Books about Maarten from Amazon.com

Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: Maarten Troost is a laowai (foreigner) in the Middle Kingdom, ill-equipped with a sliver of Mandarin, questing to discover the "essential Chineseness" of an ancient and often mystifying land. What he finds is a country with its feet suctioned in the clay of traditional culture and a head straining into the polluted stratosphere of unencumbered capitalism, where cyclopean portraits of Chairman Mao (largely perceived as mostly good, except for that nasty bit toward the end) spoon comfortably with Hong Kong's embrace of rat-race modernity. From Beijing and its blitzes of flying phlegm--and girls who lend new meaning to "Chinese take-out"--to the legendary valley of Shangri-La (as officially designated by the Party), Troost learns that his very survival may hinge on his underdeveloped haggling skills and a willingness to deploy Rollerball-grade elbows over a seat on a train. Featuring visits to Mao's George Hamiltonian corpse and a rural market offering Siberian Tiger paw, cobra hearts, and scorpion kebabs (in the food section), Lost on Planet China is a funny and engrossing trip across a nation that increasingly demands the world's attention. --Jon Foro

Maarten Troost's Travel Tips for China

1. Food can be classified as meat, poultry, grain, fish, fruit, vegetable and Chinese. Embrace the Chinese. If you love it, it will love you back. True, you may find yourself perplexed by what resides on your plate. You may even be appalled. The Chinese have an expression: We eat everything with four legs except the table, and anything with two legs except the person. They mean it too. And so you may find yourself in a restaurant in Guangzhou contemplating the spicy cow veins; or the yak dumplings in Lhasa, or the grilled frog in Shanghai, or the donkey hotpot in the Hexi Corridor, or the live squid on the island of Putuoshan. And you may not know, exactly, what it is you're supposed to do. Should you pluck at this with your chopsticks? The meal may seem so very strange. True, you may be comfortable eating a cow, or a pig, or a chicken, yet when confronted with a yak or a swan or a cat, you do not reflexively think of sauces and marinades. The Chinese do however. And so you should eat whatever skips across your table. It is here where you can experience the complexity of China. And you will be rewarded. Very often, it is exceptionally good. And when it is not, it is undoubtedly interesting. And really, when traveling what more can one ask for. So go on. Eat as the locals do. However, should you find yourself confronted with a heaping platter of Cattle Penis with Garlic, you're on your own.

2. To really see China, go to the market. Any market will do. This is where China lives and breathes. It is here where you will find the sights, sounds and smells of China. And it is in a Chinese market where you will experience epic bargaining. The Chinese excel at bargaining. They live and breathe it. It is an art; it is a sport. It is, above all, nothing personal. If you do not parry back and forth, you will be regarded as a chump, a walking ATM machine, a carcass to be picked over. And so as you peruse the cabbage or consider the silk, be prepared to bargain. The objective, of course, is to obtain the Chinese price. You will, however, never actually receive the Chinese price. It is the holy grail for laowais--or foreigners--in China. Your status as a laowai is determined by how proximate your haggling gets you to the mythical Chinese price. But you will never obtain the Chinese price. Accept this. But if you're very, very good, and you bargain long and hard, and if you are lucky and catch your interlocutor on an off day, you may, just may, receive the special price. Consider yourself fortunate.

3. Travelers are often told to get off the beaten path, to take the road less traveled, to march to a different drum. You don't need to do this in China. The road well-traveled is a very fine road. The French Concession in Shanghai is splendid. The Forbidden City is a wonder of the world. So too the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an. Indeed, the Chinese say so themselves. There is much to be seen in places that are often seen. And yet... China is not merely a country. It is not a place defined by sights. It is a world upon itself, a different planet even. And to see it--to feel it--means leaving that well-traveled road. And China is an excellent place for wandering. From the monasteries of Tibet to the rainforests of Yunnan Province and onward through the deserts of Xinjiang to the frozen tundra of Heilongjiang Province, China offers a vast kaleidoscope of people and terrain unlike anywhere else on Earth. This may seem intimidating to the China traveler. Will there be picture menus in the Taklamakan Desert? (No.) Is Visa accepted in Inner Mongolia? (Not likely.) Still, one should move beyond the Great Wall. And if you can manage to cross six lanes of traffic in Beijing, you can manage the slow train to Kunming.

