Here's a page from Longitude, the specialty bookseller for travelers. To order online, and to see the latest, most comprehensive selection of books and maps, go to http://reading.longitudebooks.com/LO332. You may also call 800-342-2164 to order or request a catalog.

These 4 items are available for $63, including U.S. shipping, a 15% discount (Item no. EXCHN422)

Lonely Planet Beijing  •  Damian Harper GUIDEBOOK •  2007 •  PAPER  • 242 PAGES In its hallmark style, this practical guide to Beijing by Lonely Planet features maps, an overview of culture, history and nature, and a good deal of nuts-and-bolts information on excursions, accommodations and sightseeing. There's even a section on the locally spoken dialect of Mandarin. With color photographs and excellent travel information. (CHN47, $18.99)
The Forbidden City, Center of Imperial China  •  Gilles Beguin  •  Dominique Morel HISTORY •  1997 •  PAPER  • 144 PAGES This slim volume is packed with maps, archival photographs and illustrations. A surprisingly effective overview of Beijing's Imperial Court, with a useful chronology, and a carefully chosen selection of writings over the ages. Part of the acclaimed "Discoveries" series of references that fit in your pocket, for travelers it's an indispensable and handy guide to the Forbidden City and the history of Imperial China. (CHN32, $12.95)
The Last Days of Old Beijing, Tales from the New City  •  Michael Meyer BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 336 PAGES A thoroughly engaging memoir of two years living in Beijing's oldest neighborhood. As more and more of Beijing's alleyways fall to its rapacious growth, journalist Michael Mayer moved into a threathened central Beijing hutong neighborhood (outside latrine and all), and here captures the rhythms, traditions, lively characters and history of the alleyways and courtyard houses. Meyer thoroughly enmeshed himself in the neighborhood -- he even becomes a teacher in the local elementary school -- and the result is a lovely elegy to a dying way of life. (CHN493, $25.99)
Beijing Map  •  Borch Maps 2007 •  MAP This laminated, folded map of the city center of Beijing, at a scale of 1:24,000 notes 2008 Olympic venues, attractions, a map of the metro and ddetailed inset maps of key attractions. With an index and Chinese characters for key place names, very useful for getting around by taxi. (CHN199, $8.95)

Beijing Guidemap  •  MapEasy    •  This handy colorful double-sided map shows Central Beigin along with The Forbidden City, Tiannamen Square, the Summer Palace, Greater and out-of-town Beijing. (CHN530, $6.95)
Beijing Day by Day  •  Jen Lin-liu   • GUIDEBOOK  •  A compact shirt pocket guide, ideal for a short visit, featuring remarkably good suggestions for everything from food, hotels and neighborhoods to shopping. With a separate foldout map of the city center. (CHN510, $12.99)
Odyssey Guide Beijing Walks, Exploring the Heritage  •  Don J. Cohn   • GUIDEBOOK  •  An illustrated, literate guide to scenic and historical walks throughout Beijing, much enhanced by color photography and maps. Compact, but includes background on culture and natural history. (CHN369, $24.95)
Visiting Historic Beijing, A Guide to Sites & Resources  •  Robert L. Thorp   • GUIDEBOOK  •  Thorp weaves essays on culture and history with site plans and description in this excellent, in-depth guide to exploring the temples, tombs, gardens, palaces, ancient archaeological sites and noteworthy architecture of Beijing and environs. (CHN521, $24.95)
Forbidden City, The Great Within  •  Caroline Courtauld  •  May Holdsworth  •  Hu Chui  •  Jonathan Spence   • HISTORY  •  This richly illustrated blend of history, anecdote, biographical sketches and stunning images evokes daily life in the Bejing's imperial city. (CHN450, $24.95)
The Forbidden City  •  Geremie R. Barme  •  Mary Beard   • HISTORY  •  A compact, elegant volume in Harvard's excellent Wonders of the World series, this pocket history illuminates the culture, mystique, architecture and politics of imperial Beijing. Fittingly, the book opens with Mao's symbolic address from the Gate of Heavenly Peace. (CHN468, $19.95)
Understanding China, A Guide to China's Economy, History, and Politics  •  John Bryan Starr   • HISTORY  •  John Bryan Starr, a professor of history and former director of the China Association, brings his classroom experience to this admirably brief, clearheaded introduction to contemporary China. (CHN196, $16.00)
Beijing Then and Now  •  Brian Page   • ART & ARCHITECTURE  •  Past and present Beijing are compared in photographs of Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Confucious Temple, the Marco Polo Bridge and other notable city sites. (CHN448, $18.95)
The City of Heavenly Tranquility, Peking in the History of China  •  Jasper Becker   • ART & ARCHITECTURE  •  A British journalist, Jasper mourns the jumble of courtyard houses, tangle of alleyways, carefully tended ginkgo and pomegranate trees, gardens and canals swept away in the zeal to reinvent Beijing for the 21st century in this rich elegy. (CHN407, $28.00)
A Comrade Lost and Found, A Beijing Story  •  Jan Wong   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE • COMING IN FEBRUARY  •  Wong (Red China Blues) travels to Beijing with her family in pursuit of the ghosts from her academic past at Beijing University in the early 1970s during the Cultural Revolution. Tracing the fates of past friends, Wong finds their stories as fluid as the ancient landmarks which give way to the modern city. (CHN547, $24.00)
Beijing Time  •  Michael Dutton   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  Dutton's exuberant scholarly analysis of the people, neighborhoods, monuments and transformation of contemporary Beijing includes his charming black-and-white photographs. (CHN467, $26.95)
Red China Blues, My Long March from Mao to Now  •  Jan Wong   • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  •  Jan Wong tells of her experiences in the "hermetically sealed bubble of Maoism" as one of two westerners to attend Beijing University, then offers a first-hand account of recent reforms in China. (CHN37, $15.95)
Beijing Coma  •  Ma Jian   • LITERATURE  •  In this remarkable novel former Tiananmen Square protester Dai Wei awakeens after a decade of unconsciousness, learning that his mother had sold one of his kidneys to finance his care, and that the China he knew has undergone radical change. (CHN502, $27.50)
Empress Orchid  •  Anchee Min   • LITERATURE  •  In this novel of the glorious, decadent last days of 19th-Century Imperial China, Min (Red Azalea, Becoming Madame Mao) combines her tale of a young girl from the provinces who marries an emperor -- and then improbably becomes the Last Empress -- with a lovingly re-created portrait of life in the Forbidden City. (CHN267, $14.00)
Foreign Babes in Beijing, Behind the Scenes of a New China  •  Rachel DeWoskin   • LITERATURE  •  DeWoskin entertainingly illuminates Chinese versus Western perceptions in this enlightening memoir of her experiences in Beijing (where she landed a role in a soap opera of the title). (CHN478, $13.95)