Because English language skills are regarded as requisite for success in college and careers, South Korean parents have gone as far as to have their children undergo a tongue-snipping surgery in the mistaken belief that it will improve their enunciation. Park (English language and literature, National University of Singapore) asserts that Korea is in the throes of 'English frenzy' to promote its global aspirations but not without resistance and ambivalence. His metalinguistic analysis of Korean-English discourse examined in yumeo (humor), television shows, and face-to-face interactions is framed as an ideological issue, i.e., as an index of hegemony and class mobility. Implications for teaching and learning English and socially/historically constructed language attitudes in a non-Western culture are discussed. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Practical Problems in VLSI Physical Design Automation contains problems and solutions related to various well-known algorithms used in VLSI physical design automation. Dr. Lim believes that the best way to learn new algorithms is to walk through a small example by hand. This knowledge will greatly help understand, analyze, and improve some of the well-known algorithms. The author has designed and taught a graduate-level course on physical CAD for VLSI at Georgia Tech. Over the years he has written his homework with such a focus and has maintained typeset version of the solutions.

In The Long March, Sun Shuyun uncovers the true story behind the mythic march of Mao's soldiers across China, exposing the famine, disease, and desertion behind the legend.

In 1934, in the midst of civil war, the Communist party and its 200,000 soldiers were forced from their bases by Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist troops. Led by Mao Tse Tung, they set off on a strategic retreat to the barren north of China, thousands of miles away. As Sun Shuyun travels along the march route, her interviews with survivors and villagers show that the forces at work during the days of the revolution – poverty, sickness, and Mao's use of terror, propaganda, and ruthless purges – have shaped modern China irrevocably. Uncovering the forced recruitment, political infighting, and futile deaths behind the myth, Shuyun creates a compelling narrative of a turning point in modern Chinese history, and a fascinating journey that spans China, old and new.

Un testo classico della letteratura cinese, la storia d'amore più importante e amata di sempre, finalmente ridotto in forma di fumetto da due autori di immenso talento: un drammaturgo e una giovanissima disegnatrice dal tocco quasi magico. Una storia toccante e deliziosa. Il primo adattamento a fumetti al mondo di un classico della letteratura orientale. Un volume raffinato, di altissimo valore visivo, dalla veste attraente ed elegante. Uno stile grafico tra il manga e le stampe d'arte, che coniuga moda e rigore scenografico.

In recent years, echocardiography has evolved from a qualitative diagnostic tool into a complex and sophisticated technique that is able to provide accurate, quantitative information driving the management of most cardiac diseases. Despite the availability, affordability and scientific value of advanced echocardiography techniques such as Tissue Doppler Imaging (TDI) and Speckle Tracking, there has been a lack of accessible information about their use in real-life medical practice.

This practical book is the first comprehensive resource with truly international authorship covering the theory and clinical applications of advanced myocardial imaging as a diagnostic, monitoring and prognostic tool.

• Edited by internationally recognized experts in cardiac imaging, Myocardial Imaging: Tissue Doppler and Speckle Tracking collates the latest research into a specific, in-depth resource.
• The book focuses on how to use advanced cardiac imaging techniques in everyday clinical practice, presenting relevant material in a logical format.
• Each chapter covers a different clinical application of TDI and Speckle Tracking techniques and is illustrated with full color images and tables, allowing quick and easy reference to clinically appropriate information.
• It is accompanied by an invaluable CD of video clips that illustrate concepts in the text and provide real examples of echocardiography in practice.
• Clear, concise key facts and summaries throughout the book enable fast decisions at point of care.

This book is an invaluable resource for cardiologists, sonographers or other healthcare professionals who want to get the most out of the new technology available on echo machines.

This is the candid and revealing wartime memoir of the soldier who, at the age of just 32, became South Korea's first four-star general. The book brings an unprecedented perspective to the Korean War.

'Explores transracial adoption from adopted adults' perspectives using memoir, reflective/analytical essays, poetry, artwork, film critique, psychology, sociology, critical race, reproductive justice, more. Discusses reasons children become available for international adoption (war, poverty, structural inequities), ramifications of the colorblind ideal for adoptees (dealing with racism, cultural alienation, emotional isolation)'--Provided by publisher.

Optimization Theory and Methods can be used as a textbook for an optimization course for graduates and senior undergraduates. It is the result of the author's teaching and research over the past decade. It describes optimization theory and several powerful methods. For most methods, the book discusses an idea’s motivation, studies the derivation, establishes the global and local convergence, describes algorithmic steps, and discusses the numerical performance.

