Best of
Asia

1996

Still Life With Rice: A Young American Woman Discovers the Life and Legacy of Her Korean Grandmother


Helie Lee - 1996
    Petersburg Times) this is a radiant and engaging story about a young American woman’s discovery about the life of her Korean grandmother.Helie Lee’s grandmother, Hongyong Baek, came of age in a unified but socially repressive Korea, where she was taught the roles that had been prescribed for her: obedient daughter, demure wife, efficient household manager. Ripped from her home first during the Japanese occupation and again during the bloody civil war that divided her country, Hongyong fought to save her family by drawing from her own talents and values. Over the years she proved her spirit indomitable, providing for her husband children by running a successful restaurant, building a profitable opium business, and eventually becoming adept at the healing art of ch’iryo. When she was forced to leave her country, she moved her family to California, where she reestablished her ch’iryo practice. Writing in her grandmother’s voice, Helie Lee recreates an individual experience in a unique culture that is both seductively exotic and strangely familiar. With wit and verve, she claims her own Korean identity and illuminates the intricate experiences of Asian-American women in this century.

Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now


Jan Wong - 1996
    A true believer--and one of only two Westerners permitted to enroll at Beijing University--her education included wielding a pneumatic drill at the Number One Machine Tool Factory. In the name of the Revolution, she renounced rock & roll, hauled pig manure in the paddy fields, and turned in a fellow student who sought her help in getting to the United States. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War to seek asylum in China.Red China Blues is Wong's startling--and ironic--memoir of her rocky six-year romance with Maoism (which crumbled as she became aware of the harsh realities of Chinese communism); her dramatic firsthand account of the devastating Tiananmen Square uprising; and her engaging portrait of the individuals and events she covered as a correspondent in China during the tumultuous era of capitalist reform under Deng Xiaoping. In a frank, captivating, deeply personal narrative she relates the horrors that led to her disillusionment with the "worker's paradise." And through the stories of the people--an unhappy young woman who was sold into marriage, China's most famous dissident, a doctor who lengthens penises--Wong reveals long-hidden dimensions of the world's most populous nation.In setting out to show readers in the Western world what life is like in China, and why we should care, she reacquaints herself with the old friends--and enemies of her radical past, and comes to terms with the legacy of her ancestral homeland.

Hush! A Thai Lullaby


Minfong Ho - 1996
    A lullaby which asks animals such as a lizard, monkey, and water-buffalo to be quiet and not disturb the sleeping baby.

India, My Love


Osho - 1996
    It is not only a nation, a country, a mere piece of land. It is something more: it is a metaphor, poetry, something invisible but very tangible. It is vibrating with certain energy fields that no other country can claim.For almost ten thousand years, thousands of people have reached to the ultimate explosion of consciousness. Their vibration is still alive, their impact is in the very air; you just need a certain perceptivity, a certain capacity to receive the invisible that surrounds this strange land.It is strange because it has renounced everything for a single search, the search for the truth.In these pages, we are treated to a spellbinding vision of what Osho calls "the real India," the India that has given birth to enlightened mystics and master musicians, to the inspired poetry of the Upanishads and the breathtaking architecture of the Taj Mahal. We travel through the landscape of India's golden past with Alexander the Great and meet the strange people he met along the way. We are given a front-row seat in the proceedings of the legendary court of the Moghul Emperor Akbar, and an insider's view of the assemblies of Gautama the Buddha and his disciples.In the process, we discover just what it is about India that has made it a magnet for seekers for centuries, and the importance of India's unique contribution to our human search for truth.Beautifully illustrated with photos of some of India's most sacred places, India My Love is a mystery tour with Osho as guide and storyteller. In its pages we are taken on a journey through India's "golden past," and into its haunting presence. Along the way we are introduced to beggars and kings, wise men and fools, lovers and warriors, artists and scholars, and learn how each of them has contributed to the rich tapestry of mysticism and mystery that makes up India's unique contribution to our human search for truth.

Papel de Liha


Ompong Remigio - 1996
    She works all day: cooks their meals, does the laundry, cleans each nook and cranny. All this work must make her hands as rough as sandpaper! This distresses the little girl in our story who overhears her aunt say that sandpaper hands will make her father leave her mother!

