And no scholar is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China's boldest strategist--the pragmatic, disciplined force behind China's radical economic, technological, and social transformation.

    Part Three Cups of Tea, and part Into Thin Air, Grennan's remarkable memoir is at once gripping and inspirational, and it carries us deep into an exotic world that most readers know little about.One Person Can Make a DifferenceIn search of adventure, twenty-nine-year-old Conor Grennan traded his day job for a year-long trip around the globe, a journey that began with a three-month stint volunteering at the Little Princes Children's Home, an orphanage in war-torn Nepal. Conor was initially reluctant to volunteer, unsure whether he had the proper skill, or enough passion, to get involved in a developing country in the middle of a civil war. But he was soon overcome by the herd of rambunctious, resilient children who would challenge and reward him in a way that he had never imagined. When Conor learned the unthinkable truth about their situation, he was stunned: The children were not orphans at all. Child traffickers were promising families in remote villages to protect their children from the civil war - for a huge fee - by taking them to safety. They would then abandon the children far from home, in the chaos of Nepal's capital, Kathmandu. For Conor, what began as a footloose adventure becomes a commitment to reunite the children he had grown to love with their families, but this would be no small task. He would risk his life on a journey through the legendary mountains of Nepal, facing the dangers of a bloody civil war and a debilitating injury. Waiting for Conor back in Kathmandu, and hopeful he would make it out before being trapped in by snow, was the woman who would eventually become his wife and share his life's work. Little Princes is a true story of families and children, and what one person is capable of when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. At turns tragic, joyful, and hilarious, Little Princes is a testament to the power of faith and the ability of love to carry us beyond our wildest expectations.

    He has not flinched from taking them on, even now after almost 60 years in the political fray. Why is Lee so hard on his political opponents? Could the People's Action Party ever lose its grip on power? Are the younger leaders up to the mark? Will growing religiosity change Singapore for the better of worse? How will rising giants China and India affect Singapore's fortunes? Lee, fields these issues and many other questions as he covers the terrain of the past and contemplates the expanse of the future for tis iland nation that he and his foundin generation uilt on the hopes of a people. Based on 32 hours of interviews at the Istana, along with 64 pages of photographs and a dvd insert, the book features Lee in full flow, combative, thought-provoking controversial.

    Drawing on historical records as well as his conversations with Chinese leaders over the past forty years, Kissinger examines how China has approached diplomacy, strategy, and negotiation throughout its history, and reflects on the consequences for the global balance of power in the 21st century. Since no other country can claim a more powerful link to its ancient past and classical principles, any attempt to understand China's future world role must begin with an appreciation of its long history. For centuries, China rarely encountered other societies of comparable size and sophistication; it was the "Middle Kingdom," treating the peoples on its periphery as vassal states. At the same time, Chinese statesmen-facing threats of invasion from without, and the contests of competing factions within-developed a canon of strategic thought that prized the virtues of subtlety, patience, and indirection over feats of martial prowess. In On China, Kissinger examines key episodes in Chinese foreign policy from the classical era to the present day, with a particular emphasis on the decades since the rise of Mao Zedong. He illuminates the inner workings of Chinese diplomacy during such pivotal events as the initial encounters between China and modern European powers, the formation and breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Korean War, Richard Nixon's historic trip to Beijing, and three crises in the Taiwan Straits. Drawing on his extensive personal experience with four generation of Chinese leaders, he brings to life towering figures such as Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping, revealing how their different visions have shaped China's modern destiny. With his singular vantage on U.S.-China relations, Kissinger traces the evolution of this fraught but crucial relationship over the past 60 years, following its dramatic course from estrangement to strategic partnership to economic interdependence, and toward an uncertain future. With a final chapter on the emerging superpower's 21st-century world role, On China provides an intimate historical perspective on Chinese foreign affairs from one of the premier statesmen of the 20th century.

    With almost everyone they know suddenly erased from the face of the earth, the girls set out for the convent where they attend school. They are abducted almost immediately and sold to a Mumbai brothel owner, beginning a hellish descent into the bowels of the sex trade.Halfway across the world, Washington, D.C., attorney Thomas Clarke faces his own personal and professional crisis-and makes the fateful decision to pursue a pro bono sabbatical working in India for an NGO that prosecutes the subcontinent's human traffickers. There, his conscience awakens as he sees firsthand the horrors of the trade in human flesh, and the corrupt judicial system that fosters it. Learning of the fate of Ahalya and Sita, Clarke makes it his personal mission to rescue them, setting the stage for a riveting showdown with an international network of ruthless criminals.

    Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called "a My Lai a month." Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.

    After studying law at Cambrige and time spent helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh seeks solace among the jungle fringed plantations of Northern Malaya where she grew up as a child.

    Too pretty to obtain a governess's job, Isabella Saunders accepts an offer from a Singapore merchant to teach him English and live with his family. Two years later Bram Deagan arrives in Singapore, determined to make his fortune as a trader. Mr Lee sees a way to expand his business connections and persuades Isabella to marry Bram.Bravely, she sets sail for a new land and life. But the past casts a long shadow and together they face unexpected dangers. Will they find a way to achieve their dreams of a successful trading business?

    With almost 200 million people, a 500,000-man army, nuclear weapons, and a large diaspora in Britain and North America, Pakistan is central to the hopes of jihadis and the fears of their enemies. Yet the greatest short-term threat to Pakistan is not Islamist insurgency as such, but the actions of the United States, and the greatest long-term threat is ecological change. Anatol Lieven's book is a magisterial investigation of this highly complex and often poorly understood country: its regions, ethnicities, competing religious traditions, varied social landscapes, deep political tensions, and historical patterns of violence; but also its surprising underlying stability, rooted in kinship, patronage, and the power of entrenched local elites. Engagingly written, combining history and profound analysis with reportage from Lieven's extensive travels as a journalist and academic, Pakistan: A Hard Country is both utterly compelling and deeply revealing.

    In “Disparity,” for example, Yu Hua illustrates the mind-boggling economic gaps that separate citizens of the country. In “Copycat,” he depicts the escalating trend of piracy and imitation as a creative new form of revolutionary action. And in “Bamboozle,” he describes the increasingly brazen practices of trickery, fraud, and chicanery that are, he suggests, becoming a way of life at every level of society. Characterized by Yu Hua’s trademark wit, insight, and courage, China in Ten Words is a refreshingly candid vision of the “Chinese miracle” and all its consequences, from the singularly invaluable perspective of a writer living in China today.

