Best of
Asia

1998

The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew


Lee Kuan Yew - 1998
    In these vivid memoirs, Lee takes a profoundly personal look back at the events that led to Singapore's independence and shaped its struggle for success. And, as always, he lets the chips fall where they may.In intimate detail, Lee recounts Singapore's unforgettable history. You'll be with Lee as he leads striking unionists against the colonial government; shares tea and rounds of golf with key players in Britain and Malaya; and drinks warm Anchor beer with leaders of the communist underground at secret midnight meetings. From British colonial rule through Japanese occupation in World War II, Communist insurrection, riots, independence -- and the struggles that followed -- few political memoirs anywhere have been this blunt, or this fascinating.Anyone interested in the political history of Singapore, Asia, and the modern world.

The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison


Warren Fellows - 1998
    He was consequently sentenced to life in Bang Kwang prison, known as the Bangkok Hilton. This is the story of his 12 years behind bars, the abuse of human rights and the squalid conditions he endured.

Sorcerer's Apprentice


Tahir Shah - 1998
    Two decades later, he sets out in search of this man. Sorcerer's Apprentice is the story of his apprenticeship to one of India's master conjurors and his initiation into the brotherhood of godmen. Learning to unmask illusion as well as practice it, he goes on a journey across the subcontinent, seeking out its miraculous and bizarre underbelly, traveling from Calcutta to Madras, from Bangalore to Bombay, meeting sadhus, sages, sorcerers, hypnotists, and humbugs. His quest is utterly unforgettable.-- An extraordinary account of how illusion works and an astonishing portrait of a great illusionist.

The Long Way Home: A Journey Into History with Captain Robert Ford


Ed Dover - 1998
    I sell NEW, personally autographed copies of The Long Way Home Revised Edition directly from my home. This new 2008 version combines and integrates previously listed addenda items and new information into the main body of the story, with additional photos of the Clipper, in a high quality paperback version.

The End of Imagination


Arundhati Roy - 1998
    The End of Imagination also includes her nonfiction works Power Politics, War Talk, Public Power in the Age of Empire, and An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, which include her widely circulated and inspiring writings on the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the need to confront corporate power, and the hollowing out of democratic institutions globally.

The Clouds Should Know Me By Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China


Red Pine - 1998
    Featuring the original Chinese as well as english translations and historical introductions by Burton Watson, J.P. Seaton, Paul Hansen, James Sanford, and the editors, this book provides an appreciation and understanding of this elegant and traditional expression of spirituality."So take a walk with...these cranky, melancholy, lonely, mischievous poet-ancestors. Their songs are stout as a pilgrim's stave or a pair of good shoes, and were meant to be taken on the great journey."--Andrew Schelling, from his Introduction

Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas


Han Fook Kwang - 1998
    This book, which was first published in 1998, tells the story of his life from when the Japanese occupied Singapore in 1941 until 1998 when he was Senior Minister. Based on 13 exclusive interviews held over 30 hours, this book chronicles the events, people and political fortunes that were to shape Lee’s view of the world, as well as the path he set for the transformation of Singapore. It delves into the choices he made, the political turnings he took, the insights gained and lessons learnt, some of which were expounded to the authors for the first time, with wit, wisdom, candor and vivid recollection. Written by three leading journalists from The Straits Times.

Colorful


Eto Mori - 1998
    The soul hasn't been kicked out of the cycle of rebirth just yet—he's been given a second chance. He must recall the biggest mistake of his past life while on 'homestay' in the body of fourteen-year-old Makoto Kobayashi, who has just committed suicide. It looks like Makoto doesn't have a single friend, and his family don't seem to care about him at all. But as the soul begins to live Makoto's life on his own terms, he grows closer to the family and the people around him, and sees their true colors more clearly, shedding light on Makoto's misunderstandings.Since its initial release over twenty years ago, Colorful has become a part of the literary canon, not only in Japan—where it has sold over a million copies—but around the world, having been translated into several different languages. Now, Eto Mori's beloved classic is finally available in English.