Empires of the Monsoon


Richard Seymour Hall - 1996
    It is this civilization and its destruction at the hands of the West that Richard Hall recreates in this book. Hall's history of the exploration and exploitation by Chinese and Arab travellers, and by the Portuguese, Dutch and British alike is one of brutality, betrayal and colonial ambition.

The Voice of Hope


Aung San Suu Kyi - 1996
    Daughter of the martyred Burmese national hero who negotiated Burma's independence from Britain in the 1940s, Aung San Suu Kyi led the pro-democracy movement in Burma in 1988. The movement was quickly and brutally crushed by the military junta, and Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest.The Voice of Hope is a rare and intimate journey to the heart of her struggle. Over a period of nine months, Alan Clements, the first American ordained as a Buddhist monk in Burma, met with Aung San Suu Kyi shortly after her release from her first house arrest in July 1995. With her trademark ability to speak directly and compellingly, she presents here her vision of engaged compassion and describes how she has managed to sustain her hope and optimism.

Masters of Meditation and Miracles: Lives of the Great Buddhist Masters of India and Tibet


Tulku Thondup - 1996
    They flourished in Tibet, the Roof of the World, in its golden days. These teachers belong to the Longchen Nyingthig lineage of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, a cycle of mystical teachings revealed by the great scholar and adept Jigme Lingpa. From the first master, Garap Dorje, to the present, each spiritual personality has his or her own distinctive role to play in this great lineage. In retelling their stories in his own words, the author has sought to bring out their inner feelings as well as their external activities: how they faced and healed physical pain, how they dealt with emotional turmoil, how they overcame spiritual or meditative illusions, and most important, what experiences they had when they awakened their own inner Buddha Mind and Buddha qualities. These biographies not only provide great sources of teachings on meditation, but will also kindle a spiritual flame in the hearts of readers.

Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple


Kaoru Nonomura - 1996
    This book is Nonomura's recollection of his experiences. He skillfully describes every aspect of training, including how to meditate, how to eat, how to wash, even how to use the toilet, in a way that is easy to understand no matter how familiar a reader is with Zen Buddhism. This first-person account also describes Nonomura's struggles in the face of beatings, hunger, exhaustion, fear, and loneliness, the comfort he draws from his friendships with the other trainees, and his quiet determination to give his life spiritual meaning.After writing Eat Sleep Sit, Kaoru Nonomura returned to his normal life as a designer, but his book has maintained its popularity in Japan, selling more than 100,000 copies since its first printing in 1996. Beautifully written, and offering fascinating insight into a culture of hardships that few people could endure, this is a deeply personal story that will appeal to all those with an interest in Zen Buddhism, as well as to anyone seeking spiritual growth.

Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam's Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap


Cecil B. Currey - 1996
    Author Cecil B. Currey makes one primary reason clear: North Viet Nam's Senior Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap. Victory at Any Cost tells the full story of the man who fought three of the world's great powers—and beat them all.

Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography


Peter Conn - 1996
    Buck was one of the most renowned, interesting, and controversial figures ever to influence American and Chinese cultural and literary history--and yet she remains one of the least studied, honored, or remembered. In this richly illustrated and meticulously crafted narrative, Conn recounts Buck's life in absorbing detail, tracing the parallel course of American and Chinese history. This cultural biography thus offers a dual portrait: of Buck, a figure greater than history cares to remember, and of the era she helped to shape.

The Kanji Dictionary


Mark Spahn - 1996
    Every kanji compound, a word or phrase made up of two or more characters, is listed under each of its components characters. This unique, time–saving feature makes finding compounds fast and easy. Entries are arranged according to a radical based reference system, similar to that used in most other dictionaries, but is has been simplified to make it easier to learn and use. Also, the comprehensive on/kun readings index and handy radical "overview lists" provide further means to find an entry. The focus of this reference work is kanji compounds, and the more than 47,000 entries in the main text include the most common and most important terms and expressions currently in use. The addition of newly coined terms, particularly those in new technical fields, is another key feature.-Features over 47,000 entries with an emphasis on current expressions-Arranged for search from any kanji in a compound-Contains a complete on/kun (Chinese/Japanese) reading index-Includes and easy–to–use radical guide-Provides appendices of counters, historical periods, common Japanese surnames, etc.