    She extracted a promise from him that he would forgive Shishupala a hundred offences. As he grew up Shishupala had enough reasons to be angry with Krishna. Especially after he was jilted by Princess Rukmini, in favour of the merry-eyed cowherd. He provoked Krishna repeatedly and was forgiven a hundred times. And then one day Shishupala committed his hundred and first offence.

    Lying and killing for the sake of peace and order, Indra felt he was unworthy of being king of heaven. A new king was installed on his throne! Now it was up to Indra’s wife Shachi to ensure that his honour survived. Would the gods ever regain their respect for her beloved?

    But things go from bad to worse when they are suddenly attacked by a cadre of Arm Slaves.

    In Oslo, actress Liv Ullmann read a long statement the activist had prepared for his 2009 trial. It read in part: I stand by the convictions I expressed in my June Second Hunger Strike Declaration twenty years ago I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies.That statement is one of the pieces in this book, which includes writings spanning two decades, providing insight into all aspects of Chinese life. These works not only chronicle a leading dissident s struggle against tyranny but enrich the record of universal longing for freedom and dignity. Liu speaks pragmatically, yet with deep-seated passion, about peasant land disputes, the Han Chinese in Tibet, child slavery, the CCP s Olympic strategy, the Internet in China, the contemporary craze for Confucius, and the Tiananmen massacre. Also presented are poems written for his wife, Liu Xia, public documents, and a foreword by Vaclav Havel.This collection is an aid to reflection for Western readers who might take for granted the values Liu has dedicated his life to achieving for his homeland.

    Yet Tibet in the twenty-first century can only be properly understood in the context of its extraordinary history. Sam van Schaik brings the history of Tibet to life by telling the stories of the people involved, from the glory days of the Tibetan empire in the seventh century through to the present day. He explores the emergence of Tibetan Buddhism and the rise of the Dalai Lamas, Tibet’s entanglement in the "Great Game" in the early twentieth century, its submission to Chinese Communist rule in the 1950s, and the troubled times of recent decades. Tibet sheds light on the country’s complex relationship with China and explains often-misunderstood aspects of its culture, such as reborn lamas, monasteries and hermits, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the role of the Dalai Lama. Van Schaik works through the layers of history and myth to create a compelling narrative, one that offers readers a greater understanding of this important and controversial corner of the world.

    When Papa arrives, Maomao hardly recognizes him at first. But before long, the family is making sticky rice balls, hearing the firecrackers, and watching the dragon dance in the street. Maomao loves doing ordinary things with Papa - getting a haircut, fixing things around the house, and sleeping tucked between her parents. But all too soon it is time for Papa to go away again.

    Within one exotic land lie the secrets of a lifetime! Newlywed Nerys Watkins leaves rural Wales for the first time in her life, to accompany her husband on a missionary posting to India. Travelling from lonely Ladakh, high up in the Himalayas, Nerys discovers a new world in the lakeside city of Srinagar. Here, in the exquisite heart of Kashmir, the British live on carved wooden houseboats and dance, flirt and gossip as if there is no war. But the battles draw ever closer, and life in Srinagar becomes less frivolous when the men are sent away to fight. Nerys is caught up in a dangerous friendship, and by the time she is reunited with her husband, the innocent Welsh bride has become a different woman. Years later, when Mair Ellis clears out her father's house, she finds an exquisite antique shawl, woven from the finest yarns and embroidered in the shades of lake water and mountain skies. Wrapped within its folds is a lock of child's hair. Tracing her grandparents' roots back to Kashmir, Mair embarks on a quest that will change her life forever.

    A paperback original from a superb writer whose first novel was enthusiastically praised by Khaled Hosseini, bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, Haji, an American of Indo-Pakistani descent, writes with grace, heart, and wisdom about the collisions of culture and religion, tradition and modernity played out through individual lives.

    Written over twenty years, the many pieces form an eclectic treasury of stories from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and beyond. Some consider the lives of women in society, both in East and West. The women-only police stations of Brazil, for instance, as well as the female inmates waiting to die on America's Death Row, or the young widows who clear landmines for a living in northern Cambodia. More still look at Morocco, where Shah and his family reside in a mansion set squarely in the middle of a sprawling Casablanca shantytown. And, yet more reflect on the oddities and contradictions of the modern world. Such as why, in India each summer, hundreds of thousands line up to swallow live fish; or how the Model T Ford sounded the death knell of lavish Edwardian ostrich-feather hats.

    Not just any bridge—but a special one because it has always been known as The Lucky Bridge. In olden days it was said that to walk over it during a marriage ceremony, or at the beginning of the New Year would bring the traveler good luck. Because of its reputation, over the years it has also become a popular place for young mothers to abandon their children. What to some may seem cruel is in reality their final gift to their offspring—one last chance to send them off to their new destinies with luck on their side. Jing, an old woman, is the unofficial and often reluctant guardian of the bridge. When no one else will, Jing steps in to prevent the children from frostbite, abuse and hunger, and then she delivers them safely to the orphanage. This has been her routine for many years, but what does Jing do when the latest child, a blind boy, burrows deep into her heart? Read ‘The Bridge’ to see how Fei Fei’s life is changed by the love of a lonely old woman. The Bridge is a short story of 17,000 words, approximately 72 pages. Fei Fei’s character is based on a real orphaned boy that Kay Bratt met during her time in China. Don't miss these other great books by Kay Bratt! Full length books currently available on Kindle "Silent Tears; A Journey of Hope in a Chinese Orphanage” and “Chasing China; A Daughter’s Quest for Truth”.

    He’s not their uncle. He’s not even related to them. In fact, he was born thousands of miles from the Philippines, the place he now calls home. No, Wade’s none of those things. He’s their Papasan. He runs the go-go bar where the girls dance and entertain. But that doesn’t make them any less than a family.And rule number one: don’t mess with the family.PERFECT GENTLEMAN is a 6000 word short story that originally appeared in the KILLER YEAR: STORIES TO DIE FOR anthology edited by Lee Child.