The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India


Urvashi Butalia - 1998
    Within the space of two months in 1947 more than twelve million people were displaced. A million died. More than seventy-five thousand women were abducted and raped. Countless children disappeared. Homes, villages, communities, families, and relationships were destroyed. Yet, more than half a century later, little is known of the human dimensions of this event. In The Other Side of Silence , Urvashi Butalia fills this gap by placing people—their individual experiences, their private pain—at the center of this epochal event.Through interviews conducted over a ten-year period and an examination of diaries, letters, memoirs, and parliamentary documents, Butalia asks how people on the margins of history—children, women, ordinary people, the lower castes, the untouchables—have been affected by this upheaval. To understand how and why certain events become shrouded in silence, she traces facets of her own poignant and partition-scarred family history before investigating the stories of other people and their experiences of the effects of this violent disruption. Those whom she interviews reveal that, at least in private, the voices of partition have not been stilled and the bitterness remains. Throughout, Butalia reflects on difficult questions: what did community, caste, and gender have to do with the violence that accompanied partition? What was partition meant to achieve and what did it actually achieve? How, through unspeakable horrors, did the survivors go on? Believing that only by remembering and telling their stories can those affected begin the process of healing and forgetting, Butalia presents a sensitive and moving account of her quest to hear the painful truth behind the silence.

Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan


Will Ferguson - 1998
    Not in 4000 years of Japanese recorded history had anyone followed the Cherry Blossom Front from one end of the country to the other. Nor had anyone hitchhiked the length of Japan. But, heady on sakura and sake, Will Ferguson bet he could do both. The resulting travelogue is one of the funniest and most illuminating books ever written about Japan. And, as Ferguson learns, it illustrates that to travel is better than to arrive.

Death in the A Shau Valley: L Company LRRPs in Vietnam, 1969-70


Larry Chambers - 1998
    But his unit's mission stayed the same: act as the eyes and ears of the 101st deep in the dreaded A Shau Valley--where the NVA ruled.Relentless thick fog frequently made fighter bombers useless in the A Shau, and the enemy had furnished the nearby mountaintops with antiaircraft machine guns to protect the massive trail network that snaked through it. So, outgunned, outmanned, and unsupported, the teams of L Company executed hundreds of courageous missions. Now, in this powerful personal record, Larry Chambers recaptures the experience of the war's most brutal on-the-job training, where the slightest noise or smallest error could bring sudden--and certain--death. . . .

Revenge


Yōko Ogawa - 1998
    Years later, the writer’s stepson reflects upon his stepmother and the strange stories she used to tell him. Meanwhile, a surgeon’s lover vows to kill him if he does not leave his wife. Before she can follow-through on her crime of passion, though, the surgeon will cross paths with another remarkable woman, a cabaret singer whose heart beats delicately outside of her body. But when the surgeon promises to repair her condition, he sparks the jealousy of another man who would like to preserve the heart in a custom tailored bag. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders—their fates converge in a darkly beautiful web that they are each powerless to escape.Macabre, fiendishly clever, and with a touch of the supernatural, Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge creates a haunting tapestry of death—and the afterlife of the living.

An Anthology


Rabindranath Tagore - 1998
    This comprehensive and engaging anthology gathers his polymathic achievement, from the extraordinary humanity of The Post Officer to memoirs, letters, essays and conversations, short stories, extracts from the celebrated novel The Home and the World, poems, songs, epigrams, and paintings. This inspired collection of works by one of this century's most profound writers in an essential guide for readers seeking to understand Indian literature, culture, and wisdom, and the perfect reintroduction of Tagore's magnificence to American readers.

The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe


John Rabe - 1998
    The Good Man of Nanking is a crucial document for understanding one of World War II's most horrific incidents of genocide, one which the Japanese have steadfastly refused to acknowledge.  It is also the moving and awe-inspiring record of one man's conscience, courage, and generosity in the face of appalling human brutality.Until the recent emergence of John Rabe's diaries, few people knew abouth the unassuming hero who has been called the Oskar Schindler of China.  In November 1937, as Japanese troops overran the Chinese capital of Nanking and began a campaign of torture, rape, and murder against its citizens, one man-a German who had lived in China for thirty years and who was a loyal follower of Adolph Hitler-put himself at risk and in order to save the lives of 200,000 poor Chinese, 600 of whom he sheltered in his own home.

The Greatest Treasure


Demi - 1998
    In this traditional Chinese tale, a poor man receives a treasure of gold and discovers the true value of simple pleasures.

Splendid Slippers: A Thousand Years of an Erotic Tradition


Beverley Jackson - 1998
    The author's vast collection of historical and contemporary photographs, plus 40 full-color -portraits- of her most prized slippers, creates a uniquely poignant and evocative panorama.

The Crane Wife


Odds Bodkin - 1998
     This retelling of a traditional Japanese folktale teaches readers young or old a lesson about life and love.

