In September of 2005, the Peace Corps sent Michael Levy to teach English in the heart of China's heartland. His hosts in the city of Guiyang found additional uses for him: resident expert on Judaism, romantic adviser, and provincial basketball star, to name a few. His account of overcoming vast cultural differences to befriend his students and fellow teachers is by turns poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. While revelling in the peculiarities of life in China's interior, the author also discovered that the 'other billion' (people living far from the coastal cities covered by the American media) have a complex relationship with both their own traditions and the rapid changes of modernization. Lagging behind in China's economic boom, they experience the darker side of 'capitalism with Chinese characteristics', daily facing the schizophrenia of conflicting ideologies.

Retailing is a high-tech, global, growth industry that plays a vital economic role in society. The authors' objective in preparing the eighth edition is to stimulate student interest in retailing courses and careers by capturing the exciting, challenging, and rewarding opportunities facing both retailers and firms that sell their products and services to retailers, such as IBM and Proctor & Gamble. The textbook focuses on the strategic issues facing the retail industry and provides a current, informative, 'good read' for students. The eighth edition maintains the basic philosophy of previous editions while focusing on key strategic issues with an emphasis on financial considerations and implementation through merchandise and store management. These strategic and tactical issues are examined for a broad spectrum of retailers, both large and small, domestic and international, selling merchandise and services.

"Retailing Management" by Levy and Weitz is the best-selling textbook in the retailing market. Retailing is a high tech, global, growth industry that provides challenging and rewarding career opportunities for college graduates. This book and its corresponding tools and exercises were written to expose students to the excitement of retailing and prepare them for a career in retailing and related fields. Known for its strategic look at retailing and current coverage, this new seventh edition continues to be organized around a model of strategic decision-making. One of the major advantages of the Levy/Weitz approach is the text's readability, organization, and its emphasis on how students can come to grips with real retailing issues and be able to solve problems. The text's logical organization around a decision-making process allows readers to learn about the process of strategic decisions first before moving on to decision implementation. The implementation decisions are broken down into merchandise management decisions and store management decisions, just as they would be in a real retailing setting. The text provides a balanced treatment of strategic, 'how to', and conceptual material, in a highly readable and interesting format. The seventh edition continues its cutting edge coverage on the latest topics and developments in retailing including: globalization; customer relationship management programs; multi-channel retailing; supply chain management, the use of the Internet to improve operating efficiencies and customer service; and, legal, ethical and cooperate social responsibility issues. Students indicate that this text is a 'good read' because of the numerous examples of retailers, their practices, the interesting retail facts in the margins, and eye catching design and layout.