The Roaring Stream: A New Zen Reader


Nelson Foster - 1996
    It offers readers a tour through more than a millennium of writing, presenting one masterpiece after another in chronological progression. "You can dip into the waters of this stream, again and again, at any point Finding refreshment and perspective, " notes Robert Aitken in his introduction. "A year From now you can dip in again and find treasures that were not at all evident the First time." From lectures to letters, brief poems to extended disquisitions, this collection is an ideal point of entry For newcomers to the Zen tradition, and an essential sourcebook For those who are already " on the way.""Now the masterpieces of Zen Buddhist writing are availa6le in a single volume," applauds Library Journal. "[This] will be the standard introduction to Zen Buddhism For years to come."

Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine


Jasper Becker - 1996
    Over thirty million perished in a grain shortage brought on not by flood, drought, or infestation, but by the insanely irresponsible dictates of Chairman Mao Ze-dong's "Great Leap Forward," an attempt at utopian engineering gone horribly wrong.Journalist Jasper Becker conducted hundreds of interviews and spent years immersed in painstaking detective work to produce Hungry Ghosts, the first full account of this dark chapter in Chinese history. In this horrific story of state-sponsored terror, cannibalism, torture, and murder, China's communist leadership boasted of record harvests and actually increased grain exports, while refusing imports and international assistance. With China's reclamation of Hong Kong now a fait accompli, removing the historical blinders is more timely than ever. As reviewer Richard Bernstein wrote in the New York Times, "Mr. Becker's remarkable book...strikes a heavy blow against willed ignorance of what took place."

True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women: The Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military...


Keith Howard - 1996
    Yet successive post-war Japanese governments have refused to acknowledge what took place and no reparations have been made to the mainly Korean victims. Recent developments in human rights and women's rights in Korea have led to the surviving Comfort Women to overcome traditional taboos of chastity, defilement and shame to speak out for the first time.

Confucius Speaks: Words to Live by


Tsai Chih Chung - 1996
    Presents key pasages from the Analects of Confucius in comic book form.

Gods That Fail: Modern Idolatry & Christian Mission


Vinoth Ramachandra - 1996
    Idols such as science, reason and irrationality stand tall across the landscape. Ramachandra shows how they enslave their devotees and too often wreak chaos inside as well as outside the church.Gods That Fail combines lively social criticism with fresh biblical exposition, It will prove illuminating and helpful to any Christian who wants to see through the forces that block effective mission in today's world.

Charmaine Solomon's Encyclopedia of Asian Food


Charmaine Solomon - 1996
    This comprehensive reference book is all you will need to understand everything about even the most obscure Asian ingredients.

An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911


Stephen Owen - 1996
    to the end of the imperial system in 1911.This collection of over 600 pieces, translated with great clarity and sense of the original, presents the tradition in historical and aesthetic context. Moving roughly chronologically through the tradition, An Anthology of Chinese Literature gathers texts in a variety of genres songs, letters, anecdotes, poetry, political oratory, plays, traditional literary theory, and more to show how the essential texts build on and echo each other. Coupled with highly readable commentary, this innovative structure uniquely highlights the interplay among Chinese literature, culture, and history.

The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii's Culinary Heritage


Rachel Laudan - 1996
    Lauden was given the 1997 Jane Grigson Award, presented to the book that, more than any other entered in the competition, exemplifies distinguished scholarship.Hawaii has one of the richest culinary heritages in the United States. Its contemporary regional cuisine, known as local food by residents, is a truly amazing fusion of diverse culinary influences. Rachel Laudan takes readers on a thoughtful, wide-ranging tour of Hawaii's farms and gardens, fish auctions and vegetable markets, fairs and carnivals, mom-and-pop stores and lunch wagons, to uncover the delightful complexities and incongruities in Hawaii's culinary history.More than 150 recipes, photographs, a bibliography of Hawaii's cookbooks, and an extensive glossary make The Food of Paradise an invaluable resource for cooks, food historians, and Hawaiiana buffs.

Lao Lao of Dragon Mountain


Margaret Bateson-Hill - 1996
    The full story in Chinese and instructions for making traditional Chinese paper-cuts are also included.

Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India


Gregory Schopen - 1996
    Challenging the popular stereotype that represented the accumulation of merit as the domain of the layperson while monks concerned themselves with more sophisticated realms of doctrine and meditation, Professor Schopen problematizes many assumptions about the lay-monastic distinction by demonstrating that monks and nuns, both the scholastic elites and the less learned, participated actively in a wide range of ritual practices and institutions that have heretofore been judged 'popular,' from the accumulation and transfer of merit; to the care of deceased relatives;.... Taken together, the studies contained in this volume represent the basis for a new historiography of Buddhism, not only for their critique of many of the idees recues of Buddhist Studies but for the compelling connections they draw between apparently disparate details." --Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

Never Without Heroes: Marine Third Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam, 1965-70


Lawrence C. Vetter Jr. - 1996
    . .In four and a half years in Vietnam, the Marines of the Third Reconnaissance Battalion repeatedly penetrated North Vietnamese and Vietcong sanctuaries by foot and by helicopter to find enemy forces, learn the enemy's intentions, and, when possible, bring deadly fire down on his head. Heavily armed, well-camouflaged teams of six and eight men daily exposed themselves to overwhelming enemy forces so that other Marines would have the information necessary to fight the war.It's all here: grueling, tense, and deadly recon patrols; insertions directly into NVA basecamps; last-stand defenses in the wreckage of downed helicopters; pursuit by superior North Vietnamese forces; agonizing deaths of men who valiantly put their lives on the line.NEVER WITHOUT HEROES is the first book to recount the story of a Marine reconnaissance battalion in Vietnam from the day of its arrival to its withdrawal. In Vietnam, Larry Vetter served as a platoon leader in Third Recon Battalion. He supplements his own recollections with Marine Corps records, exhaustive interviews with veterans, and correspondence to capture the bravery, and self-sacrifice of war.

The Killing Fields


Chris Riley - 1996
    After being out of print for some time we have a limited number of copies available.

The Beach


Alex Garland - 1996
    (Nancy Pearl)

Peacebound Trains


Haemi Balgassi - 1996
    As Sumi waits for the train that will bring her mother back after a long absence, Grandmother tells how her family escaped on a train from Seoul, Korea, at the last moment before the Korean War began.

Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular East Asia


Imamura Keiji - 1996
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Fighting for Faith and Nation


Cynthia Keppley Mahmood - 1996
    Listening to the voices of people who experience political violence--either as victims or as perpetrators--gives new insights into both the sources of violent conflict and the potential for its resolution.Drawing on her extensive interviews and conversations with Sikh militants, Cynthia Keppley Mahmood presents their accounts of the human rights abuses inflicted on them by the state of India as well as their explanations of the philosophical tradition of martyrdom and meaningful death in the Sikh faith. While demonstrating how divergent the world views of participants in a conflict can be, Fighting for Faith and Nation gives reason to hope that our essential common humanity may provide grounds for a pragmatic resolution of conflicts such as the one in Punjab which has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the past fifteen years.

Angkor Wat: Time, Space, and Kingship


Eleanor Mannikka - 1996
    The temple was rescued from obscurity in the mid-19th century when French explorers reported seeing great sandstone monuments in the Cambodian jungle. At the turn of the century, as clearing began and the site re-emerged from the surrounding jungle growth, the temple was on its way to becoming recognized around the world as one of our greatest architectural achievements. Despite its impressive exterior, very little was known about Angkor Wat beyond the stories told by it bas-reliefs and the inscriptions chronicling the life of its builder, King Suryavarman II. Now, Eleanor Mannikka's study brings the principles of 12th-century Khmer temple architecture to the modern world.

Japanese for Busy People: Kana Workbook


Association for Japanese-Language Teaching (AJALT) - 1996
    Now, more than a decade after its first revision, the series is being redesigned, updated and consolidated to meet the needs of today's students and businesspeople who want to learn natural, spoken Japanese as effectively as possible in a limited amount of time.The Kana Workbook teaches the reading and writing of the two most basic Japanese scripts, hiragana and katakana. These scripts are used all the time in written Japanese, and a mastery of them is essential for those who wish to study the language at any level above "survival." As such, the book serves as a prerequisite to both Japanese for Busy People I: Kana Version and Japanese for Busy People II, and it is also recommended as review for those who have learned kana before but have forgotten some of the basics.This completely revised workbook features: - Lots of practice in recognition, reading, and writing; - Fun, picture-dictionary-like illustrations that help students build their vocabularies; - A free CD that gives learners a taste of the actual sounds of Japanese; - A bonus section introducing basic kanji.

