Kingdom Of Characters Pulitzer Prize Finalist

Author : Jing Tsu
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0735214743
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) written by Jing Tsu and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

Author : Jing Tsu
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0735214735
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) written by Jing Tsu and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

Author : Matt Napier
Publisher : Sleeping Bear Press
ISBN 13 : 1410310361
Total Pages : 26 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Little Canada written by Matt Napier and published by Sleeping Bear Press. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toddlers will delight in this board book highlighting well-known Canadian symbols and traditions, including famous buildings and wildlife. Rhyming riddles frame the questions, while brightly painted clues help the youngest book lover figure out the answer.

Author : Lore Segal
Publisher : Melville House
ISBN 13 : 161219303X
Total Pages : 127 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Half the Kingdom written by Lore Segal and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book The renowned New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist delivers a hilarious, poignant, and profoundly moving tale of living, loving, and aging in America today At Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, doctors have noticed a marked uptick in Alzheimer’s patients. People who seemed perfectly lucid just a day earlier suddenly show signs of advanced dementia. Is it just normal aging, or an epidemic? Is it a coincidence, or a secret terrorist plot? In the looking-glass world of Half the Kingdom—where terrorist paranoia and end-of-the-world hysteria mask deeper fears of mortality; where parents’ and their grown children's feelings vacillate between frustration and tenderness; and where the broken medical system leads one character to quip, “Kafka wrote slice-of-life fiction”—all is familiar and yet slightly askew. Lore Segal masterfully interweaves her characters’ lives—lives that, for good or for ill, all converge in Cedar's ER—into a funny, tragic, and tender portrait of how we live today. “Lore Segal may have come closer than anyone to writing The Great American Novel.” —The New York Times “I always feel in her work such a sense of toughness and humor . . . Her writing is sad and funny, and that makes it more of both.” —Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad

Author : Yu Hua
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0307739791
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China in Ten Words written by Yu Hua and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of China’s most acclaimed writers: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades. Framed by ten phrases common in the Chinese vernacular, China in Ten Words uses personal stories and astute analysis to reveal as never before the world’s most populous yet oft-misunderstood nation. In "Disparity," for example, Yu Hua illustrates the expanding gaps that separate citizens of the country. In "Copycat," he depicts the escalating trend of piracy and imitation as a creative new form of revolutionary action. And in "Bamboozle," he describes the increasingly brazen practices of trickery, fraud, and chicanery that are, he suggests, becoming a way of life at every level of society. Witty, insightful, and courageous, this is a refreshingly candid vision of the "Chinese miracle" and all of its consequences.

Author : Jing Tsu
Publisher : Penguin Press
ISBN 13 : 9780141985312
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kingdom of Characters written by Jing Tsu and published by Penguin Press. This book was released on 2023-01-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A riveting, masterfully researched account of the bold innovators who adapted the Chinese language to the modern world, transforming China into a superpower in the process What does it take to reinvent the world's oldest living language? China today is one of the world's most powerful nations, yet just a century ago it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, left behind in the wake of Western technology. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu shows that China's most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: to make the formidable Chinese language - a 2,200-year-old writing system that was daunting to natives and foreigners alike - accessible to a globalized, digital world. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who adapted the Chinese script - and the value-system it represents - to the technological advances that would shape the twentieth century and beyond, from the telegram to the typewriter to the smartphone. From the exiled reformer who risked death to advocate for Mandarin as a national language to the imprisoned computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup, generations of scholars, missionaries, librarians, politicians, inventors, nationalists and revolutionaries alike understood the urgency of their task and its world-shaping consequences. With larger-than-life characters and a thrilling narrative, Kingdom of Characters offers an astonishingly original perspective on one of the twentieth century's most dramatic transformations.

Author : Hernan Diaz
Publisher : Riverhead Books
ISBN 13 : 9780593713099
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Trust written by Hernan Diaz and published by Riverhead Books. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN FICTION A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022 ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022 ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2022 KIRKUS PRIZE And named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by The New Yorker, Vogue, Time, NPR, Oprah Daily, Esquire, BookPage, and more "Buzzy and enthralling ...A glorious novel about empires and erasures, husbands and wives, staggering fortunes and unspeakable misery...Fun as hell to read." --Oprah Daily "A genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City's elite in the roaring '20s and Great Depression."--Vanity Fair "A riveting story of class, capitalism, and greed." --Esquire "Captivating."--NPR "Exhilarating." --New York Times An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth--all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit. Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another--and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation. At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.

Author : S. C. Gwynne
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1416597158
Total Pages : 394 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Empire of the Summer Moon written by S. C. Gwynne and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award* *A New York Times Notable Book* *Winner of the Texas Book Award and the Oklahoma Book Award* This New York Times bestseller and stunning historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West “is nothing short of a revelation…will leave dust and blood on your jeans” (The New York Times Book Review). Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches. Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads, and the amazing story of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being. Hailed by critics, S. C. Gwynne’s account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told. Empire of the Summer Moon announces him as a major new writer of American history.

Author : Thomas S. Mullaney
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262536102
Total Pages : 501 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Chinese Typewriter written by Thomas S. Mullaney and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today. Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters—in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter. The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for “Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained “typewriter girls” and “typewriter boys.” Still later was the “Double Pigeon” typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of “predictive text.” Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an “object history” but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened. A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University

Author : Geraldine Brooks
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101079258
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book March written by Geraldine Brooks and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-01-31 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize--a powerful love story set against the backdrop of the Civil War, from the author of The Secret Chord. From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks's place as a renowned author of historical fiction.