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How China’s expansive new era of urbanization threatens to undermine the foundations of rural life 

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has vastly expanded its urbanization processes in an effort to reduce the inequalities between urban and rural areas. Centered on the mountainous region of Chongqing, which serves as an experimental site for the country’s new urban development policies, The End of the Village analyzes the radical expansion of urbanization and its consequences for China’s villagers. It reveals a fundamental rewriting of the nation’s social contract, as villages that once organized rural life and guaranteed rural livelihoods are replaced by an increasingly urbanized landscape dominated by state institutions. 

Throughout this comprehensive study of China’s “urban–rural coordination” policy, Nick R. Smith traces the diminishing autonomy of the country’s rural populations and their subordination to larger urban networks and shared administrative structures. Outside Chongqing’s urban centers, competing forces are at work in reshaping the social, political, and spatial organization of its villages. While municipal planners and policy makers seek to extend state power structures beyond the boundaries of the city, village leaders and inhabitants try to maintain control over their communities’ uncertain futures through strategies such as collectivization, shareholding, real estate development, and migration.

As China seeks to rectify the development crises of previous decades through rapid urban growth, such drastic transformations threaten to displace existing ways of life for more than 600 million residents. Offering an unprecedented look at the country’s contentious shift in urban planning and policy, The End of the Village exposes the precarious future of rural life in China and suggests a critical reappraisal of how we think about urbanization.

Winner of Book of the Year in Portugal, The Village of Vanished Souls is a sweeping historical tale inspired by authentic records of the Portuguese Inquisition and the real lives of villagers whose stories have long been forgotten.

Portugal, 1671—Nine-year-old Isaaque Zarco lives a peaceful life in the remote mountain village of Castelo Rodrigo, where he helps his mother prepare meals, roams the surrounding forests with his spirited best friend Lena, and learns about nature from the village apothecary, Samuel. But his idyllic childhood is shattered when Lena and her family suddenly vanish, followed by a series of brutal murders that plunge the isolated community into fear.

When Isaaque’s formidable Castilian grandmother visits, she says what no one else dares: the Inquisition is hunting descendants of Jews who continue to secretly practice. Then she entrusts Isaaque with an even more dangerous secret—that he, too, belongs to a secret Jewish family. As she introduces him to the forbidden traditions and sacred writings of their ancestors, Isaaque’s understanding of his parents, his village, and himself is transformed forever.

As Isaaque comes of age, he is drawn into a clandestine network that helps persecuted Jews escape Portugal. Every mission carries the risk of imprisonment, torture, and death, yet this dangerous work gives Isaaque a profound sense of purpose while deepening his commitment to his heritage. When he learns that his beloved grandmother is ill, he embarks on a journey that will expose long-buried family secrets and reveal that learning to embrace his heritage is only the beginning of what will soon be asked of him.

Inspired by the names, arrest records, and testimonies preserved in Inquisitional archives, The Village of Vanished Souls recreates a little-known chapter of history with vivid historical detail and emotional depth. At once an unforgettable coming-of-age story and a moving portrait of resilience, identity, faith, and love, it gives voice to people whose courage endured despite centuries of persecution and forced silence.

The Village on the Plain tells the story of the founding of Auburn University as a small private college and the tumultuous history of its growth and transformation into the complex institution it is today.

Auburn University possesses a rich and storied past as well as an esprit de corps that is the envy of its rivals. Dwayne Cox’s The Village on the Plain traces the school’s history in fascinating detail from its origins as a private college through its emergence as a nationally recognized land-grant university.

Founded before the Civil War to provide a classical education, Auburn became the state’s land-grant college after the cessation of hostilities. This infused the school with a vision of the reborn South as a commercial and industrial power. By the 1880s, the applied sciences were at the core of Auburn’s growth and strength. Like most southern universities, Auburn never enjoyed financial abundance, and scarcity intensified internal debates over investments in liberal arts or science. Modest state funding for higher education also complicated Auburn’s rise. It became a source of competition with the University of Alabama. This rivalry was most intense between 1908 and 1948. The two schools did not meet on the gridiron but blocked and tackled one another in the legislature over the division of state funds.

On the idyllic plains of Lee County, Alabama, Auburn developed a unique, sometimes introspective culture, which is true of many universities founded far from urban centers. Long Auburn’s head archivist, Cox describes this culture with an insider’s insights and shows how it shaped the school's history and community.

Auburn University’s history is that of a small private college that rose to the challenges of convulsive state and national events, not only to survive but to emerge more vibrant and thriving. Offering much to students of higher education and Alabama history, as well as readers affiliated with Auburn University, The Village on the Plain tells the story of this complex and fascinating institution.
 

In the village of the ghost bells, the church chimes ring—even though the church has no bells. One of the neighbors wants to buy dreams—or is she a dream that someone else is dreaming? Where and why do dreams become nightmares?

These are only some of the fascinating questions raised in Village of the Ghost Bells, Edla Van Steen’s second novel. First published in 1983 as Coraçôes mordidos, the novel tells the story of the would-be utopian community built on an old plantation of the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil. Its atmosphere is dreamlike, often verging on the supernatural, and strange events signal the transformation of the utopian dream into a nightmare. Ultimately destroyed by greed, corruption, and exploitation, the community becomes a microcosm of the Brazilian socioeconomic system, in which it takes all of a person’s warmth, idealism, passion, and humor to survive the bleak environment.