San'ya Blues: Laboring Life in Contemporary Tokyo


Edward Fowler - 1996
    The city's largest day-labor market, notorious for its population of casual laborers, drunks, gamblers, and vagrants, has been home for more than half a century to anywhere from five to fifteen thousand men who cluster in the mornings at a crossroads called Namidabashi (Bridge of Tears) in hopes of getting work. The day-labor market, along with gambling and prostitution, is run by Japan's organized crime syndicates, the yakuza. Working as a day laborer himself, Fowler kept a diary of his experiences. He also talked with day laborers and local merchants, union leaders and bureaucrats, gangsters and missionaries. The resulting oral histories, juxtaposed with Fowler's narrative and diary entries, bring to life a community on the margins of contemporary Japan.Located near a former outcaste neighborhood, on what was once a public execution ground, San'ya shows a hidden face of Japan and contradicts the common assumption of economic and social homogeneity. Fowler argues that differences in ethnicity and class, normally suppressed in mainstream Japanese society, are conspicuous in San'ya and similar communities. San'ya's largely middle-aged, male day-laborer population contains many individuals displaced by Japan's economic success, including migrants from village communities, castoffs from restructuring industries, and foreign workers from Korea and China. The neighborhood and its inhabitants serve as an economic buffer zone--they are the last to feel the effects of a boom and the first to feel a recession. They come alive in this book, telling urgent stories that personify such abstractions as the costs of modernization and the meaning of physical labor in postindustrial society.

The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam


William J. Duiker - 1996
    Making use of newly available documentary sources and recent Western scholarship, the author reevaluates Communist revolutionary strategy during the Vietnam War. Based on primary materials in several languages, this respected work is essential for an understanding of Vietnam in the twentieth century.

The Weight of the Yen


R. Taggart Murphy - 1996
    This happened because the United States spent and Japan saved. In the early 1980s, Reagan's Washington discovered that Japan would cheerfully lend their vast savings to the United States by buying U.S. government bonds.How the Japanese money accumulated, the system that created it, and American fumbling that led to crippling debt service, a loss of much of our manufacturing base, and our economy's diminishing good jobs. The Weight of the Yen explains it all, in an intriguing, jargon-free analysis of the past fifteen years and the problems between America and Japan that are yet to come.

The Women of the Pleasure Quarter


Elizabeth de Sabato Swinton - 1996
    Fascinating study of geisha, courtesans, kabuki performers as portrayed by masters of Japanese art from 1600 to 1868.

Mysterious Tales of Japan


Rafe Martin - 1996
    Each possesses an elegant beauty that unfolds in strange situations and heads toward inevitable conclusions that mirror the realities of our own lives.

The Warrior Song of King Gesar


Douglas J. Penick - 1996
    The Gesar cycle has been recreated and amended by visionary bards in Central Asia for centuries. In this modern rendition, Douglas Penick brings us the unbroken heritage of spiritual warriorship embodied by the life of the enlightened warrior-sage Gesar, King of Ling. Gesar's unique teaching lies in showing us ways to use the very energy of drama and adventure to attain lasting peace.

Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 6: Biology and Biological Technology, Part 6: Medicine


Joseph Needham - 1996
    Five essays are included by Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen, edited and expanded upon by the editor, Nathan Sivin. The essays offer broad and readable accounts of medicine in culture, including hygiene and preventive medicine, forensic medicine and immunology. Professor Sivin's extensive introduction discusses these essays, placing them in their historical and medical context, and surveys recent medical discoveries from China, Japan, Europe and the United States.

Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East-Asian Influences on His Work


Reinhard May - 1996
    In this groundbreaking study, Reinhard May shows conclusively that Martin Heidegger borrowed some of the major ideas of his philosophy - on occasion almost word for word - from German translations of Chinese Daoist and Zen Buddhist classics. The discovery of this astonishing appropriation of non-Western sources will have important consequences for future interpretations of Heidegger's work. Moreover, it shows Heidegger as a pioneer of comparative philosophy and transcultural thinking.

