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Orphan bachelors : a memoir : on being a confession baby, Chinatown daughter, baa-bai sister, caretaker of exotics, literary balloon peddler, and grand historian of a doomed American family / by Ng, Fae Myenne,1956-author.;
"From the bestselling, award-winning author of novels Bone and Steer Toward Rock, Fae Myenne Ng's Orphan Bachelors is a singular memoir of her beloved San Francisco's Chinatown and of a family building a life in a country bent on their exclusion. Beloved by readers for her "incantatory" (New York Times) novels and their luminous depictions of Chinatown, Fae Myenne Ng's new memoir is a personal, timely portrait of the same storied place. In pre-Communist China, Ng's father memorized a book of lies and gained entry to the United States as a stranger's son, evading the Exclusion Act, an immigration law which he believed was meant to extinguish the Chinese American family. During the McCarthy era, he entered the Confession Program only to have his citizenship revoked. Ng was her parents' precocious firstborn. A child raised by a seafaring father and a seamstress mother, by Chinatown and its legendary Orphan Bachelors--men without wives or children, exclusion's living legacy. Exclusion's shadow followed Ng from the back alleys of Chinatown in the sixties, to Manhattan in the eighties, to the high desert of California in the nineties, until her return home in the 2000s when the deaths of her youngest brother and her father devastated the family. As a child, Ng believed her father's lies; as an adult, she returned to her childhood home to write his truth. Orphan Bachelors weaves together the history of one doomed family; an elegy for brothers estranged and for elders lost; and insights into writing between languages and teaching between generations. In this powerful remembrance, Ng gives voice to her ancestors, her Orphan Bachelors, and her own inner self, howling in Cantonese, impossible to translate but determined to be heard"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Ng, Fae Myenne, 1956-; Chinese American authors; Chinese American families;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Tom Clancy's Op-Center. by Rovin, Jeff,author.; Clancy, Tom,1947-2013,creator.; Pieczenik, Steve R.,creator.;
"In Jeff Rovin's Tom Clancy's Op-Center: God of War, after the devastating outbreak of a killer super virus, the Black Wasp Team must prevent America's enemies from gaining access to the most dangerous weapon the world has ever seen. The passengers and crew on an Airbus en route to Australia suddenly begin coughing up blood and hemorrhaging violently as the plane plunges to the ground. There are no survivors. A luxury yacht in the South Indian Sea blows up, and a lone woman escapes the contagion that has inexplicably killed everyone else on the boat. A helicopter whose occupants have been stricken by an unknown illness crashes into a bridge in South Africa, killing motorists and pedestrians. The world is facing a devastating bio-terror event, and a game of brinksmanship gets underway as the major powers jockey for position: China sends a naval flotilla to seek the source of the plague and find a way to weaponize it; Russia maneuvers quietly on the sidelines to seize the deadly prize in its quest to regain an empire; while back in Washington D.C., Chase Williams and his top secret Black Wasp special ops team must find out who is behind these deadly attacks before war is unleashed. What is the secret linking an illegal diamond mining operation, a controversial cure for AIDS, an apartheid-era conspiracy to cover up attempted genocide, and a brilliant but utterly amoral entrepreneur with a score to settle? Black Wasp mounts an ingenious attack on two fronts, from the storm-tossed seas off South Africa to an edge-of-the seat-chase as they seek to find the truth behind this lethal disease before millions of innocent lives are lost." --
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Special forces (Military science); Terrorism; Biological warfare;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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Tom Clancy's Op-Center. [sound recording] / by Rovin, Jeff,author.; Abano, Aaron,narrator.; Clancy, Tom,1947-2013,creator.; Pieczenik, Steve R.,creator.; Macmillan Audio (Firm),publisher.;
Read by Aaron Abano."In Jeff Rovin's Tom Clancy's Op-Center: God of War, after the devastating outbreak of a killer super virus, the Black Wasp Team must prevent America's enemies from gaining access to the most dangerous weapon the world has ever seen. The passengers and crew on an Airbus en route to Australia suddenly begin coughing up blood and hemorrhaging violently as the plane plunges to the ground. There are no survivors. A luxury yacht in the South Indian Sea blows up, and a lone woman escapes the contagion that has inexplicably killed everyone else on the boat. A helicopter whose occupants have been stricken by an unknown illness crashes into a bridge in South Africa, killing motorists and pedestrians. The world is facing a devastating bio-terror event, and a game of brinksmanship gets underway as the major powers jockey for position: China sends a naval flotilla to seek the source of the plague and find a way to weaponize it; Russia maneuvers quietly on the sidelines to seize the deadly prize in its quest to regain an empire; while back in Washington D.C., Chase Williams and his top secret Black Wasp special ops team must find out who is behind these deadly attacks before war is unleashed. What is the secret linking an illegal diamond mining operation, a controversial cure for AIDS, an apartheid-era conspiracy to cover up attempted genocide, and a brilliant but utterly amoral entrepreneur with a score to settle? Black Wasp mounts an ingenious attack on two fronts, from the storm-tossed seas off South Africa to an edge-of-the seat-chase as they seek to find the truth behind this lethal disease before millions of innocent lives are lost." --