Faced with keeping track of twelve ducklings, Mama Duck finds different ways to group them so that they are easier to count.

Optimization Theory and Methods can be used as a textbook for an optimization course for graduates and senior undergraduates. It is the result of the author's teaching and research over the past decade. It describes optimization theory and several powerful methods. For most methods, the book discusses an idea's motivation, studies the derivation, establishes the global and local convergence, describes algorithmic steps, and discusses the numerical performance.

Stunning account of Sun Shuyun's journey to retrace the steps of one of the most popular figures in Chinese history - the monk Xuanzang. '}Wild Swans{ meets }The Alchemist{ ' }Conde Nast Traveller{

Il carteggio tra Mishima e Kawabata è un documento interessante sia dal punto di vista letterario che da quello umano. L'ultima lettera di Mishima è scritta pochi giorni prima del suo drammatico suicidio rituale, nel 1970. Kawabata gli sopravviverà dodici anni, e nel 1972 seguirà l'esempio del discepolo dandosi la morte.

Preface by Donald Keene

Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) was probably written late in the ninth or early in the tenth century. Mention at the end of the tale that smoke still rose from Mount Fuji , a sign it was an active volcano, is an important clue to the date of composition, for we know that by 905 A.D. the mountain had ceased to emit smoke. Regardless of exactly when the tale was first set down on paper, it is the oldest surviving Japanese work of fiction; The Tale of Genji (written about 1010) referred to it as the 'ancestor of all romances.'

Many theories have been published about the authorship, but they are little more than guesses. The names of five suitors, resembling those of members of the Japanese court of the eighth century, have suggested to some scholars that the The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter was conceived of as a satire directed against a certain court faction, but this is not how the work was read in later centuries. Today it is thought of mainly as a children's story, and Kaguya-hime, the heroine, looks in the illustrations as lovable as Snow-White or Cinderella; there is no suggestions of the heartlessness that is perhaps her most memorable feature

Elements in the narrative recall similar tales from other parts of the world. The tests to which the suitors are subjected resemble the riddles asked by the icy Princess Turandot, or we may recall the three caskets among which the suitors had to choose in The Merchant of Venice. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the tests Kaguya-hime imposes is the humor with which they are related. The second suitor's lyrical description of the magical island of Horai, where he allegedly found the jeweled branch, is interrupted by the mundane demands of the artisans who actually made it. Again, the fourth suitor, at the end of his unsuccessful quest, urges his men to stay away from the vicinity of the house of 'that thief of a Kaguya-hime.' Such a characterization of the heroine takes us from the realm of the children's story.

Many texts of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter have come down, each with its share of variant. The names of the characters differ somewhat from text to text or even within the same text. The differences are not confined to names: towards the end, when the old man is attempting to prevent Kaguya-hime from being taken off to the moon, he urges his men to shoot anything they see in the sky, no matter how small, and they assure him that they will shoot down 'even a mosquito.' But other texts mention not a mosquito but a bat; perhaps some scribe thought it was a bit too farfetched for anyone to shoot down a mosquito, and changed the word to a larger flying object.

There are other problems in the text. Near the beginning the Bamboo Cutter says of himself that he is over seventy years old, but towards the end (twenty years later) we are told that he has just turned fifty. It seems likely that there was a copyist's error, but some scholars, taking the figure given at the end as the Bamboo cutter's real age, have suggested that twenty years earlier, when he was only thirty, he may have been one of the suitors for Kaguya-hime's hand. Such problems in the text should not, however, prevent us from enjoying the storyteller's art.

About thirty-five years ago I first published a translation of The Tales of the Bamboo Cutter in the journal Monumenta Nipponica. A few years later-in the summer of 1965-a Japanese publisher conceived the plan of a book that would incorporate my translation, the translation into modern Japanese by the great novelist Yasunari Kawabata, and illustrations by one of the outstanding contemporary Japanese painters. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to revise my translation.

About this time, I visited an exhibition of kirie (paper-cut pictures) by Masayuki Miyata, and discovered that he had actually completed series of works illustrating The Tale if the Bamboo Cutter. I was delighted that at last it would be possible to realize the project first conceived so many years before. There were still further delays, but at last the book has materialized. It combines the work of unknown Japanese writer of over a thousand years ago, the translation by a master of modem Japanese, illustrations by an outstanding artist, and a translation by an American who has devoted his life to the study of Japanese literature.