    As the tide turned, 27th Infantry Brigade – 1st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 1st Middlesex and 3rd Royal Australian Regiment – spearheaded the counterattack into North Korea, decimating North Korea’s army. Meanwhile, the elite 41 Commando, Royal Marines was raiding deep behind enemy lines. With victory imminent, men expected to be ‘home by Christmas’. It was not to be. In a shock onslaught launched out of Manchurian blizzards, Mao’s legions stormed south. Fighting for survival, 27th Brigade broke free of a closing trap before holding open the route for US units escaping a massive ambush. Then, as rearguard, it covered broken UN forces and desperate refugees fleeing through an apocalyptic winter warscape of devastated villages, blown bridges and burning cities. And on the war’s most harrowing battleground, 41 Commando braved ‘Hellfire Valley’ to reinforce besieged US marines surrounded amid North Korea’s most hostile mountains. What followed – the breakout from Chosin Reservoir to the sea - remains the most epic fighting withdrawal of modern history. Though Korea remains the biggest, bloodiest, most brutal war fought by British troops since World War II, the story of their central role in the conflict’s most terrible months has never been fully told. Far more than mere battlefield history, Andrew Salmon’s book draws on interviews with some 90 veterans and survivors to pain an unforgettable portrait of an immense human tragedy. 425 pages, 470 pages in total

    She is grateful for her life, but now that she is on the precipice of total independence, she feels she is missing something. Determined to learn more of her past, Mia hops a plane to the country of her birth. As she follows the red thread back through her motherland, she is enamored by the history and culture of her heritage, strengthening her resolve to find the truth of her beginnings, even as Chinese officials struggle to keep it buried. With an unwavering spirit of determination, Mia battles the forces stacked against her and uncovers a truth that will change her life.

    Violent Earth illuminates those dusky subjects with the expertise of The Smithsonian and the graphic skills of DK editors. This fully illustrated, 360-page coffee table book takes you deep into processes that are literally reshaping our planet. As relevant as today's headlines.

    When Rider lands in Cheo Reo, things get complicated. Viet Cong battalions are gathering in the surrounding hills like storm clouds, while the corrupt South Vietnamese commander and his troops sit idle. And sixty thousand Montagnard tribespeople want their mountain homeland back. Soon Rider is entangled with the local CIA man and an alluring doctor serving the indigenous tribes. As he closes in on the opium fields, he learns the hard way that that not all enemies are beyond the perimeter; someone in Cheo Reo wants him dead. Easy enough in a combat zone where killing is common and loyalties are for sale. Red Flags is a masterly novel of soldiers and spies grappling with forces beyond their control and striving for the most basic goal in war—survival.

    Thoughtful, reflective narrative of a reluctant soldier in Vietnam Author served as a mechanized infantryman in the Mekon Delta with the 9th Infantry Division Captures the rhythms of life in war as well as the boredom and chaos of Vietnam Two One Pony was the name of the author's squad's armored personnel carrier Tries to make sense of the absurdity of the war

    Pattabhi Jois, B.K.S. Iyengar, and T.K.V. Desikachar. First published in 2005 by the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, The Yoga of the Yogi is at last available in a portable paperback format.

    This new collection of Hindu tales, including the birth of the gods, tales of creation, and the arrival of humans, is illuminated by Amanda Hall's exquisite artwork, which reflects the influence of both classical and contemporary Indian art.

    In fact, he’d been taught that religion was evil, and that those who believed in it were deluded, cultists, or imperialist spies. But as a writer whose work has been banned in China and has even landed him in jail, Liao felt a kinship with Chinese Christians in their unwavering commitment to the freedom of expression and to finding meaning in a tumultuous society. Unwilling to let his nation lose memory of its past or deny its present, Liao set out to document the untold stories of brave believers whose totalitarian government could not break their faith in God, including: * The over-100-year-old nun who persevered in spite of beatings, famine, and decades of physical labor, and still fights for the rightful return of church land seized by the government* The surgeon who gave up a lucrative Communist hospital administrator position to treat villagers for free in the remote, mountainous regions of southwestern China* The Protestant minister, now memorialized in London’s Westminster Abbey, who was executed during the Cultural Revolution as “an incorrigible counterrevolutionary” This ultimately triumphant tale of a vibrant church thriving against all odds serves as both a powerful conversation about politics and spirituality and a moving tribute to China’s valiant shepherds of faith, who prove that a totalitarian government cannot control what is in people’s hearts.

    By 1979 it had a powerful industrial economy and a vibrant civil society in the making, which would lead to a democratic breakthrough eight years later. The transformation took place during the years of Park Chung Hee's presidency. Park seized power in a coup in 1961 and ruled as a virtual dictator until his assassination in October 1979. He is credited with modernizing South Korea, but at a huge political and social cost.South Korea's political landscape under Park defies easy categorization. The state was predatory yet technocratic, reform-minded yet quick to crack down on dissidents in the name of political order. The nation was balanced uneasily between opposition forces calling for democratic reforms and the Park government's obsession with economic growth. The chaebol (a powerful conglomerate of multinationals based in South Korea) received massive government support to pioneer new growth industries, even as a nationwide campaign of economic shock therapy-interest hikes, devaluation, and wage cuts-met strong public resistance and caused considerable hardship.This landmark volume examines South Korea's era of development as a study in the complex politics of modernization. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources in both English and Korean, these essays recover and contextualize many of the ambiguities in South Korea's trajectory from poverty to a sustainable high rate of economic growth.

    . . an utter delight.” —Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever HadDespite being house-bound due to an accelerated-aging disorder, Areum lives life to its fullest, vicariously through the stories of his parents, conversations with Little Grandpa Jang—his sixty-year-old neighbor and best friend, and through the books he reads to visit the places he would otherwise never see.For several months, Areum has been working on a manuscript, piecing together his parents’ often embellished stories about his family and childhood. He hopes to present it on his birthday, as a final gift to his mom and dad; their own falling-in-love story.As his seventeenth birthday approaches, Areum moves into the long-term ward in the city hospital, bringing abrupt change to his daily life; from a new friend who might be more—or less—than she seems, to his loving parents who are definitely keeping something from him. There are also the challenges of the creeping darkness in his eyes, and the loneliness of his shrinking connection to the world outside his window. Areum meets these situations head on, and with the support of family and friends, finds joy in even the most difficult times.Interweaving the past and present of a tight-knit family, Ae-ran Kim's My Brilliant Life evokes the full breadth of human emotions; happiness and sadness, pain and relief, emptiness and significance; masterfully exploring the power of empathy.