Lonely Planet Bhutan


Lonely Planet - 1998
    Join the pilgrims at colourful Changangkha Lhakhang, hike to the dramatic cliff -hanging Taktshang Goemba, or explore the busy weekend market at Thimpu; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Bhutan and begin your journey now! Inside Lonely Planet Bhutan Travel Guide: Colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - festivals, architecture, Buddhism, customs, wildlife, history, traditional arts Over 37 maps Covers Thimphu, Paro Dzongkhag, Trongsa Dzongkhag, Mongar Dzongkhag and more eBook Features: (Best viewed on tablet devices and smartphones) Downloadable PDF and offline maps prevent roaming and data charges Effortlessly navigate and jump between maps and reviews Add notes to personalise your guidebook experience Seamlessly flip between pages Bookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flash Embedded links to recommendations' websites Zoom-in maps and images Inbuilt dictionary for quick referencing Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet. About Lonely Planet: Since 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel media company with guidebooks to every destination, an award-winning website, mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travellers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves. *Best-selling guide to Bhutan. Source: Nielsen BookScan. Australia, UK and USA

More Far Eastern Tales


W. Somerset Maugham - 1998
    From the love affair between a missionary and a drunkard to the mystery surrounding a death at sea, this collection gives a warm and humourous insight into life and history of life in the colonies and stands as a superbly entertaining and compelling testament to Maugham's skill and power as a short story writer.For an alternate cover edition see: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

The Spectre of Comparisons


Benedict Anderson - 1998
    Strange shifts in perspective can take place when Berlin is viewed from Jakarta, or when complex histories of colonial domination strand what counts as the founding work of a national culture in a language its people no longer read. The “spectre of comparisons” arises as nations stir into self awareness, matching themselves against others, and becoming whole through the exercise of the imagination.In this series of profound and eloquent essays, Benedict Anderson, best known for his classic book on nationalism, Imagined Communities, explores these effects as they work their way through politics and culture. Spanning broad accounts of the development of nationalism and identity, and detailed studies of Southeast Asia, the book includes pieces on East Timor, where every Indonesian attempt to suppress national feeling has had the opposite effect; on the Philippines, where it is said that some horses eat better than stable-hands; on Thailand, where so much money can be made in elected posts that candidates regularly kill to get them; on the Filipino nationalist and novelist José Rizal for whom “we mortals are like turtles—we have value and are classified according to our shells;” and a remarkable essay on Mario Vargas Llosa, detailing the fate of indigenous minorities at the hands of the modern state.While The Spectre of Comparisons is an indispensable resource for those interested in Southeast Asia, Anderson also takes up the large issues of the universal grammars of nationalism and ethnicity, the peculiarity of nationalist imagery as replicas without originals, and the mutations of nationalism in an age of mass global migrations and instant electronic communications.

Hokusai and Hiroshige: Great Japanese Prints from the James A. Michener Collection, Honolulu Academy of Arts


Julia M. White - 1998
    Michener Collection, Honolulu Academy of ArtsHokusai: September 23-November 15, 1998Hiroshige: November 21, 1998-January 17, 1999The society of Japan's Edo period (1615-1867) embraced a number of intriguing contradictions. It was a time of unprecedented stability, when Japan, previously a mosaic of violently warring feudal states, finally achieved unity as a nation. Though strictly stratified in four hereditary classes -- nobles, farmers, artisans, and merchants -- Edo society nevertheless produced a vigorous middle class of enterprising commoners. By the 1800s, commoners enjoyed the numerous amenities of Edo (Tokyo), the world's largest city (pop. ca. 800,000). They launched businesses, perfected crafts, gained leisure time and literacy, traveled a system of safe roads, and enjoyed art and poetry.While initially print makers illustrated the denizens of the pleasure quarters, or ukiyo (Floating World), the print also became an acceptable and affordable medium for the full range of expression common to Japanese art, including landscape, flowers and birds, and genre scenes. The most important and prolific were the 19th-century artists Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige, whose prints constitute the most recognizable images of Japanese art throughout the world. Hokusai and Hiroshige were the chief innovators of a new motif in ukiyo-e prints — the landscape as an independent subject. This collection of 200 prints, 100 by each artist, is designed to explore their full range of expression. The selection includes their great landscape series, among them Hokusai's complete Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, and the unfailing favorite, Hiroshige's Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road, also in its entirety. In Hokusai's and Hiroshige's prints, we see the faces of the new middle class, both the excitement and drudgery of their daily activities, and their favorite views of landmarks and natural wonders.

