Best Selling Books by Anne Stevenson

How did China grow from an impoverished country to become the second largest economy in the world in just over four decades? And how did this economic miracle come to an end, as seems the case today?To understand the story of China''s rapid rise and equally rapid fall, author Anne Stevenson-Yang takes us back to the beginning, when Deng Xiaoping took over and opened its moribund economy to Western money and know-how. Stevenson-Yang, who lived and worked in China for a quarter of a century, traces each decade of China''s tumultuous development, from the roaring 1980s to today''s malaise.In her first-hand account, Wild Ride, Stevenson-Yang concludes that China is returning to the poverty and isolation of the Mao era. What happened to the promise of the political change that would come with the opening of the economy? And the institutional reforms of the last four decades?The author says all that change was all an illusion. Communist China, being interested only in survival, played along and the West fell for it. With the rise of Xi Jinping, that capitalist experiment is over. ''It took me years to understand that I was an unwitting player in an elaborate dramatic confection.''

CHINA'' S SEAMY UNDERSIDEKitty and her teenage friends, squatting in an empty apartment, are looking for gas to cook instant noodles. Bai Song and his wife, who live in the unit across the hallway, have a well-equipped kitchen with all the mod cons. Plus they'' re old and retired, meaning they'' re ripe for a bit of rough fun, Clockwork Orange-style.China at the turn of the century. Everything is upside down. Respect for your elders? You'' ve got be joking. Communism? Yeah right. Cut-throat capitalism is the only way to get ahead. “ To get rich is glorious” .In ten wonderfully surreal stories, Anne Stevenson-Yang conjures up the atmosphere of a society in freefall. China as you'' ve never imagined it: a wife who fakes her divorce so she can buy an apartment; neglected teens who tie up an elderly couple so they can use their kitchen; a country girl who poisons a disabled man for a residence permit.Living in China for nearly twenty-five years, Stevenson-Yang became fascinated in the “ muffled violence beneath the placid surface” .

A critical analysis of how concentrated power in China''s political system enabled fast growth but is now making it impossible for the nation to modernize.

In November 2004 the Cotsen Children''s Library at Princeton University became the home of Mr. Lloyd Cotsen''s extensive collection of Beatrix Potter manuscripts, original art, photographs, and related ephemera. To mark the occasion of this very special gift, the Cotsen Occasional Press produced this lavish, oversized catalogue full of illustrations and photographs of the diverse items in the collection.Part I of the Catalogue is divided into separate sections covering original artwork, manuscripts, printed ephemera, photographs, books, and commercial merchandise (such as the unique Jemima Puddleduck doll pictured below). Each item in the collection is described in detail, and many of the items are pictured as well.Part II includes complete facsimile reproductions of the thirty picture letters included in the collection that Potter wrote to some of her many young friends. The volume also contains an Introduction that provides a brief overview of the Potter collection''s place in the larger whole of the Cotsen Children''s Library, and offers readers a brief-but remarkably informative and detailed-account of Beatrix Potter''s life and work The volume is concluded with a bibliography, a list of illustrations, and a detailed index.The Beatrix Potter Collection of Lloyd Cotsen was published in an extremely limited edition of 500 copies.