    A young poet named Liao Yiwu, who had up until then lead an apolitical bohemian existence, found his voice in that moment, and, like the solitary man who stood firmly in front of a line of tanks, Liao proclaimed his outrage—only his weapon would be his words. Liao's memoir, For a Song and a Hundred Songs, captures the four dehumanizing years he spent in jail for writing the incendiary poem "Massacre." Through the power and beauty of his prose, he reveals the brutal reality of crowded Chinese prisons—the harassment from guards and fellow prisoners, the torture, the conflicts among human beings in close confinement, and the boredom of everyday life. Hailed by Philip Gourevitch as "one of the most original and remarkable Chinese writers of our time," Liao presents a stark and devastating portrait of a nation in flux, exposing a side of China that outsiders rarely ever get to see. This honest account and witness to history will forever change the way you view the rising superpower of China.

    We now see that this great cathedral of a book not only commemorates those massed victims but celebrates the unquenched spirit of resistance which flickered and then burst into flame even in Stalin's "special camps."Of the Archipelago as a whole, LeMonde has said:"It is the epic of our times. An epic is always the creation of an entire people, written by the one person who has the creative power and the genius to become a spokesman for his nation. And in this work, we hear a people speaking through the impassioned, intrepid, ironic, furious, lyrical, brutal and often tender voice of the narrator."

    Bernard's iconic photograph of Marilyn standing over the subway grate in a billowing white dress is synonymous with Hollywood glamour and sex appeal, and many of the images here have never before been published. They cover key moments in Marilyn's life, including her first professional sitting in 1946, all enlivened by fascinating excerpts from Bruno's journal.Fans of the blonde bombshell will also treasure the stunning, frameable print included with this keepsake book, and both Jane Russell (Marilyn's co-star in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and Lindsay Lohan have contributed forewords.

    However, the fantastic tale is not as simple as its plot suggests. In the forties of the 20th century, one summer day, on the bending shore of the magical, eternal river Yangtze, a woman met a young stranger she falls in love with. But he can't love her back, and she can't love him if she would have known why he has hunted her down all over China to tell her a dark secret...Butterfly is a haunting love story a la Romeo and Juliet of the Orient. The modern fairytale explores passion beyond all forbidden boundaries and love tested to its limits to defy even death. Taking a stab at sensitive historical, social issues such as the Rape of Nanking, the question arises, what is love? Where is the salvation in all the heartlessness of mankind? Are we able to love, a deed that is so often taken for granted? Perhaps love is neither simple nor always pleasant or even inhuman. In the end the protagonists have to undergo a metamorphosis in order to be reunited again on the bank of the Yangtze river where they met seven decades ago.

    

    A young Sikh girl, Simran Kaur, has run away from her father, who would rather poison his daughter than see her defiled. And Ibrahim Masud, an elderly Muslim doctor driven from the town of his birth, limps toward the new Muslim state of Pakistan, rediscovering on the way his role as a healer. As the displaced face a variety of horrors, this unlikely quartet comes together, defying every rule of self-preservation to forge a future of hope.A dramatic, luminous story of families and nations broken and formed, "Partitions" introduces an extraordinary novelist who writes with the force and lyricism of poetry.

    Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor, people are angry, and one night, Sachiko and Nobu witness three teenage boys taunting and beating their father in the park. Sachiko especially remembers Terrence Harris, the boy with dark skin and hazel eyes, and Nobu cannot believe the boys capable of such violence toward his father are actually his friends.What Sachiko and Nobu do not know is that Terrence's family had received a telegram that morning with news that Terrence's father was killed at Pearl Harbor. Desperate to escape his pain, Terrence rushes from his home and runs into two high-school friends who convince him to find a Japanese man and get revenge. They do not know the man they attacked is Sachiko and Nobu's father.In the months that follow, Terrence is convicted of his crime and Sachiko and Nobu are sent to an internment camp in Arkansas, a fictionalized version of the two camps that actually existed in Arkansas during the war. While behind bars and barbed wire, each of the three young people will go through dramatic changes. One will learn acceptance. One will remain imprisoned by resentment, and one will seek a path to forgiveness.

    Two friends, a boy from the country and a girl from the city, take us on a tour of their beloved land through their eyes. They introduce us to their homes, families, favorite places, school life, holidays and more!Celebrate the cherry blossom festivalLearn traditional Japanese songs and poemsMake easy recipes like mochi (New Year's sweet rice cakes) and okonomiyaki (Japanese pizza or pancakes)Create origami frogs, samurai helmets and more!Beyond the fun and fascinating facts, you'll also learn about the spirit that makes Japan one-of-a-kind. This is a book for families to treasure together.

    A testament to this trend is the success of Nanao, a quarterly magazine aimed at this younger market, and filled with stylish spreads and tips on dressing, finding great but inexpensive pieces, and customizing, accessorizing, and caring for these traditional garments. The New Kimono presents, in book form, a selection of the best articles from Nanao, providing a wealth of information to Western readers with an interest in kimono. Articles include interviews with young Japanese women who consider kimono their day-to-day garb, advice on how to coordinate fabrics and designs, how to choose an obi, how to choose footwear, how to choose underwear, how to customize vintage kimono, and fabulous vintage kimono fashion spreads. An appendix provides clear, step-by-step guidelines on putting on kimono, kimono underwear, yukata, and obi. A glossary of kimono terms and a shop guide is also included. Beautiful photographs combine with practical hints, making this book indispensible for kimono lovers, as well as anyone with an interest in fashion, Japanese popular culture, or textiles and design.

    But the post-9/11 war against terrorists is not the first time the United States has battled such ferocious foes. The forgotten Moro War, lasting from 1902 to 1913 in the islands of the southern Philippines, was the first confrontation between American soldiers and their allies and a determined Muslim insurgency.The Moro War prefigured American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than superficially: It was a bitter, drawn-out conflict in which American policy and aims were fiercely contested between advocates of punitive military measures and proponents of conciliation.As in today's Middle East, American soldiers battled guerrillas in a foreign environment where the enemy knew the terrain and enjoyed local support. The deadliest challenge was distinguishing civilians from suicidal attackers. Moroland became a crucible of leadership for the U.S. Army, bringing the force that had fought the Civil War and the Plains Indian Wars into the twentieth century. The officer corps of the Moro campaign matured into the American generals of World War I. Chief among them was the future general John Pershing-who learned lessons in the island jungles that would guide his leadership in France.Rich with relevance to today's news from the Middle East, and a gripping piece of storytelling, The Moro War is a must-read to understand a formative conflict too long overlooked and to anticipate the future of U.S. involvement overseas.