From Both Sides Now: The Poetry of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath


Philip Mahony - 1998
    Chronologically arranged to mirror the progression of the war, From Both Sides Now brings together a wide variety of opposing views, with poetry by American and Vietnamese soldiers, orphans, widows, priests, monks, political figures, and antiwar protesters. In addition to including extraordinary works from well-known poets such as Bruce Weigl, Margaret Atwood, Yusef Komunyakaa, Sharon Olds, Robert Bly, Allen Ginsberg, Grace Paley, Philip Levine, and W. S. Merwin, editor Phillip Mahony has scoured the globe to find amazing and, in some cases, never-before-published poetry by North and South Vietnamese soldiers and poets and the first postwar generation of Vietnamese-Americans. Together the words of these poets cohere to a modern, many-voiced epic about the most important event in recent American history. Poignant and accessible, the poems collected here will leave an indelible impact on all readers -- not only poetry lovers but everyone who lived through, and those who want to learn about, the Vietnam War.

East Window: Poems from Asia


W.S. Merwin - 1998
    Included are poems by some of the world's greatest writers, deeply influential poets such as Rumi, Tu Fu, Li Po, and Muso Soseki, beautifully brought forward by one of the century's most celebrated poets.

Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West


Donald S. Lopez Jr. - 1998
    . . . Lively and engaging, Lopez's book raises important questions about how Eastern religions are often co-opted, assimilated and misunderstood by Western culture."—Publishers Weekly"Proceeding with care and precision, Lopez reveals the extent to which scholars have behaved like intellectual colonialists. . . . Someone had to burst the bubble of pop Tibetology, and few could have done it as resoundingly as Lopez."—Booklist"Fascinating. . . [A] provocative exploration. Lopez conveys the full dizziness of the Western encounter with Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism."—Fred Pheil, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review"A timely and courageous exploration. . . . [Lopez's] book will sharpen the terms of the debate over what the Tibetans and their observers can or should be doing about the place and the idea of Tibet. And that alone is what will give us all back our Shambhala."—Jonathan Spence, Lingua Franca Book Review"Lopez's most important theme is that we should be wary of the idea . . . that Tibet has what the West lacks, that if we were only to look there we would find the answers to our problems. Lopez's book shows that, on the contrary, when the West has looked at Tibet, all that it has seen is a distorted reflection of itself."—Ben Jackson, Times Higher Education Supplement

A Cambodian Prison Portrait. One Year in the Khmer Rouge's S-21


Vann Nath - 1998
    "This text is the harrowing tale of a survivor of a secret prison known as Tuol Sleng or S-21, where more that 14,000 men, women and children were tortured and executed during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Hanuman: Based on Valmiki's Ramayana


Erik Jendresen - 1998
    So begins the story of Hanuman the monkey who believes he has lost his magic after leaping all the way to the sun. For children ages 7 and up.

Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia


Stephen Oppenheimer - 1998
    At the end of the Ice Age, Southeast Asia formed a continent twice the size of India, which included Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Borneo. In Eden in the East, Stephen Oppenheimer puts forward the astonishing argument that here in southeast Asia—rather than in Mesopotamia where it is usually placed—was the lost civilization that fertilized the Great cultures of the Middle East 6,000 years ago. He produces evidence from ethnography, archaeology, oceanography, creation stories, myths, linguistics, and DNA analysis to argue that this founding civilization was destroyed by a catastrophic flood, caused by a rapid rise in the sea level at the end of the last ice age.

A Poem at the Right Moment: Remembered Verses from Premodern South India


Velcheru Narayana Rao - 1998
    The poems are remarkable for their wit and precision, their lyrical insight on the commonplace, their fascination with sensual experience, and their exploration of the connection between language and desire. Taken together the catus offer a penetrating critical vision and an understanding of the classical traditions of Telugu, Tamil, and Sanskrit. Each poem is presented in a contemporary English translation along with the Indian-language original. An introduction and a concluding essay explore in detail the stories and texts that comprise the catu system.

