leaders bridge the gap between niche AI and GenAI technologies and user pain points. Whether you're already leading product teams or are an aspiring product manager, and regardless of your prior knowledge with AI, this guide will empower you to confidently navigate every stage of the AI product lifecycle.

Confidently manage AI product development with tools, frameworks, strategic insights, and real-world examples from Google, Meta, OpenAI, and moreLead product orgs to solve real problems via agentic AI and GenAI capabilitiesGain AI Awareness and technical fluency to work with AI models, LLMs, and the algorithms that power them; get cross-functional alignment; make strategic trade-offs; and set OKRs

With its infamously packed cars and disciplined commuters, Tokyo’s commuter train network is one of the most complex technical infrastructures on Earth. In An Anthropology of the Machine, Michael Fisch provides a nuanced perspective on how Tokyo’s commuter train network embodies the lived realities of technology in our modern world. Drawing on his fine-grained knowledge of transportation, work, and everyday life in Tokyo, Fisch shows how fitting into a system that operates on the extreme edge of sustainability can take a physical and emotional toll on a community while also creating a collective way of life—one with unique limitations and possibilities.
An Anthropology of the Machine is a creative ethnographic study of the culture, history, and experience of commuting in Tokyo. At the same time, it is a theoretically ambitious attempt to think through our very relationship with technology and our possible ecological futures. Fisch provides an unblinking glimpse into what it might be like to inhabit a future in which more and more of our infrastructure—and the planet itself—will have to operate beyond capacity to accommodate our ever-growing population.

Examining the stories of diverse Christians in Shanghai, this book uses the city as a model to highlight how a minority religion in a city has interacted with other religions as well as social, cultural, political, and economic changes.

Susangeline Y. Patrick illustrates how the history of Shanghai Christians sheds light on why and how Christians have accommodated social and political changes, and gives valuable insights into multiculturalism, globalization, sinicization, and ecclesiology. The interreligious dialogues between Shanghai Christians and other traditions such as Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Islam, and Judaism throughout history provide worthy reflections on the roles of Christians in a multi-religious space.

A veteran writing teacher makes a “moving” (Rick Wormeli) argument that writing is a form of thinking and feeling and shows why it can’t be replaced by AI

In the age of artificial intelligence, drafting an essay is as simple as typing a prompt and pressing enter. What does this mean for the art of writing? According to longtime writing teacher John Warner: not very much.

More Than Words argues that generative AI programs like ChatGPT not only can kill the student essay but should, since these assignments don’t challenge students to do the real work of writing. To Warner, writing is thinking—discovering your ideas while trying to capture them on a page—and feeling—grappling with what it fundamentally means to be human. The fact that we ask students to complete so many assignments that a machine could do is a sign that something has gone very wrong with writing instruction. More Than Words calls for us to use AI as an opportunity to reckon with how we work with words—and how all of us should rethink our relationship with writing.

In this unique book offering personal, spiritual, and historical reflections—some never shared before—His Holiness the Dalai Lama tells the full story of his struggle with China to save Tibet and its people for nearly seventy-five years.

The Dalai Lama has had to contend with the People’s Republic of China for about his entire life. He was sixteen years old when Communist China invaded Tibet in 1950, only nineteen when he had his first meeting with Chairman Mao in Beijing, and twenty-five when he was forced to escape to India and became a leader in exile. In the decades since, he has faced Communist China’s leaders—Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping—in his efforts to protect Tibet and its people, with their distinct language, culture, religion, history, and environment, in the face of the greatest possible obstacles.

Now, almost seventy-five years after China’s initial invasion of Tibet, the Dalai Lama reminds the world of Tibet’s unresolved struggle for freedom and the hardship his people continue to face in their own homeland. He offers his thoughts on the geopolitics of the region and shares how he personally was able to preserve his own humanity through the profound losses and challenges that threaten the very survival of the Tibetan people. This book captures the Dalai Lama’s extraordinary life journey—discovering what it means to lose your home to a repressive invader and to build a life in exile; dealing with the existential crisis of a nation, its people, and its culture and religion; and envisioning the path forward.