    Autobiographical reminiscences of Kidar Sharma, dead in 1999, Indian motion picture producer and director

    The images embrace a huge range of styles, from traditional to futuristic, from classic ukiyo-e prints to the worlds of manga and anime."

    The Old Kitchen represents the traditional dishes of hi family history–hawker noodles, Japanese yakitori, sour and salty Malaysian laksa. The New Kitchen features modern dishes that draw on the memorable flavors and experiences of his own life as a migrant in Australia.

    The Religious Question in Modern China highlights parallels and contrasts between historical events, political regimes, and cultural movements to explore how religion has challenged and responded to secular Chinese modernity, from 1898 to the present.   Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer piece together the puzzle of religion in China not by looking separately at different religions in different contexts, but by writing a unified story of how religion has shaped, and in turn been shaped by, modern Chinese society. From Chinese medicine and the martial arts to communal temple cults and revivalist redemptive societies, the authors demonstrate that from the nineteenth century onward, as the Chinese state shifted, the religious landscape consistently resurfaced in a bewildering variety of old and new forms. The Religious Question in Modern China integrates historical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives in a comprehensive overview of China’s religious history that is certain to become an indispensible reference for specialists and students alike.

    After Independence, the island enjoyed a liberal parliamentary democracy with a lively independent press and a booming economy. It had a judiciary, an efficient economy, and a stability envied by emerging nations. The world expected a leader amongst nations.* Instead, in pursuit of power and fundamentalist Buddhism, an oligarchy of Sinhalese political leaders and monks hi-jacked democracy. In response a brutal enemy was born: the Tamil Tigers. The result, one of modern history's longest civil conflicts, spawned a host of horrific innovations: suicide bombers, child soldiers, death squads, violent Buddhism and murdered journalists.* But ethnic conflict is only part of the story.* Twenty-seven years on, with Iran, Burma, Libya, and China as its closest allies, democracy has been reduced to a cabal of brothers who control the economy, the courts, and the media. Today they tout their bloody conquest of the Tamil Tiger guerrillas as an example for other nations with 'terrorist' problems.* Gordon Weiss, a veteran journalist and UN official for two decades, was firmly entrenched in the conflict as spokesperson for the United Nations in Colombo. He was a close observer as, in just four months in 2009, tens of thousands of civilians perished, cornered, along with the last of the Tamil Tigers on a windy spit. * This account unravels the compelling history that leads up to that horrific moment, peeling back the Sri Lankan government's cloak of silence to reveal the events of those weeks beat by beat.* The Cage offers a rare glimpse into the reality behind the daily headlines: the inner workings of media manipulation, and the plight of international aid workers struggling to provide humanitarian assistance to those caught in the crossfire of a deadly civil conflict.

    All About Korea is a fun-filled journey to a new place. Korean culture and history are featured prominently in this colorful Korean book for kids, allowing an educational as well as entertaining experience.Learn how to play the exciting Korean see-saw game with a friend, how to sing "Happy Birthday" in Korean, and how kids say "hello!"Other activities include making a White Tiger puppet, playing jegi (Korean hacky-sack) and singing "Arirang," Korea's most beloved song.Enjoy the traditional Korean stories "Taming a Tiger" and "Two Foolish Green Frogs."Easy Korean recipes are included for delicious treats like kimbap (roll-your-own wraps) and songpyeon (sweet filled rice cakes).All About Korea is a book for families to treasure together. It offers not only the most important facts about Korean, but also reflects the spirit that makes Korea one-of-a-kind.

    She'd already taken dance lessons, but everyone said a poor country girl would never get into the academy, especially without any connections in the Communist Party of the 1970s. But Zhongmei, whose name means Faithful Plum, persisted, even going on a hunger strike, until her parents agreed to allow her to go. She traveled for three   days and two nights to get to Beijing and eventually beat out 60,000 other girls for one of 12 coveted spots. But getting in was easy compared to staying in, as Zhongmei soon learned. Without those all-important connections she was just a little girl on her own, far away from family. But her determination, talent, and sheer force of will were not something the teachers or other students expected, and soon it was apparent that Zhongmei was not to be underestimated. Zhongmei became a famous dancer, and founded her own dance company, which made its New York debut when she was in just her late 20s.  In A Girl Named Faithful Plum, her husband and renowned journalist, Richard Bernstein, has written a fascinating account of one girl's struggle to go from the remote farmlands of China to the world's stages, and the lengths she went to in order to follow her dream.From the Hardcover edition.

    Ukiyo-e: The Art of the Japanese Print takes a thematic approach to this iconic Japanese art form, considering prints by subject matter: geisha and courtesans, kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, erotica, nature, historical subjects and even images of foreigners in Japan.An artist himself, author Frederick Harris—a well-known American collector who lived in Japan for 50 years—pays special attention to the methods and materials employed in Japanese printmaking. The book traces the evolution of ukiyo-e from its origins in metropolitan Edo (Tokyo) art culture as black and white illustrations, to delicate two-color prints and multicolored designs. Advice to admirers on how to collect, care for, view and buy Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints rounds out this book of charming, carefully selected prints.

    One day, he promised to take her there so she could meet her half-sister, Bachanu, who had stayed behind. But at the age of sixteen - as she so vividly related in her bestseller Shame - Jasvinder ran away from home to escape a forced marriage. Her parents disowned her. 'Shame travels...' her father told her. Although her mother took all her other daughters to meet the extended family in the Punjab, Jasvinder was never allowed to go. With her own daughter about to marry, Jasvinder decides to challenge thirty years of rejection by going to India herself. She wants to explore her roots and to see for herself the place her parents called home until the day they died. What Jasvinder finds in India and what she learns changes the way she sees the world, and has important lessons for all of us. SHAME TRAVELS is not only a gripping and revealing quest, but also an inspirational journey of the heart.