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Audiobooks.; Biological warfare; Special forces (Military science); Terrorism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A map of the new normal : how inflation, war, and sanctions will change your world forever / by Rubin, Jeff,1954-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Bestselling author and economist Jeff Rubin looks ahead and warns that the inflation that took the world by surprise in 2021 is in fact the front of a perfect storm of war, supply-chain disruption, geopolitical realignment, domestic upheaval, and energy scarcity that will change everything. During the pandemic, the borrowing patterns of the Canadian government inflated a national deficit by a factor of ten in just two years -- and the time has come to pay for it. The ramifications of international COVID-19 spending could potentially last for decades, and inevitably one of the first manifestations of these consequences will be an unhooking of private lenders' interest rates from central banks. That is just the first symptom of a series of cascading upheavals. Supply-chain disruptions have already shown the vulnerability of the globalism model that has fueled growth for the past decades. War has not only shown the fragility of the status quo, but has revealed diplomatic and economic rifts that promise to shift trading patterns, which means access to markets and to resources. At the same time, the precarity of the US dollar underlines the life-or-death importance of those resources, energy in particular. And consolidation of a Eurasian bloc, from Russia to China, and encompassing old enemies like Iran and former US ally Saudi Arabia, hint that the upheaval of Covid was just the beginning. Tracking trade wars and kinetic wars, central banks and run on banks, pipelines blown up and startups knocked down, The New World Order gives us a glimpse of a near future that will look very different from the recent past. It reminds us that our mortgage rates and job security, our grocery bills and investments, are all tied to events set in motion by governments, corporations, and black swans around the world."--
Subjects: Economic forecasting.; Social prediction.; Twenty-first century;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Natural beauty : a novel / by Huang, Ling Ling,1989-author.;
"In this sly, surprising, and razor-sharp debut novel, a virtuoso pianist gives up her future as a musician to work at a high-end wellness store in New York City where the pursuit of beauty comes at a staggering cost. Our narrator is the youngest student at the Conservatory. She produces a sound from the piano no one else does, employing a special technique she learned from her parents--also stunningly talented musicians--who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future as a pianist and accepts a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City. Holistik is known for its remarkable products and outrageous procedures: remoras that suck cheap Botox from the body, eyelash extensions made of spider silk, emotional support ducklings bred to imprint on their owners. Every product is ethically sourced and made with nothing but the highest quality ingredients. Our narrator's new job is a coveted one among New York's beauty-obsessed, and it affords her entry into a new world of privilege. She becomes transfixed by Helen--a model, and the niece of Holistik's charismatic owner--and the two strike up a close friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, Holistik plies our narrator with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, lighten her hair, and change her eye color. But beneath these fancy creams and tinctures lies a terrible truth that threatens to consume her. After all, beauty is nothing without ugliness. NATURAL BEAUTY is a piercing, terrifying, and darkly funny debut that eviscerates the beauty and wellness industry, exploring questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity. This propulsive novel takes a world that feels familiar and pushes it to a conclusion that at first might seem jarring, but when we inch closer, settles on us as truth"--