Sindh Revisited: A Journey in the Footsteps of Captain Sir Richard Francis Butrton


Christopher Ondaatje - 1996
    The book is both a biography and exploration of the British India of yesterday and the India and Sindh of today.

Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India


Bernard S. Cohn - 1996
    His earlier publications have shown how dramatic British innovations in India, including revenue and legal systems, led to fundamental structural changes in Indian social relations. This collection of his writings in the last fifteen years discusses areas in which the colonial impact has generally been overlooked. The essays form a multifaceted exploration of the ways in which the British discovery, collection, and codification of information about Indian society contributed to colonial cultural hegemony and political control.Cohn argues that the British Orientalists' study of Indian languages was important to the colonial project of control and command. He also asserts that an arena of colonial power that seemed most benign and most susceptible to indigenous influences--mostly law--in fact became responsible for the institutional reactivation of peculiarly British notions about how to regulate a colonial society made up of others. He shows how the very Orientalist imagination that led to brilliant antiquarian collections, archaeological finds, and photographic forays were in fact forms of constructing an India that could be better packaged, inferiorized, and ruled. A final essay on cloth suggests how clothes have been part of the history of both colonialism and anticolonialism.

High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng's China


Jing Wang - 1996
    Wang's energetic, creative, and highly intelligent take on Chinese culture provides a broad portrait of the post-revolutionary era and a provocative inquiry into the nature of Chinese modernity.In seven linked essays, the author examines the cultural dynamics that have given rise to the epochal discourse. She traces the Chinese Marxists' short debate over "socialist alienation" and examines the various schools of thought—Li Zehou and the Marxist Reconstruction of Confucianism, the neo-Confucian Revivalists, and the Enlightenment School—that came into play in the Culture Fever. She also critiques the controversial mini-series Yellow River Elegy. In mapping out China's post-revolutionary aesthetics, Wang introduces the debate over "pseudo-modernism," refutes the pseudo-proposition of "Chinese postmodernism," and looks at the dawning of popular culture in the 1990s.This book delivers a ten-year intertwined history of Chinese intellectuals, writers, literary critics, and cultural critics that gives us a deeper understanding of the China of the 1980s, the 1990s, and beyond.

Manchu Palaces


Jeanne Larsen - 1996
    Schooled in painting and music in the hope of securing a place in the imperial palaces of Beijing's Forbidden City, Lotus learns other arts from her father's concubine that are at odds wit the teachings of straitlaced Confucian scholars. Meanwhile, her lively, book-loving cousin prepares herself for the difficult life of a wife and daughter-in-law, seeking a suitable husband who isn't put off by the smallpox scars that mar her face. As the cousins wend their way through the seductive world of the senses, a second tale, one of spiritual pilgrimage, unfolds: Lotus's beloved mother has died, and her spirit wanders between the realms, struggling to return to life in the flesh. While Lotus explores the mysteries of sex and seeks an end to her mourning, her mother refuses to learn the lessons of the gods and goddesses.

Facing The Cambodian Past: Selected Essays 1971-1994


David P. Chandler - 1996
    Other essays deal with aspects of the colonial period and the revolutionary era (1975-1979). This collection closes with two essays, written 16 years apart, that deal with what the author calls "the tragedy of Cambodian history."

Gai-Jin, Tom #2


James Clavell - 1996
    Their passions mingle with monarchs and diplomats, assassins, courtesans and spies. Their fates collide in James Clavell’s latest masterpiece set in nineteenth-century Japan–an unforgettable epic seething with betrayal and secrets, brutality and heroism, love and forbidden passions.…

Quiet Fire


Juliana Chang - 1996
    The poems were selected to reflect both the high quality and wide range of Asian American poetic discourse. The anthology begins with writings from the 1890s by Sadakichi Hartmann and Yone Noguchi and includes poems by Jun Fujita (1923), Bunishi Kagawa (1930), Hisaye Yamamoto (1940), Diana Change (1946), and others. Early work by well-known writers Joy Kogawa, Jessica Hagedorn, and Lawson Inada are also represented. Essays by Fay Chiang, Eric Chock, Alan Chong Lau, Kimiko Hahn, and Gerry Shikatani give an overview of regional Asian American poetry scenes from the 1970s through the 1990s, and the editor provides a complete bibliography of published volumes of Asian American poetry. An important source book, Quiet Fire makes a significant contribution to the remapping of American poetry and Asian American literature.