    Al-Jubouri writes 'This is my protest, this is my folly,' yet these poems are neither simple protest nor in any sense folly. These poems are both essential and eternal."—Nick FlynnThis translation of Iraqi author Amal al-Jubouri contextualizes America's occupation of Iraq through the Qur'an's story of Hagar. Complementary pairs of poems portray life before and after the war. This work simultaneously mirrors Hagar's desperate running between Safa and Marwah, as we pace frantically between pre- and post-occupation Iraq—the poet begging in vain for poetry not to abandon her people.Honor before the occupationWorship the LeaderLove the PartyCurse America, the siege~Honor after the occupationCurse the DictatorForsake the PartyClap with flowers in your hand for America, her wallAmal al-Jubouri, a native of Iraq, is the author of five collections of poetry including Wine from Wounds; Words, Set Me Free!; Enheduanna, Priestess of Exile; and 99 Veils. In 1997 she took asylum in Germany after having been listed first on Uday Hussein's list of renegade Iraqi writers and was the first Iraqi writer to return to Baghdad, two days after the fall of the regime. The founder and editor-in-chief of al-Diwan, the first and only Arab-German literary magazine, she is president of the East-West Diwan German Cultural Foundation and acts as cultural counselor for the Yemen Embassy in Berlin.

    In this exceptional book, he shares the story of his personal journey, set against the backdrop of modern Singapore history.

    These remarkable paintings, dating from 1100 to 1900, were selected according to identifiable artists, and they refute the long-held view of anonymous authorship in Indian art.Traditionally, Indian paintings have been classified by regional styles or dynastic periods, with an emphasis on subject matter. Stressing the combined tools of connoisseurship and inscriptional evidence, the pioneering research reflected in this book has identified individual artists and their oeuvres through the analysis of style.The introductory essay outlines the origins of early Indian painting of the first millennium, which set the scene for the development of the art of the book. The sections that follow examine manuscript painting as it evolved from palm-leaf to paper, the emergence of traditional painting as an independent art form, and its demise with the coming of photography. Biographies of the artists whose works appear in this volume and a glossary of their major literary sources provide valuable context.

    He takes us to the back-alley restaurants of Vietnam on a quest to eat cobra; to the neon streets of Japan, where he goes on tour with a jazz band, gets lost in the depraved depths of a comic book shop, and nearly causes a riot at a punk rock bar; to far Western China, where he narrowly misses a terrorist attack and endures a harrowing drive on the world’s highest highway. Whether he’s losing his lunch on the boat ride to the disputed Dokdo islets, surviving a bus wreck on a Korean highway, eating chicken embryos in the Philippines, or riding a dilapidated motorbike through the dirt tracks of Laos, Tharp delivers his tales with a mixture of honesty, wit, and humor that will inspire readers to strap on a backpack and hit the road.

    Johnson reports from the front lines, trekking to nomad resettlements to speak with the people who guard Tibet's slowly vanishing culture; and he travels alongside the Dalai Lama in the campaigns for Tibetan sovereignty. Johnson unpacks how China is using its economic power around the globe to assail the Free Tibet movement. By encouraging massive Chinese migration and restricting Tibetan civil rights, the Chinese are also working to dilute Tibetan culture within Tibet itself. He also takes a sympathetic but unsentimental look at the Dalai Llama, a popular figure in the West who is regarded as a failure by many of his own people. Staggering in scope, vivid and audacious in its narrative aims, Tragedy in Crimson tells the story of a people on the brink of cultural extinction and the rising nation that is quashing them.

    Here, she has collected 100 curry recipes from dals to biryanis, vegetarian to meat, simple and elaborate.Everybody loves a curry - and this book has a recipe to suit every taste.

    The waters released from the dam's massive reservoir rushed through the heavily populated downstream area, devastating the industrial city of Morbi and its surrounding agricultural villages. As the torrent's thirty-foot-tall leading edge cut its way through the Machhu River valley, massive bridges gave way, factories crumbled, and thousands of houses collapsed. While no firm figure has ever been set on the disaster's final death count, estimates in the flood's wake ran as high as 25,000.Despite the enormous scale of the devastation, few people today have ever heard of this terrible event. The Guinness Book of World Records and a few obscure articles contain the scant publicly available information about it.No One Had a Tongue to Speak tells, for the first time, the suspenseful and multifaceted story of the Machhu dam disaster. Based on over 130 interviews and extensive archival research, the authors recount the disaster and its aftermath in vivid firsthand detail. The book progresses sequentially, beginning with a centuries-old folktale that foretells Morbi's destruction and ending with an examination of the flood's present-day legacy in the lives of its survivors. Whenever possible, the story of the flood and its aftermath is told through the voices and viewed through the eyes of the people who survived the devastation. Moreover, the book presents important findings culled from formerly classified government documents that reveal the long-hidden failures that culminated in one of the deadliest floods in history.The authors follow characters whose lives were interrupted and forever altered by the flood, provide vivid first-hand descriptions of the disaster and its aftermath, and shed light on the never-completed judicial investigation into the dam's collapse. With its suspenseful plot, compelling characters, and moving nonfiction narrative, No One Had a Tongue to Speak reads more like a novel than a nonfiction account, revealing the profound human tragedy behind the dry statistics and painting a vivid portrait of an India torn between its feudal past and its industrial future.WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING:"What is it about dams that inspire fatal dreams of grandeur? Utpal Sandesara and Tom Wooten have done a great service by vividly reconstructing one of the greatest and least known dam disasters in history—although it is anything but unknown, of course, to the largely voiceless people who were its major victims. This is an absorbing story not just about bureaucratic ambition and folly, but about power and powerlessness." —Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars, King Leopold's Ghost, and other books."Written with a sympathy as deep as its research, this is the story of a deadly environmental disaster that sprang from hubris and miscalculation. Like any sudden disaster, the floods that destroyed Morbi burst upon the everyday lives of people unaware of what was about to befall them. Sandesara and Wooten skillfully capture both the commonplace and the extraordinary, and in doing so reveal what sometimes seems to be the near universal failures that lay behind so many environmental disasters and the quite specific particulars of Indian history and development." — Richard White, professor of American History at Stanford University"The anatomy of a perfect storm: not just a South Asian monsoon-driven tragedy killing thousands, but an overall portrait of social, political, historical, and moral corruption and dysfunction. Inspections are missed, planning is chaotic, and disempowered find themselves squarely in the path of an epic disaster." —Clark Blaise, co-author (with Bharati Mukherjee) of Days and Nights in Calcutta and The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of Air-India 182"This memorable account of an epic flood is all the more impressive because its authors, one of them the son of a survivor, are so young. Their reporting is painstaking, their stories heartbreaking." —Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