Subjects: Black humor.; Satirical literature.; Novels.; Beauty, Personal; Chinese Americans; Women pianists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Strangers in the land : exclusion, belonging, and the epic story of the Chinese in America / by Luo, Michael,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From New Yorker editor and writer Michael Luo, a vivid, urgent history of two centuries of Chinese exclusion and the birth of anti-Asian feeling in America. In 1889, when the Supreme Court upheld the Chinese Exclusion Act-a measure barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States that remained in effect for more than fifty years -- Justice Stephen Johnson Field characterized the Chinese as a people "residing apart by themselves." They were, Field concluded, "strangers in the land." Today, there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States, yet this label still hovers over Asian Americans. In Strangers in the Land, Luo traces anti-Asian feeling in America to the first wave of immigrants from China in the mid-nineteenth-century: laborers who traveled to California in search of gold and railroad work. Their communities almost immediately faced mobs of white vigilantes who drove them from their workplaces and homes. In his rich, character-driven history, Luo tells stories like that of Denis Kearney, the sandlot demagogue who became the face of the anti-Chinese movement, and of activists who fought back, like Massachusetts Senator George Frisbie Hoar and newspaperman Wong Chin Foo. After the halt on immigration in 1889, the Chinese-American community who remained struggled to survive and thrive on the margins of American life. In 1965, when LBJ's Immigration and Nationality Act forbade discrimination by national origin, America opened its doors wide to families like those of Luo's parents, but he finds that the centuries of exclusion of Chinese-Americans left a legacy: many Asians are still treated, and feel, like outsiders today. Strangers in the Land is a sweeping narrative of a forgotten chapter in American history, and a reminder that America's present reflects its exclusionary past"--
Subjects: United States.; Chinese Americans; Chinese;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Being Chinese in Canada : the struggle for identity, redress and belonging / by Dere, William Ging Wee,1949-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."After the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885-construction of the western stretch was largely built by Chinese workers-the Canadian government imposed a punitive head tax to deter Chinese citizens from coming to Canada. The exorbitant tax strongly discouraged those who had already emigrated from sending for wives and children left in China-effectively splintering families. After raising the tax twice, the Canadian government eventually brought in legislation to stop Chinese immigration altogether. The ban was not repealed until 1947. It was not until June 22, 2006, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized to the Chinese Canadian community for the Government of Canada's racist legacy. Until now, little had been written about the events leading up to the apology. William Dere's Being Chinese in Canada is the first book to explore the work of the head tax redress movement and to give voice to the generations of Chinese Canadians involved. Dere explores the many obstacles in the Chinese Canadian community's fight for justice, the lasting effects of state-legislated racism and the unique struggle of being Chinese in Quebec. But Being Chinese in Canada is also a personal story. Dere dedicated himself to the head tax redress campaign for over two decades. His grandfather and father each paid the five-hundred-dollar head tax, and the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act separated his family for thirty years. Dere tells of his family members' experiences; his own political awakenings; the federal government's offer of partial redress and what it means to move forward-for himself, his children and the community as a whole. Many in multicultural Canada feel the issues of cultural identity and the struggle for belonging. Although Being Chinese in Canada is a personal recollection and an exploration of the history and culture of Chinese Canadians, the themes of inclusion and kinship are timely and will resonate with Canadians of all backgrounds."--
Subjects: Dere, William Ging Wee, 1949-; Chinese; Chinese; Chinese; Chinese; Chinese Canadians; Chinese Canadians; Chinese Canadians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Blood money : the story of life, death, and profit inside America's blood industry / by McLaughlin, Kathleen(Journalist),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Bad Blood meets Dreamland in this kaleidoscopic investigation into the shadowy and vampiric blood business and the dangerous limits of demand for the crucial resource that runs through our very veins. Every year, about twenty million Americans sell blood plasma for cash in a barely regulated market dominated by private industry and off-the-grid trafficking. These commercial efforts prey on an insatiable market for medical and scientific innovation fed from the veins of some of the country's most marginalized communities, such as undocumented immigrants and residents of poverty-stricken Flint, Michigan. We are often told that "blood donations" are used to save lives, but blood plasma, a component of whole blood, has become a precious commercial good. Blood plasma is collected and marketed by