Voice for the Voiceless is a powerful testimony from a global icon, who shares both his pain and his enduring hope in his people’s ongoing quest to restore dignity and freedom.

Months before the start of the Pacific War in 1941, John Reeves - his career and marriage failing - is posted as British consul to the tiny Portuguese colony of Macao in southern China.

The Japanese soon declare war on the West with their attacks on Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong. But because Portugal is neutral, Macao is left alone and becomes a tiny island of neutrality, an Asian Casablanca surrounded by Japanese-occupied China.

Reeves, a lonely and awkward man, finds himself the only senior representative of the Allies within a radius of thousands of miles. He runs spy rings, collects intelligence, smuggles people to freedom, takes care of refugees and is threatened with assassination - and The Good War of Consul Reeves tells his story.

台灣在戰後持續了數十年的快速經濟成長，
發展成績與南韓並居後進國之首。
瞿宛文專論《台灣戰後經濟發展的源起》探討造就這優異績效的原因，
挑戰了當今台灣社會的主流論述。
就「如何做到」而言，主流的自由市場理論實難以提供合理解釋，關鍵因素確如對該學派採批判立場的結構學派所言，是國府在有利的客觀條件配合下，在當時採取了符合時宜的經濟與產業政策。再則，日本殖民遺產與美國的援助，雖提供了重要有利條件，但僅為輔助性角色，無法在戰後「自然地」帶來工業化。
《台灣戰後經濟發展的源起：後進發展的為何與如何》採取歷史性角度，探究了「發展動力」層面，認為百年來救亡圖存追求現代化的民族動力，高度提升了國府經濟與產業政策的品質，並促使國府施行土地改革並著重社會公平。然而這歷史條件也隱含了這發展模式的局限，影響至今。
《台灣戰後經濟發展的源起》一書希望藉由此研究促進對台灣經濟如何進一步發展的討論，同時對後進發展理論做出貢獻。

Transformer-based language models are powerful tools for solving a variety of language tasks and represent a phase shift in the field of natural language processing. But the transition from demos and prototypes to full-fledged applications has been slow. With this book, you'll learn the tools, techniques, and playbooks for building useful products that incorporate the power of language models. Experienced ML researcher Suhas Pai provides practical advice on dealing with commonly observed failure modes and counteracting the current limitations of state-of-the-art models. You'll take a comprehensive deep dive into the Transformer architecture and its variants. And you'll get up-to-date with the taxonomy of language models, which can offer insight into which models are better at which tasks. You'll learn: Clever ways to deal with failure modes of current state-of-the-art language models, and methods to exploit their strengths for building useful products How to develop an intuition about the Transformer architecture and the impact of each architectural decision Ways to adapt pretrained language models to your own domain and use cases How to select a language model for your domain and task from among the choices available, and how to deal with the build-versus-buy conundrum Effective fine-tuning and parameter efficient fine-tuning, and few-shot and zero-shot learning techniques How to interface language models with external tools and integrate them into an existing software ecosystem

「華僑」是誰？是「唐人」的延續，還是身份的重塑？
當故土遠去，何為「原鄉」？何為「祖國」？

斯波義信，以其深厚的學術造詣，重新審視「華僑」的歷史與身份，揭開從「唐人」到「華人」，再到「華僑」的時代演變。作者透過細緻的史料梳理與縝密的分析，本書探索「華僑」如何成為移民史的「變態」，在「同化」與「傳承」之間的拉扯，奔波苦難百多年，何人之過？

何以為「華僑」？何以為「唐／華人」？

本書帶您回溯數百年遷徙的歷史，探索這段身份變遷的旅程。從早期海上貿易到現代民族國家的建構，移民者如何用經濟實力與文化連結塑造身份認同，卻又在民族情緒洋溢之下，成就了百年的「變態」。本書不僅簡明系統地整理了「唐／華人」移民歷史的豐富細節，更從大歷史的角度，帶領讀者深入思考「華僑」作為「變態」的前世今生。