    During his research, Tim Choy became increasingly interested in the power of the notion of specificity. While documenting the expert and lay production of Hong Kong’s biological, cultural, and political specificities, he began comparing the logics and narrative forms that made different types of specificity—such as species, culture, locality, and state autonomy—possible and meaningful. He came to understand these logics and forms as “ecologies of comparison,” conceptual practices through which an event or form of life comes to matter in environmentalist and other political terms. Choy’s ethnography is about environmentalism, Hong Kong, and the ways that we think about environmentalism in Hong Kong and other places. It is also about how politics, freedom, culture, expertise, and other concepts figure in comparison-based knowledge practices.

    After the whirlwind of the revolution, the Bolsheviks struggled to consolidate their victory. To rescue the economy and save the regime, Lenin made concessions to the people. But after his death, Stalin introduced forced collectivisation and industrialisation, condemning the Soviet people to conditions worse than those experienced under the Tsars. Nikita Khrushchev reversed the worst excesses of Stalinism, and in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on radical reforms of the communist system – unleashing unforeseen consequences that swept him from power and destroyed the USSR. Martin Sixsmith brings his firsthand experience of reporting from Russia in the 1980s and ‘90s to his narrative, witnessing the critical moment when the Soviet Union lost its grip on power. He asks if the recurring patterns of Russian history can help us understand what has happened since 1991, when the promise of Western-style democracy aroused so many hopes for change. Eyewitness accounts, archive recordings and personal testimony enrich his narrative, as well as readings from Russian authors and historians such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vasily Grossman, plus music by Stravinsky, Prokofiev and others. The final 25 episodes from the landmark BBC Radio series.

    Waxen Wings: The Acta Koreana Anthology of Short Fiction from Korea offers a diverse sampling from a century of modern Korean short fiction, beginning with stories from two early masters (Yi Hyos k and Ch'ae Manshik) and ending with works by four of the most imaginative contemporary writers (Kim Y ngha, Ha S ngnan, P'y n Hyey ng, and Kim Chunghy k). In between are the two writers who are primarily responsible for the visibility enjoyed by Korean women fiction writers today (O Ch ngh i and Pak Wans ), and a writer, Kim W nil, who has made it his lifework to address the territorial and spiritual division of the Korean peninsula. The title of the anthology, from Ha S ngnan's 1999 story, suggests the transcendental qualities of the finest Korean short fiction."

    Shortly after anti-western sentiment sends her home in a hurry she discovers she is pregnant by him. Attempts by her, and later their daughter, to contact him fail. Her daughter, Meihua, goes to China to look for her father and ends up marrying a Chinese man and teaching art. The Cultural Revolution sees her sent to prison as a American spy suspect and anti-revolutionary, and her husband confined to a gulag. Their children, still at home, are raised by the family's illiterate servant, Yao. Yao's crude manner and resourcefulness partly shield Yezi, Meihua's daughter, and the novel's main character, from family tragedy, poverty and political discrimination, negotiating their survival during the revolution that she barely understands. Only after her mother released, does Yezi hear about her foreign grandmother, Agnes, who lives in Boston and has lost contact with the family since Yezi's birth. Curious about her American ancestry, Yezi now a teenager, joins Agnes in the U.S. Reading her grandmother's diaries helps Yezi get to know her grandmother as a young Canadian missionary and her life in China with the man who is her grandfather, and who her mother longed to find.

    Here, for the first time in English, is a book that charts the history of seppuku from ancient times to the twentieth century through a collection of swashbuckling tales from history and literature. Author Andrew Rankin takes us from the first recorded incident of seppuku, by the goddess Aomi in the eighth century, through the "golden age" of seppuku in the sixteenth century that includes the suicides of Shibata Katsuie, Sen no Riky? and Toyotomi Hidetsugu, up to the seppuku of General Nogi Maresuke in 1912.Drawing on never-before-translated medieval war tales, samurai clan documents, and execution handbooks, Rankin also provides a fascinating look at the seppuku ritual itself, explaining the correct protocol and etiquette for seppuku, different stomach-cutting procedures, types of swords, attire, location, even what kinds of refreshment should be served at the seppuku ceremony. The book ends with a collection of quotations from authors and commentators down through the centuries, summing up both the Japanese attitude toward seppuku and foreigners' reactions:"As for when to die, make sure you are one step ahead of everyone else. Never pull back from the brink. But be aware that there are times when you should die, and times when you should not. Die at the right moment, and you will be a hero. Die at the wrong moment, and you will die like a dog." -- Izawa Nagahide, The Warrior's Code, 1725"We all thought, 'These guys are some kind of nutcakes.'" -- Jim Verdolini, USS Randolph, describing "Kamikaze" attack of March 11, 1945

    What she learned instead were brutal truths about women’s rights, the politics of corruption, the failures of democracy, the mechanism of globalization, and a profound emotional connection that can only be called love. Moore’s fascinating story from the cusp of the global economic meltdown is a look at her time with the first all-women’s dormitory in the history of the country, just kilometers away from the notorious Killing Fields. Her tale is a noble one, as heartbreaking as it is hilarious; staunchly ethical yet conflicted and human.Moore’s in-depth examination of her stint among the first large group of social-justice-minded young women from the impoverished provinces is told in intimate, mood-evocative, beautifully-written first-person prose. Cambodian Grrrl is the first in a series of short essay collections on contemporary media, art, and educational work by, for, and with young women in Southeast Asia. Part memoir and part investigative report, Moore’s story could only be told by her. The result is illuminating, vital reading.