America at War since 1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan


Gary A. Donaldson - 1996
    The main questions asked are: How did the U.S. become involved in these wars? How were the wars conducted? And how did the U.S. get out of these wars?In Korea and Vietnam, the US fought to show the world that it would stand up to the evils of communism—that it could be counted on (with money, advisors, or even a major military effort if necessary) to halt the advance of communism. But in both wars, the US showed itself to be militarily vulnerable. In its wars against radical Islam since 9/11, the United States has made use of its military to protect its interests in the Middle East, particularly its oil interests, while trying to spread its ideas of democracy, constitutionalism, and the rule of law. The lessons are clear: America's values often do not translate into the less-developed world.In 2016, as the debate over ISIS intensifies, America at War since 1945 reminds us that the history of US postwar military conflict has seldom been marked by clearly defined goals and outcomes. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

A Dictionary of Maqiao


Han Shaogong - 1996
    Told in the format of a dictionary, with a series of vignettes disguised as entries, A Dictionary of Maqiao is a novel of bold invention–and a fascinating, comic, deeply moving journey through the dark heart of the Cultural Revolution.Entries trace the wisdom and absurdities of Maqiao: the petty squabbles, family grudges, poverty, infidelities, fantasies, lunatics, bullies, superstitions, and especially the odd logic in their use of language–where the word for “beginning” is the same as the word for “end”; “little big brother” means older sister; to be “scientific” means to be lazy; and “streetsickness” is a disease afflicting villagers visiting urban areas. Filled with colorful characters–from a weeping ox to a man so poisonous that snakes die when they bite him–A Dictionary of Maqiao is both an important work of Chinese literature and a probing inquiry into the extraordinary power of language.

Deluxe Origami: Includes Everything Needed to Master the Japanese Art of Paper Folding


Charles E. Tuttle Company - 1996
    From exotic animals such as giraffes and peacocks to classics like candy boxes or pinwheels, Deluxe Origami shows you how to fold 29 projects that will delight and amaze. This kit includes everything you need to get started folding, and will provide hours of fun and entertainment for the whole family.

The Temple of Memories: History, Power, and Morality in a Chinese Village


Jun Jing - 1996
    It recounts both how this proud community was subjected to intense suffering during the Maoist era, culminating in its forcible resettlement in December 1960 to make way for the construction of a major hydroelectric dam, and how the village eventually sought recovery through the commemoration of that suffering and the revival of a redefined religion.Before 1949, the Kongs had dominated their area because of their political influence, wealth, and, above all, their identification with Confucius, whose precepts underlay so much of the Chinese ethical and political tradition. After the Communists came to power in 1949, these people, as a literal embodiment of the Confucian heritage, became prime targets for Maoist political campaigns attacking the traditional order, from land reform to the “Criticize Confucius” movement. Many villagers were arrested, three were beheaded, and others died in labor camps. When the villagers were forced to hastily abandon their homes and the village temple, they had time to disinter only the bones of their closest family members; the tombs of earlier generations were destroyed by construction workers for the dam.

Shambhala: The Fascinating Truth behind the Myth of Shangri-la


Victoria LePage - 1996
    Called by some Shangri-la, this mythical kingdom, where the pure at heart live forever among jewel lakes, wish-fulfilling trees, and speaking stones, has fired the imagination of both actual explorers and mystical travelers to the inner realms. In this fascinating look behind the myth, Victoria LePage traces the links between this legendary Utopia and the mythologies of the world. Shambhala, LePage argues persuasively, is "real" and may be becoming more so as human beings as a species learn increasingly to perceive dimensions of reality that have been concealed for millennia.

Cultural Atlas Of India


Gordon Johnson - 1996
    Here is a stimulating introduction to the peoples and cultures of the Indian subcontinent, from ancient times to the present day, with special coverage of topics that may be unfamiliar to the Western reader.