4. Hell is a line in China. You are so forewarned.

5. Manners are important in China. How can this be, you wonder? You have, for instance, experienced a line in China. Your ribs have been pummeled. You have been trampled upon by grandmothers who are not more than four feet tall. You have learned, simply by queuing in the airport taxi line, what it is like to eat bitter, an evocative Chinese expression that conveys suffering. This does not seem upon first impression to be a country overly concerned with prim etiquette. But it is. True, hawking enormous, gelatinous loogies is perfectly acceptable in China. And a good belch is fine as well. And picking your teeth after dinner is a sign of urbane sophistication. But this does not mean that manners are not taken seriously in China. It's just that they are different in China. And so feel free to spit and burp, but do not even think of holding your chopsticks with your left hand. You will be regarded as an ill-mannered rube. So watch your manners in China. But learn them first.

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Price: $12.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

At the age of twenty-six, Maarten Troost—who had been pushing the snooze button on the alarm clock of life by racking up useless graduate degrees and muddling through a series of temp jobs—decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to Tarawa, a remote South Pacific island in the Republic of Kiribati. He was restless and lacked direction, and the idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the earth was irresistibly romantic. He should have known better.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals tells the hilarious story of what happens when Troost discovers that Tarawa is not the island paradise he dreamed of. Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles through relentless, stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish—all in a country where the only music to be heard for miles around is “La Macarena.” He and his stalwart girlfriend Sylvia spend the next two years battling incompetent government officials, alarmingly large critters, erratic electricity, and a paucity of food options (including the Great Beer Crisis); and contending with a bizarre cast of local characters, including “Half-Dead Fred” and the self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of Tarawa (a British drunkard who’s never written a poem in his life).

With The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Maarten Troost has delivered one of the most original, rip-roaringly funny travelogues in years—one that will leave you thankful for staples of American civilization such as coffee, regular showers, and tabloid news, and that will provide the ultimate vicarious adventure..
Price: $6.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

With The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Maarten Troost established himself as one of the most engaging and original travel writers around. Getting Stoned with Savages again reveals his wry wit and infectious joy of discovery in a side-splittingly funny account of life in the farthest reaches of the world. After two grueling years on the island of Tarawa, battling feral dogs, machete-wielding neighbors, and a lack of beer on a daily basis, Maarten Troost was in no hurry to return to the South Pacific. But as time went on, he realized he felt remarkably out of place among the trappings of twenty-first-century America. When he found himself holding down a job—one that might possibly lead to a career—he knew it was time for him and his wife, Sylvia, to repack their bags and set off for parts unknown.

Getting Stoned with Savages tells the hilarious story of Troost’s time on Vanuatu—a rugged cluster of islands where the natives gorge themselves on kava and are still known to “eat the man.” Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles against typhoons, earthquakes, and giant centipedes and soon finds himself swept up in the laid-back, clothing-optional lifestyle of the islanders. When Sylvia gets pregnant, they decamp for slightly-more-civilized Fiji, a fallen paradise where the local chiefs can be found watching rugby in the house next door. And as they contend with new parenthood in a country rife with prostitutes and government coups, their son begins to take quite naturally to island living—in complete contrast to his dad..
Price: $7.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Virtually every computing system today is part of a distributed system. Programmers, developers, and engineers need to understand the underlying principles and paradigms as well as the real-world application of those principles. Now, internationally renowned expert Andrew S. Tanenbaum – with colleague Martin van Steen – presents a complete introduction that identifies the seven key principles of distributed systems, with extensive examples of each. Adds a completely new chapter on architecture to address the principle of organizing distributed systems. Provides extensive new material on peer-to-peer systems, grid computing and Web services, virtualization, and application-level multicasting. Updates material on clock synchronization, data-centric consistency, object-based distributed systems, and file systems and Web systems coordination. For all developers, software engineers, and architects who need an in-depth understanding of distributed systems.

