Best of
Asia

1956

Defeat Into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India, 1942-1945


William Slim - 1956
    He then restored his army's fighting capabilities and morale with virtually no support from home and counterattacked. His army's slaughter of Japanese troops ultimately liberated India and Burma. The first edition of Defeat Into Victory, published in 1956, was an immediate sensation selling 20,000 copies within a few days. This is an updated version with a new introduction by David W. Hogan Jr.

Imperial Woman


Pearl S. Buck - 1956
    According to custom, she moved to the Forbidden City at the age of seventeen to become one of hundreds of concubines. But her singular beauty and powers of manipulation quickly moved her into the position of Second Consort.Tzu Hsi was feared and hated by many in the court, but adored by the people. The Empress's rise to power (even during her husband's life) parallels the story of China's transition from the ancient to the modern way.

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion


Yukio Mishima - 1956
    While an acolyte at the temple, he fixates on the structure’s aesthetic perfection and it becomes the one and only object of his desire. But as Mizoguchi begins to perceive flaws in the temple, he determines that the only true path to beauty lies in an act of horrendous violence. Based on a real incident that occurred in 1950, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion brilliantly portrays the passions and agonies of a young man in postwar Japan, bringing to the subject the erotic imagination and instinct for the dramatic moment that marked Mishima as one of the towering makers of modern fiction. With an introduction by Donald Keene; Translated from the Japanese by Ivan Morris.(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 1: Introductory Orientations


Joseph Needham - 1956
    It's been acclaimed by specialists in both East & West & also by readers with wider & more general interests. The text, based on research of a high critical quality, is supported by many hundreds of illustrations & is imbued with a warm appreciation of China. Volume 1 is an introductory volume, in which Needham prepares his readers for the study of a whole human culture. He begins by examining the structure of the Chinese language; he reviews the geography of China & the long history of its people, & discusses the scientific contacts which have occurred throughout the centuries, between Europe & E. Asia.

The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh


Agnes Smedley - 1956
    He was commander in chief of the People's Revolutionary Army, and this is the story of the first sixty years of his life. As a supreme commanding general, he was probably unique; surely there has never been another commander in chief who, during his years of service, spun, wove, set type, grew and cooked his own food, wrote poetry and lectured not only to his troops on military strategy and tactics but to women's classes on how to preserve vegetables. Evans Carlson wrote that Chu Teh has the kindness of a Robert E. Lee, the tenacity of a Grant, and the humility of a Lincoln. More than a biography, this work by a great American woman journalist, who took the account from Chu Teh himself, is a social and historical document of the highest value.

Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art - Why Exhibit Works of Art?


Ananda K. Coomaraswamy - 1956
    Coomaraswamy, curator of Indian art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, uniquely combined art historian, philosopher, orientalist, linguist, and expositor in his person. His knowledge of the arts and handcrafts of the Orient was unexcelled and his numerous monographs on Oriental art either established or revolutionized entire fields. He was also a great Orientalist, with an almost unmatched understanding of traditional culture. He covered the philosophic and religious experience of the entire premodern world, east and west, and for him primitive, medieval European, and classical Indian experiences of truth and art were only different dialects in a common language.Finally, Coomaraswamy was a provocative writer, whose erudition was expressed in a delightful, aphoristic style. The nine essays in this book are among his most stimulating. They discuss such matters as the true function of aesthetics in art, the importance of symbolism, and the importance of intellectual and philosophical background to the artists; they demonstrate that abstract art and primitive art, despite superficial resemblances, are completely divergent; and they deal with the common philosophy which pervades all great art, the nature of medieval art, folklore, and modern art, the beauty inherent in mathematics, and the union of traditional symbolism and individual portraiture in premodern cultures.

Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion


Vasilii Vladimirovich Bartold - 1956
    very good production, Indian publisher.

Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities


René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz - 1956
    This book is a study of the Tibetan protective deities, those gods worshipped by the Tibetans as protectors and guardians of Buddhism.

From Opium War To Liberation


Israel Epstein - 1956
    The aim was to speak to western-educated people (not just those of western origin but many on all continents schooled under colonial influence) - to help them to "shift gears" from what they had been taught as history to things they had not been taught or led to dismiss as marginal.