Lost Crusade: America's Secret Cambodian Mercenaries


Peter Scott - 1998
    It took nearly thirty years and a chance reunion for him to realize just how much they had become a part of him. Successfully blending intense combat narrative and stirring emotional drama, Scott vividly captures both the unique village culture of a little-known, highly spiritual people and their complex relationship with Special Forces soldiers, who found it increasingly difficult to match their charges' commitment to the costly conflict. Building on his experiences as a Phoenix Program adviser near the Cambodian border, extensive interviews with Khmer Krom survivors, hundreds of hours of research in government archives, and requests for Freedom of Information Act disclosures, Scott seamlessly reconstructs the six-thousand-strong mercenary force's final crusade against communism, beginning in their ancestral home in 1970 and ending on the U.S. West Coast in 1995.

Mei Fuh: Memories from China


Edith Schaeffer - 1998
    Here is Edith Schaeffer's lively memoir of her first five years growing up in southern China. With Mei Fuh we walk along the busy city wall, taste buffalo cream on toast, feel cool breezes from Amah's bamboo fan, inhale the sweet fragrance of oiled paper umbrellas, and hear the deep, sad sound of the ship's horn as it pulls out of Shanghai Harbor, carrying Mei Fuh to her new life in America. Mei Fuh is Edith Schaeffer's poignant tribute to the China of her early years - and a vivid evocation of a curious young girl learning to find herself in her family and in the world.

The Kingfisher Book of Mythology


Cynthia O'Neill - 1998
    With this unique wide-ranging reference, kids will learn why myths developed and explore the common themes that are echoed across cultural and geographic boundaries. Fully cross-referenced, the book covers cultures as diverse as Siberia, India, and the Amazon, as well as the more familiar civilizations of Greece, Rome, and the Americas. Includes a glossary of more than 600 mythical characters.

The Only Woman in the Room


Beate Sirota Gordon - 1998
    As the daughter of renowned Russian pianist Leo Sirota, Beate Gordon grew up in the cosmopolitan world of the concert tour, then settled in Japan in the 1930s.During World War II, while her parents remained in Japan under secret service surveillance Gordon lived alone in the United States, monitoring Tokyo Radio in five languages for the government and later writing radio propaganda.She recounts her dramatic reunion with her parents in Tokyo, where she worked in General MacArthur's headquarters, and evokes the postwar suffering in defeated Japan. Her intimate description of helping draft the women's rights section of Japan's new constitution is an astonishing record of history in the making.On returning to the States in 1947, Mrs. Gordon became a cultural impresario, bringing artists, dancers, writers, and musicians from all over to the United States. Her adventures in search of performing artists in such remote and exotic places as Mongolia, Tibet, India, and Indonesia make for hilarious and sometimes hair-raising anecdotes.The Only Woman in the Room can be appreciated on many levels -- armchair travelers, feminists, history buffs, and readers who appreciate a well-written memoir will all find Beate Gordon's extraordinary life a riveting read.

The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia


Adeeb Khalid - 1998
    With the Russian conquest in the 1860s and 1870s the region came into contact with modernity. The Jadids, influential Muslim intellectuals, sought to safeguard the indigenous Islamic culture by adapting it to the modern state. Through education, literacy, use of the press and by maintaining close ties with Islamic intellectuals from the Ottoman empire to India, the Jadids established a place for their traditions not only within the changing culture of their own land but also within the larger modern Islamic world.Khalid uses previously untapped literary sources from Uzbek and Tajik as well as archival materials from Uzbekistan, Russia, Britain, and France to explore Russia's role as a colonial power and the politics of Islamic reform movements. He shows how Jadid efforts paralleled developments elsewhere in the world and at the same time provides a social history of the Jadid movement. By including a comparative study of Muslim societies, examining indigenous intellectual life under colonialism, and investigating how knowledge was disseminated in the early modern period, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform does much to remedy the dearth of scholarship on this important period. Interest in Central Asia is growing as a result of the breakup of the former Soviet Union, and Khalid's book will make an important contribution to current debates over political and cultural autonomy in the region.

Sacred Vows


U Sam Oeur - 1998
    Using myths, stories, and history as ironic counterpoint to Cambodia's present-day situation, Oeur fortells freedom's return.

The Art of East Asia


Gabriele Fahr-Becker - 1998
    Items from Imperial China once filled the porcelain cabinets of European courts, and Japanese painting and wood-carving made their way to Europe in the nineteenth century. The impressive illustrations in this volume present the reader with the unique wealth of art forms in China and Japan, forms which have also exerted tremendous influence on Western art: artful ceramics, woodcarvings, small sculptures and bronzes, porcelains and ink drawings from China; and from Japan, temple districts, imperial villas and Zen gardens, ukiyo paintings of the Edo period, the famed No masques, as well as precious textiles and costumes. These are only a few of the many aspects selected by the authors to convey the wealth and unbelievable variety of artistic forms of East Asia. An illustrated glossary and extensive bibliography complete the book.