private industry, with the United States one of just five nations on the planet that have not yet banned the practice of pay-for-plasma giving. This precious resource is used for everything from expensive and unproven age-reversing treatments to costly and experimental cures for novel diseases like COVID-19. Based on a cross-country investigation into the plasma-giving capitals of the country, in-depth research into the blood industry, and her personal experience as a beneficiary of plasma-derived treatment for a rare condition, Kathleen McLaughlin's Blood Money reveals the underhanded machinations and unbalanced power structures of the blood industry. Taking us from China's blood black market to Silicon Valley's shadowy tech startups, this is an unforgettable inside look at an industry many of us had no idea even existed. Blood Money is an electrifying exposé that demonstrates the shadowy overlap between big medicine and big business and paints a searing portrait of the extent to which American industry feeds on the country's most vulnerable"--
Subjects: Blood banks; Blood products;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Doom : the politics of catastrophe / by Ferguson, Niall,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Setting the great crisis of 2020 in broad historical perspective, Niall Ferguson challenges the conventional wisdom that our failure to cope better with disaster was solely a crisis of political leadership, as opposed to a more profound systemic problem. Disasters are by their very nature hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of a number of developed countries, including the United States, to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why? The facile answer is to blame poor leadership. While populist leaders have certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, more profound problems have been exposed by COVID-19. Only when we understand the central challenge posed by disaster in history can we see that this was also a failure of an administrative state and economic elites that had grown myopic over much longer than just a few years. Why were so many Cassandras for so long ignored? Why did only some countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? Why do appeals to "the science" often turn out to be magical thinking? Drawing from multiple disciplines, including history, economics, public health, and network science, Doom is a global postmortem for a plague year. In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson has studied the pathologies that afflict modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online schism. Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn--if we want to avoid the doom of irreversible decline"--
Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); COVID-19 (Disease); Epidemics; Political leadership.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Must see places of the world [videorecording] / by Reader's Digest Association,production company.; Questar, Inc.,film distributor.;
Disc 1. Magnificent planet/marvels of mankind: "Your grand journey begins includes the Sahara Desert, Victoria Falls, the Grand Canyon, Banff National Park, the Amazon Rainforest, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal, and Petra in Jordan."--Container.Disc 2. Wildlife treasures: "This awe-inspiring program captures the planet's most wondrous creatures in their natural habitats, including the Royal Bengal Tiger, the Giant Panda, and the dazzlingly diverse marine creatures that inhabit Australia's Great Barrier Reef."--Container.Disc 3. Journey of a lifetime: "This three-part program embarks on the global odyssey of your dreams. Experience the world's most spectacular places and wondrous sights, each at the ideal time of year. Your itinerary includes Kenya's wild savannah, the Great Wall of China, the lost city of Petra, the Grand Canyon, Jerusalem on Easter morning, and New England in autumn."--Container.Disc 4. Australia the beautiful: "Thrill to the rare, remote, and exotic wonders of Australia! Frm misty forests to canyons that conceal secrets from the age of dinosaurs, this three-part program captures all of Australia's dazzling wildlife and glorious landscapes few visitors are privileged to see."--Container.Disc 5. Mysteries of the ancient world: "How were the pyramids constructed? What is the truth behind King Arthur and Camelot? What was the mysterious tribe of 4,000-year-old mummies discovered in the Taklamakan desert? These and other fascinating mysteries are explored in this captivating three-part program that takes a fresh look at some of history's oldest and most baffling mysteries.Disc 6. Scenic cruises of the world: "Set sail on a dream cruise around the world's most dramatic coastlines to more than twenty countries, islands, and other dramatically varied locations. This three-part series makes unforgettable stops at Nova Scotia, the Mayan ruins of Guatemala, the Panama Canal, Big Sur, and Alaska, and much more."--Container.E.DVD.
Subjects: Travelogues (Motion pictures); Documentary films.; Travel.; Historic sites.; Ocean travel.; Voyages around the world.;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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