The Yin and Yang of American Culture

The Yin and Yang of American Culture PDF

Author: Eun Y. Kim

Publisher: Nicholas Brealey

Published: 2001-06-01

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 0585434433

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You can't not have a reaction to this book! Based on over thirty years of conversations and interactions with Americans and Asians, Korean American Eun Kim presents American virtues and vices from an Asian perspective, using the ancient Asian concepts of yin and yang, which coexist in everything and complete each other to maintain cosmic harmony. In this way, Kim draws us to look at the yang (light) mirror of American vices and the yin (dark) mirror or American virtues. Examples of the virtues she discusses are generosity, competitive spirit, openness, and volunteerism. Some of the vices she explores are insistence on rights, refusal to grow up, arrogance, and tolerance of violence. In her fifty entries, the author describes and illustrates an American value and provides an Asian perspective on it as well as what she believes to be the dangers and opportunities inherent to each value. She uses personal experience, anecdotes and quotes from Asians and Americans both famous and unknown, historical background, general wisdom, and proverbs to enrich her writing. Eun Kim straddles two cultures, her Asian homeland and her adopted country, the United States. This is a highly personal and readable book, with insights that may make the American reader squirm uncomfortably in one paragraph and glow with pride in the next.

American Nations

American Nations PDF

Author: Colin Woodard

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2012-09-25

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0143122029

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• A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who during presidential elections, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of any hotly contested election in our history.

The Yin and Yang of Climate Crisis

The Yin and Yang of Climate Crisis PDF

Author: Brendan Kelly

Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1583949526

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Marrying western environmentalism with Chinese medicine, this revolutionary book illustrates the many ways that our personal well-being and climate health are vitally connected Crises such as melting ice caps, dying forests, and devastating floods are symptoms of deeper issues, both within us as individuals and within our culture. Informed by author Brendan Kelly's experience as a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, The Yin and Yang of Climate Crisis reveals that the current life-threatening severity of climate change speaks to the level of imbalance that exists in the people and institutions responsible for the crisis. Considering issues such as loss of life from increasingly severe storms, stress on farmers from rapidly changing weather, and increasing rates of disease, this book goes on to present hopeful, deep-reaching personal and societal remedies to treat the underlying causes of climate change and to restore our own health. The Yin and Yang of Climate Crisis blends the external focus of environmentalism—western science, policy issues, regulations—with the internal focus of Chinese medicine—personal health, balancing Qi, diet—to present a holistic view of our interrelationship with the planet. Kelly provides a deeper look at how we've gotten to this place of climate destabilization and ways to treat both the symptoms and their root causes. Looking through the lens of Chinese medicine, we are better able to understand that the severity of climate destabilization speaks to deeper philosophical and spiritual issues and provides an opportunity to address our own personal and collective imbalances. With his unique perspective and far-reaching perceptions, Kelly encourages us to translate the reality of our warming planet into an opportunity to ask bigger and deeper questions, including who we are, what we're here to do, and what promotes health and healing.

The Alcalde

The Alcalde PDF

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2002-01

Total Pages: 88

ISBN-13:

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As the magazine of the Texas Exes, The Alcalde has united alumni and friends of The University of Texas at Austin for nearly 100 years. The Alcalde serves as an intellectual crossroads where UT's luminaries - artists, engineers, executives, musicians, attorneys, journalists, lawmakers, and professors among them - meet bimonthly to exchange ideas. Its pages also offer a place for Texas Exes to swap stories and share memories of Austin and their alma mater. The magazine's unique name is Spanish for "mayor" or "chief magistrate"; the nickname of the governor who signed UT into existence was "The Old Alcalde."

Yin-Yang

Yin-Yang PDF

Author: Alice Renouf

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2011-12-16

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1442212713

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China has become one of the largest study and teach-abroad, travel, and business destinations in the world. Yet few books offer a diversity of perspectives and locales for Westerners considering the leap. This unique collection of letters offers a rarely seen, intimate, and refreshingly honest view of living and working in China. Here, ordinary people—recent college graduates, teachers, professors, engineers, lawyers, computer whizzes, and parents— recount their experiences in venues ranging from classrooms to marketplaces to holy mountains. The writers are genuine participants in the daily life of their adopted country, and woven throughout their correspondence is the compelling theme of outsiders coping in a culture that is vastly foreign to them and the underlying love-hate struggle it engenders. We follow their initial highs; the shift to general discomfort and then to full-blown culture shock; and slowly, the return of a sense of balance, identity, and normalcy; and finally, the decision to return home or stay. Written in a down-to-earth, personal, often humorous, always authentic style, these tales of trials, successes, and failures offer invaluable insight into a country that remains endlessly fascinating.

Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife [3 volumes]

Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife [3 volumes] PDF

Author: Jonathan H. X. Lee

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2010-12-21

Total Pages: 1498

ISBN-13: 0313350671

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This comprehensive compilation of entries documents the origins, transmissions, and transformations of Asian American folklore and folklife. Equally instructive and intriguing, the Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife provides an illuminating overview of Asian American folklore as a way of life. Surveying the histories, peoples, and cultures of numerous Asian American ethnic and cultural groups, the work covers everything from ancient Asian folklore, folktales, and folk practices that have been transmitted and transformed in America to new expressions of Asian American folklore and folktales unique to the Asian American historical and contemporary experiences. The encyclopedia's three comprehensive volumes cover an extraordinarily wide range of Asian American cultural and ethnic groups, as well as mixed-race and mixed-heritage Asian Americans. Each group section is introduced by a historical overview essay followed by short entries on topics such as ghosts and spirits, clothes and jewelry, arts and crafts, home decorations, family and community, religious practices, rituals, holidays, music, foodways, literature, traditional healing and medicine, and much, much more. Topics and theories are examined from crosscultural and interdisciplinary perspectives to add to the value of the work.

Yin-yang

Yin-yang PDF

Author: Alice Renouf

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Pub Incorporated

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9781442212695

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China has become one of the largest study and teach-abroad, travel, and business destinations in the world. Yet few books offer a diversity of perspectives and locales for Westerners considering the leap. This unique collection of letters offers a rarely seen, intimate, and refreshingly honest view of living and working in China. Here, ordinary people--recent college graduates, teachers, professors, engineers, lawyers, computer whizzes, and parents--recount their experiences in venues ranging from classrooms to marketplaces to holy mountains. The writers are genuine participants in the daily life of their adopted country, and woven throughout their correspondence is the compelling theme of outsiders coping in a culture that is vastly foreign to them and the underlying love-hate struggle it engenders. We follow their initial highs; the shift to general discomfort and then to full-blown culture shock; and slowly, the return of a sense of balance, identity, and normalcy; and finally, the decision to return home or stay. Written in a down-to-earth, personal, often humorous, always authentic style, these tales of trials, successes, and failures offer invaluable insight into a country that remains endlessly fascinating.

Understanding Vietnam

Understanding Vietnam PDF

Author: Neil L. Jamieson

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-11-10

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 0520916581

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The American experience in Vietnam divided us as a nation and eroded our confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of our foreign policy. Yet our understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, we have never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. Neil L. Jamieson, after many years of living and working in Vietnam, has written the book that provides this understanding. Jamieson paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, he takes us through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout his analysis, he allows the Vietnamese—both our friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither—to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials and reports of interviews and personal experiences. By putting our old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, Jamieson provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from our involvement in Vietnam. As the United States and Vietnam appear poised to embark on a new phase in their relationship, Jamieson's book is particularly timely.

Taoism For Dummies

Taoism For Dummies PDF

Author: Jonathan Herman

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-06-12

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1118423976

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The definitive guide to understanding Taoism—no matter your background or faith Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching is the second most translated book in the world, and the practice of religious Taoism is on the rise in China, where adherents currently number in the hundreds of millions. Yet there remains a remarkable lack of reliable information about Taoism for curious westerners. Taoism For Dummies provides comprehensive coverage of Taoism's origins in China's Chou Dynasty, its underlying quietist principles, its emergence as a major religion, various interpretation of its core texts, including both Eastern and Western interpretations, key Taoist concepts, and much more. It also provides a fascinating glimpse of Taoism in contemporary China. The ideal guide for readers interested in this influential religion, as well as those taking an introductory course on Taoism or Chinese Religion A valuable source of insight for those with an interest in modern Chinese culture and beliefs