Asia Overland


Mark Elliott - 1998
    A whopping 452 maps, town plans, and transportation routes--all in easy-to-use formats--makes this a definitive guide for a long-haul trip around Asia. Detailed visa information is given on hard-to-enter countries and the latest news on border crossings. 16 color photos.

Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment's Encounter with Asia


Jürgen Osterhammel - 1998
    In this panoramic and colorful book, Jürgen Osterhammel tells the story of the European Enlightenment's nuanced encounter with the great civilizations of the East, from the Ottoman Empire and India to China and Japan.Here is the acclaimed book that challenges the notion that Europe's formative engagement with the non-European world was invariably marred by an imperial gaze and presumptions of Western superiority. Osterhammel shows how major figures such as Leibniz, Voltaire, Gibbon, and Hegel took a keen interest in Asian culture and history, and introduces lesser-known scientific travelers, colonial administrators, Jesuit missionaries, and adventurers who returned home from Asia bearing manuscripts in many exotic languages, huge collections of ethnographic data, and stories that sometimes defied belief. Osterhammel brings the sights and sounds of this tumultuous age vividly to life, from the salons of Paris and the lecture halls of Edinburgh to the deserts of Arabia, the steppes of Siberia, and the sumptuous courts of Asian princes. He demonstrates how Europe discovered its own identity anew by measuring itself against its more senior continent, and how it was only toward the end of this period that cruder forms of Eurocentrism--and condescension toward Asia—prevailed.A momentous work by one of Europe's most eminent historians, Unfabling the East takes readers on a thrilling voyage to the farthest shores, bringing back vital insights for our own multicultural age.

Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History


Nicola Di Cosmo - 1998
    details the formation of two increasingly distinct cultural areas: the sedentary Chinese and the northern nomads. Nicola Di Cosmo explores the tensions existing between these two worlds as they became progressively more polarized, with the eventual creation of the nomadic Hsiung-nu empire in the north, and of the Chinese empire in the south. Di Cosmo investigates the origins of the antagonism between early China and its barbarian neighbors.

The Tibetans: A Struggle to Survive


Steve Lehman - 1998
    Portrays the spirit of the Tibetan people as they try to maintain their culture under Chinese rule.

Sacred Visions: Early Paintings From Central Tibet


Steven M. Kossak - 1998
    These dazzling paintings on cloth and other objects dating from the eleventh to the fifteenth century...are brought together here for the first time, and many of them are previously unpublished. The authors analyze style, iconography, provenance and date; the profound cultural ties between Tibet and eastern India as well as between Tibet and Nepal; and the painting techniques of the period.

Cast Me Out If You Will: Stories and Memoir


Lalithambika Antharjanam - 1998
    In Cast Me Out If You Will, however, Antherjanam's stories bring to life the experiences of women living at all levels of Indian society. From the faithful and devoted nanny of "Wooden Cradles" to the lonely young bride of "In the Moonlight", Antherjanam's characters are keenly observed and faithfully rendered. This unique collection of short stories and personal memoirs—a compilation representing half a century of writing and activism—is the ideal introduction to one of India's best-loved and foremost feminist authors.Antherjanam was an early feminist of Kerala, at the tip of India's subcontinent, at the beginning of the 20th century. Her family was supportive, encouraging her education and writing, but as a Brahmin woman she was confined to seclusion until her marriage, fortunately arranged to a man sympathetic to her pursuit of women's rights. Antherjanam's stories offer clear-eyed and chilling testimony to the brutal oppression suffered by Indian women "cast out" if they dared to stray from enforced subjugation. At the same time, they celebrate their resilience, resistance, and vitality of these individuals. This volume includes a selection of her fiction and memoir, which captures early moments in India's nationalist and feminist movements.

A Despotism Of Law: Crime And Justice In Early Colonial India


Radhika Singha - 1998
    Radhika Singha looks at law-making as a cultural enterprise, one in which the colonial authorities were compelled to draw upon normative codes of rank, status, and gender so as to realign them to a new, more exclusive definition of the state's sovereign right.