這是一部揭示「華僑」奧秘身份的經典之作，也是一次深刻的提問：我何來「華僑」？

從社會史的角度， 探索近代香港的殯儀文化及其演變。
生老病死，是人生必經的階段，在世的人與去世的人因死亡而分別，喪禮正是在世的人對去世的人的正式道別，也具有安撫死者家屬情緒的作用。
在傳統中國社會中，喪禮有人倫社會網絡的建構功能。通過喪禮程序的安排，展示出儒家思想所提倡的尊卑、親疏、男女有別、長幼有序等社會關係。在今日的香港社會中，傳統華人信仰的式微與西方文化的傳入，使香港居民的殯儀文化產生了極大的改變，從歷史的角度來分析這個轉變的起因與過程，也是一種相當有意義的學術工作。
殯儀業對大眾來說，是一門較為令人好奇的行業。本書另有兩個附錄，分別為兩位殯儀從業員的口述訪談，藉此讓讀者理解他們的日常工作與感受。

This book tells the story of the turbulent decades when the book publishing industry collided with the great technological revolution of our time. From the surge of ebooks to the self-publishing explosion and the growing popularity of audiobooks, Book Wars provides a comprehensive and fine-grained account of technological disruption in one of our most important and successful creative industries.Like other sectors, publishing has been thrown into disarray by the digital revolution. The foundation on which this industry had been based for 500 years – the packaging and sale of words and images in the form of printed books – was called into question by a technological revolution that enabled symbolic content to be stored, manipulated and transmitted quickly and cheaply. Publishers and retailers found themselves facing a proliferation of new players who were offering new products and services and challenging some of their most deeply held principles and beliefs. The old industry was suddenly thrust into the limelight as bitter conflicts erupted between publishers and new entrants, including powerful new tech giants who saw the world in very different ways. The book wars had begun.While ebooks were at the heart of many of these conflicts, Thompson argues that the most fundamental consequences lie elsewhere. The print-on-paper book has proven to be a remarkably resilient cultural form, but the digital revolution has transformed the industry in other ways, spawning new players which now wield unprecedented power and giving rise to an array of new publishing forms. Most important of all, it has transformed the broader information and communication environment, creating new challenges and new opportunities for publishers as they seek to redefine their role in the digital age.This unrivalled account of the book publishing industry as it faces its greatest challenge since Gutenberg will be essential reading for anyone interested in books and their future.

A history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine the shape of culture itself.

From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. The algorithm is present in the familiar neon signs and exposed brick of Internet cafes, be it in Nairobi or Portland, and the skeletal, modern furniture of Airbnbs in cities big and small. Over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed—informing the songs we listen to, the friends with whom we stay in touch—as we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to our insipid new normal.

This ever-tightening web woven by algorithms is called “Filterworld.” Kyle Chayka shows us how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless consumption, becoming a source of pervasive anxiety in the process. Users of technology have been forced to contend with data-driven equations that try to anticipate their desires—and often get them wrong. What results is a state of docility that allows tech companies to curtail human experiences—human lives—for profit. But to have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, while convenient, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question.

In Filterworld , Chayka traces this creeping, machine-guided curation as it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces. With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity—the qualities that make us human? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet?

To the last question, Filterworld argues yes—but to escape Filterworld, and even transcend it, we must first understand it.

For 80 years between 1788 and 1868 England transported its convicts to Australia. This punishment provided the first immigrants and the work force to build the colony. Using diaries, letters, and original sources, Hughes meticulously documents this history. All sides of the story are told: the political and social reasoning behind the Transportation System, the viewpoint of the captains who had the difficult job of governing and developing the colonies, and of course the dilemma of the prisoners. This is a very thorough and accurate history of Australian colonization written by the author of the book and BBC/Time-Life TV series The Shock of the New . A definitive work that is an essential purchase for both public and academic libraries. BOMC and History Book Club main selections. Judith Nixon, Purdue Univ. Libs., W. Lafayette, Ind.