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Price: $60.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As seen on TV, "The Hedonist" is the Sex Bible for Single Male vacations This in-depth guide is written for the Professional Hedonist, the guy who knows exactly what he wants, is willing to pay for it, and likes to spoil himself rotten. If you love exotic tropical excursions with Golf, Deep Sea Fishing, Casinos, and sexy young girls who always say yes, this book is for you. This detailed travel assistant covers 20 affordable tropical cities, from the hot spots in Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, and the Caribbean, to a dozen untarnished island paradises in South America, Asia, and Europe, where you'll be treated like a King for $25! A fascinating read written from personal experiences, in a hysterical, Maxim-like sarcastic style that seems more like a Bachelor Party conversation than a travel guide. You'll learn the how and the where to go for all your sports activities, as well as meeting your uninhibited "dates", with the low down on the club procedures, pricing and terminology, and local updated websites w/maps and details. Red Light Districts, Brothels, full service nude strip clubs, massage parlors, outcall escorts, horny locals, beach play toys, whatever your preference, it's all here...complete with reviews, addresses, phone numbers, and first hand field reports. Included is a must-read 30 pages of Sex Tourism 101 advice on mastering the games and psychology of the local women you'll meet. This is the taboo Bachelor's Vacation Guide that we've all been waiting for, without a single politically correct word in it. All in all, a fantastic resource, packed with info you can't find anywhere else, over 200 pages of extensive, concise, well-researched advice. A real time and money saver. Why settle for anything but the best, and why gamble on hopes. Bet on the sure thing. The girls are waiting....
Price: $12.86 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In our efforts to reform mathematics education, we've learned a tremendous amount about young students' strategies and the ways they construct knowledge, without fully understanding how to support such development over time. The Dutch do. So, funded by the NSF and Exxon Mobil, Mathematics in the City was begun, a collaborative inservice project that pooled the best thinking from both countries. In Young Mathematicians at Work, Catherine Fosnot and Maarten Dolk reveal what they learned after several years of intensive study in numerous urban classrooms.

In this second volume in a series of three, Fosnot and Dolk focus on how to develop an understanding of multiplication and division in grades 3-5. Their book:

• describes and illustrates what it means to do and learn mathematics
• provides strategies to help teachers turn their classrooms into math workshops that encourage and reflect mathematizing
• examines several ways to engage and support children as they construct important strategies and big ideas related to multiplication
• takes a close look at the strategies and big ideas related to division
• defines modeling and provides examples of how learners construct models - with a discussion of the importance of context
• discusses what it means to calculate using number sense and whether or not algorithms should still be the goal of computation instruction
• describes how to strengthen performance and portfolio assessment
• emphasizes teachers as learners by encouraging them to see themselves as mathematicians.

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Price: $21.15 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In our efforts to reform mathematics education, we've learned a tremendous amount about young students' strategies and the ways they construct knowledge, without fully understanding how to support such development over time. The Dutch do. So, funded by the NSF and Exxon, Mathematics in the City was begun, a collaborative inservice project that pooled the best thinking from both countries. In Young Mathematicians at Work, Catherine Fosnot and Maarten Dolk reveal what they learned after several years of intensive study in numerous urban classrooms.

The first in a three-volume set, Young Mathematicians at Work focuses on young children between the ages of four and eight as they construct a deep understanding of number and the operations of addition and subtraction. Rather than offer unrelated activities, Fosnot and Dolk provide a concerted, unified description of development, with a focus on big ideas, progressive strategies, and emerging models. Drawing from the work of the Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal, they define mathematics as "mathematizing" - the activity of structuring, modeling, and interpreting one's "lived world" mathematically. And they describe teachers who use rich problematic situations to promote inquiry, problem solving, and construction, and children who raise and pursue their own mathematical ideas.

In contrast to other books on math reform, Young Mathematicians at Work provides a new look at the teaching of computation. It moves beyond the current debate about algorithms to argue for deep number sense and the development of a repertoire of strategies based on landmark numbers and operations. Sample minilessons on the use of the open number line model are provided to show you how to support the development of efficient computation..
Price: $17.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In our efforts to reform mathematics education, we've learned a tremendous amount about young students' strategies and the ways they construct knowledge, without fully understanding how to support such development over time. The Dutch do. So, funded by the National Science Foundation and ExxonMobil, Mathematics in the City was begun, a collaborative inservice project that pooled the best thinking from both countries. In Young Mathematicians at Work, Catherine Fosnot and Maarten Dolk reveal what they learned after several years of intensive study in numerous urban classrooms.

In this third volume in a series of three, Fosnot and Dolk focus on how children in grades 5-8 construct their knowledge of fractions, decimals, and percents. Their book:

• describes and illustrates what it means to do and learn mathematics.
• contrasts word problems with true problematic situations which support and enhance investigation and inquiry.
• provides strategies to help teachers turn their classrooms into math workshops.
• explores the cultural and historical development of fractions, decimals, and their equivalents and the ways in which children develop similar ideas and strategies.
• defines and gives examples of modeling, noting the importance of context.
• discusses calculation using number sense and the role of algorithms in computation instruction.
• describes how to strengthen performance and portfolio assessment.
• focuses on teachers as learners by encouraging them to see themselves as mathematicians.

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Price: $21.15 [Notify me when price goes down.]