A Thousand Peaks: Poems from China


Siyu Liu - 1998
    She is a graduate of Qinghua University and Jinghua Art School, and holds a master's degree in architecture from State University of New York at Buffalo. An architect and artist, she lives in Wading River, New York. Orel Protopopescu, author, poet, and educator, leads seminars for teachers on creative writing and conducts prose and poetry workshops for students of all ages. Previous publications include two books for children, poetry, and a handbook on teaching writing. She lives with her family on Long Island.

Oriental Carpets: A Complete Guide - The Classic Reference


Murray L. Eiland - 1998
    The authors have extended the range of the book by incorporating new material on Chinese and Indian rugs, and the text has been completely revised. The plates of all the illustrations have been remade, and many of the rugs shown are new to this edition. The book's focus is the nineteenth- and twentieth-century weaving of the Middle and Far East. This is introduced by a brief history of carpets, followed by a discussion of weaving techniques, dyes, and design. Traditional practices are described, along with modern innovations, such as computer-aided design. The use of synthetic dyes and the recent revival of natural dyes are given a balanced appraisal. The importance and methodology of technical analysis is firmly emphasized. The endmatter includes extensive notes, a bibliography, and an index. The book includes more than 330 color illustrations, the majority of them new to this edition. They show classic pieces along with others that are more likely to be available to readers. Where possible, the captions include a structural analysis.

About Face: A History of America's Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton


James Mann - 1998
    President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger began their diplomacy with China in an attempt to find a way out of Vietnam. The remaining Cold War presidents saw China as an ally against the Soviet Union and looked askance at its violations of international principles. With the end of communism and China's continued human rights abuses, the U.S has failed to forge a genuinely new relationship with China. This is the essential story of contemporary U.S./China policy.

"Merveilles" à deux dimensions


Malice Mizer - 1998
    Also includes some black and white backstage photographs, as well as a 12-page original photoshoot.

Ajanta Caves


Benoy K. Behl - 1998
    Ranging in date from the second century BC to the sixth century AD, the paintings and sculptures that they found there now rank among the world's most important cultural treasures. Since the rediscovery of the caves, numerous attempts have been made to photograph the murals and sculptures accurately, but these works of art were created using the glow of lamps and candles, not the harsh light of modern professional photography. Now, in The Ajanta Caves, using long exposures that pick up natural ambient light, Benoy K. Behl captures some of the finest works of Buddhist art in all their natural luminosity. The artists who created the Ajanta caves were early followers of the Buddha, and they sought an isolated haven where they could meditate in peace. What is unique about the paintings is not their variety, nor the skill displayed in their composition, but their humanity; the men and women of this world look upon each other with expressions of infinite caring.

Gongs & Bamboo: A Panorama of Philippine Music Instruments


José Maceda - 1998
    These two areas may be viewed as pocket cultures comparable to other pocket cultures in Borneo, Sumatra, other islands in Southeast Asia and the mountain regions south of and including Yunnan province of China, thus placing the music of Luzon and Mindanao in a larger geographical context. For example, mouth organs in Borneo and continental Southeast Asia are absent in the Philippines, where, however, separate pipes of panpipes are on occasion still being played by groups of boys among the Kalingga of Luzon. The musical elements of drone and melody identified in two lutes in Borneo or ensembles in Yunnan find examples in two players of the same tube zither in Mindanao and flat gongs in Luzon.The nearly 500 photographs in the book are almost all taken in the field, showing details of making and playing bamboo buzzers, jaw harps, zithers, percussion tubes, flutes and other instruments. Manners of tapping and sliding with the hands on flat gongs differ from beating them with sticks. Examples of big bossed gongs with wide rims (agung) struck with a mallet on the boss and a stick on the rim show affinities with a manner of playing bronze drums in Yunnan. In North Luzon, men and women dancing in circles with outstretched hands distinguish them from solo dancers with minimum body movements in the South.

Lonesome You


Park Wan-Suh - 1998
    Her work--often based upon her own personal experiences, and showing keen insight into divisive social issues from the Korean partition to the position of women in Korean society--has touched readers for over forty years. In this collection, meditations upon life in old age come to the fore--at its best, accompanied by great beauty and compassion; at its worst by a cynicism that nonetheless turns a bitter smile upon the changing world.

The Sands of Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini


Sadriddin Ayni - 1998
    

I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience


Lillian Faderman - 1998
    I Begin My Life All Over is an oral history of 36 real-life strangers in a strange land, an intimate study of the immigrant experience in contemporary America.

Kaempfer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed


Engelbert Kaempfer - 1998
    Born in Westphalia in 1651, Kaempfer travelled throughout the Near and Far East before settling in Japan as physician to the trading settlement of the Dutch East India Company at Nagasaki. During his two years residence, he made two extensive trips around Japan in 1691 and 1692, collecting, according to the British historian Boxer, "an astonishing amount of valuable and accurate information". He also learned all he could from the few Japanese who came to Deshima for instruction in the European sciences. To these observations, Kaempfer added details he had gathered from a wide reading of travellers' accounts and the reports of previous trading delegations. The result was the first scholarly study of Japan in the West, a work that greatly influenced the European view of Japan throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, serving as a reference for a variety of works ranging from encyclopedias to the libretto of "The Mikado".Kaempfer's work remains one of the most valuable sources for historians of the Tokugawa period. The narrative describes what no Japanese was permitted to record (the details of the shogun's castle, for example) and what no Japanese thought worthy of recording (the minutiae of everyday life). However, all previous translations of the History are flawed, being based on the work of an eighteenth-century Swiss translator or that of the German editor some fifty years later who had little knowledge of Japan and resented Kaempfer's praise of the heathen country. Beatrice Bodart-Bailey's impressive new translation of this classic, which reflects careful studyKaempfer's original manuscript, reclaims the work for the modern reader, placing it in the context of what is currently known about Tokugawa Japan and restoring the humor and freshness of Kaempfer's observations and impressions.

Tropical Asian House


Robert Powell - 1998
    These houses represent the works of leading architects such as Charles Correa and Geoffrey Bawa as well as others who are searching for their own cultural imprint. The Tropical Asian House will be an important addition to both the professional and academic architectural markets.

Q & A: Queer in Asian America


David L. Eng - 1998
    What did it mean to be queer and Asian American at the turn of the century? This volume considers how Asian American racial and queer sexuality interconnect in mutually shaping and complicating ways.

Aladdin and Other Tales from the Arabian Nights


Rosalind Kerven - 1998
    An excellent introduction to these great legends and adult classic stories, this innovative series is sure to be collected, cherished, and reread many times.

National Geographic Annapurna Circuit: Himalayan Journey


Andrew Stevenson - 1998
    A traveller all his life, Stevenson responds to people and places with an openness unique to the cultural nomad. His portraits of the people of the Annapurna, and of the fellow trekkers who intermittently shared his journey, are a delight, and his descriptions of the landscape, and the physical hardships of the trek, are enthralling. Like every travel book of quality, this is also the record of a spiritual journey, and Stevenson movingly records his impressions of the Buddhist teachings lived around him. A richly rewarding read on every level.

History Safari


Burt Cutler - 1998
    -- An electronic voyage through time offering hours of fascinating thought-provoking reading for history lovers and students of all ages-- Flashing lights guide you through a quiz with electronic sounds signaling 'victory' or 'try again'-- Detailed timelines also provide a picture of the interrelationships of events at different places and times

The Korean Language Reform of 1446: The origin, background, and early history of the Korean alphabet


Gari Keith Ledyard - 1998
    thesis, University of California, Berkeley.

The World Turned Upside Down: Medieval Japanese Society


Pierre-François Souyri - 1998
    Using a wide variety of sources -- ranging from legal and historical texts to artistic and literary examples -- to form a detailed overview of medieval Japanese society, Souyri demonstrates the interconnected nature of medieval Japanese culture while providing an animated account of the era's religious, intellectual, and literary practices.

Forbidden City: The Great Within


May Holdsworth - 1998
    A new chapter deals with the treasures and paintings collected under imperial patronage their dramatic dispersal, painstaking recovery and restoration and ends in the triumphant establishment of the Palace Museum.Introduction by pre-eminent China scholar Jonathan Spence; explains the rich history of the home of the Chinese emperor; draws on previously inaccessible information in Beijing; explores the lifestyles behind the Forbidden City's walls; extensive quotes from early days, including views from palace maids and eunuchs; detailed map of the Forbidden City's layout.

You Can't Fight Tanks with Bayonets: Psychological Warfare against the Japanese Army in the Southwest Pacific


Allison B. Gilmore - 1998
    Allison B. Gilmore makes a strong case for the importance of psychological warfare in this theater, countering the usual view of fanatical resistance by Japanese units. Gilmore marshals evidence that Japanese military indoctrination did not produce soldiers who were invulnerable to demoralization and the survival instinct.