    It presents a thorough yet accessible overview of the language, concentrating on the real patterns of use in modern Korean. The book moves from the alphabet and pronunciation through morphology and word classes to a detailed analysis of sentence structures and semantic features such as aspect, tense, speech styles and negation. Avoiding complex grammatical terminology, the Grammar provides practical information regarding how these grammatical patterns are used in real-world conversation. Through the provision of realistic and lively examples, the book presents readers with Korean grammatical patterns in context. An extensive index and numbered sections provide readers with easy access to the information they require. Features include: detailed treatment of the common grammatical structures and parts of speech clear, jargon-free explanations extensive and wide-ranging use of examples particular attention to areas of confusion and difficulty Korean-English parallels highlighted throughout. The depth and range of Korean: A Comprehensive Grammar makes it an essential reference source for the learner and user of Korean irrespective of level. For the beginner, the book offers clear explanations of essential basic grammar points while for the more advanced learner it provides detailed descriptions of less frequent grammatical patterns. Jaehoon Yeon is Reader in Korean and Chair of the Centre for Korean Studies at SOAS, University of London. Lucien Brown is a Research Fellow in the Centre of Korean studies at SOAS, The University of London.

    But when another tragedy strikes, he’s forced to run and also deemed a fugitive. Dishonored, he has no choice but to accept work as a lowly gravedigger, a position that allows him to sharpen his corpse-reading skills. Soon, he can deduce whether a person killed himself—or was murdered.His prowess earns him notoriety, and Cí receives orders to unearth the perpetrator of a horrific series of mutilations and deaths at the Imperial Court. Cí’s gruesome investigation quickly grows complicated thanks to old loyalties and the presence of an alluring, enigmatic woman. But he remains driven by his passion for truth—especially once the killings threaten to take down the Emperor himself.Inspired by Song Cí, considered to be the founding father of CSI-style forensic science, this harrowing novel set during the thirteenth-century Tsong Dynasty draws readers into a multilayered, ingenious plot as disturbing as it is fascinating. In 2012, The Corpse Reader received the Zaragoza International Prize for best historical novel published in Spain (Premio Internacional de Novela Histórica Ciudad de Zaragoza).

    Known as the “water tower of Asia,” the Tibetan Plateau is heating up twice as fast as the global average. These rapidly melting glaciers-along with recent unprecedented development on the plateau-are quickly changing the lives of the deeply devotional nomads, monks, and farmers who have lived in this area for centuries.Photographer Phil Borges uses individual stories and portraits to illustrate how dramatic development, climate change, and the deep devotion of the Tibetan people are interacting to transform Tibetan culture. The portraits of the land and the people bring a powerful visual component as the reader meets and learns about Tibet firsthand through these storytellers.

    These thirteen tales are at once acerbic and heartbreaking, directing our gaze at the incongruities of human relations and the persistence of wounds our hearts cannot heal. Those in the multi culti world of these fictions seek answers to questions they have yet to learn to ask. But every so often they glimpse an entry point, and these sightings offer reason to hope, even if access will again be denied, as it inevitably is, for those whose desires strain towards perfection in our highly imperfect world.

    The Chinese people had been ravaged by long years of domestic struggle, terrible famine and economic and political isolation. Today, China has the world's second largest economy and is a major player in global diplomacy. This volume, written by some of the leading experts in the field, tracks China's extraordinary transformation from the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, through the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the death of Chairman Mao, to its dynamic rise as a superpower in the twenty-first century. The latest edition of the book includes a new introduction and a seventh chapter which focuses on the legacy of Deng Xiaoping, the godfather of China's transformation, under his successors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Under Mao, China challenged the outside world ideologically and militarily. Today China's challenge as an economic and diplomatic superpower may prove even more formidable. As a comprehensive and authoritative appraisal of China's last sixty years, this book will be invaluable for professionals working in the region and for students assessing what China will mean for their futures.

    Hearts of Pine brings us into the lives of three such survivors: Pak Duri, Mun Pilgi, and Bae Chunhui. Over the course of eight years, author Joshua Pilzer worked with these now-elderly women, smoking with them, eating with them, singing and playing with them, trying to understand and document their worlds of song. During four decades of secrecy and thesubsequent decades of the comfort women protest movement, singing served these women as a means of coping with and expressing their experiences, forging and sustaining identities and social relationships, and recording and conveying their struggles and philosophies of life. Through these intimateportraits, Hearts of Pine illustrates the personal and social power of music vis-�-vis other expressive media, models a humanistic history of modern Korean music, and presents heretofore unrecorded histories of the comfort women system and postwar South Korean public culture written in women'ssong.

    What began as a travelblog (feedingthedragon.com) documenting the duo's journey has evolved into a visual narrative of food, culture, and travel inside Feeding the Dragon.Arranged by the authors' travel itinerary to highlight the uniqueness of nine specific regions in China, Feeding the Dragon is part cookbook and part cultural travelogue, overflowing with sumptuous but easily prepared authentic dishes. From Buddhist vegetarian dishes enjoyed on the snowcapped mountains of Tibet to lamb kebabs served on the scorching desert of Xinjiang Province, one hundred recipes are presented alongside first-person narratives and travel photographs.Western cooks will find healthy recipes brimming with authentic ingredients and flavors, such as Lychee Martini and Shanghai Soup Dumplings, Pineapple Rice, Coca-Cola Chicken Wings, Green Tea Shortbread Cookies, and Wild Mushroom Salad. Feeding the Dragon also provides handy reference sidebars to guide cooks with time-saving shortcuts such as buying premade dumpling wrappers instead of making them from scratch, or using a blow-dryer to finish your Peking Duck. A comprehensive glossary of Chinese ingredients and their equivalent substitutions complete the book. Feeding the Dragon is not an Americanized adulteration of classic Chinese cuisine. Instead, the Tates offer readers and cooks a beautiful journey through Chinese history, culture, tradition, and food.

    Sections of the book assess the validity of Marxism and Leninism, the U.S. drive for global domination, the U.S. working class today and the need for a revolutionary party.

    Evan Edwards shares secrets to living the happy life - discovered and hammered out while living and working in the Middle East. Full of inspirational and true dramatic stories that illustrate a wealth of penetrating insights, this book will motivate you to enjoy your life, accomplish your dreams. The book about YOU... ..".You have what it takes! Believe! You are the one with the dream. You own it. And you will walk through the open doors. Nothing can stop you.. Risk, even if you make mistakes. So live with faith and abandon. Have some fun. You are being carried..."

    Meanwhile, the Japanese Imperial Army rampages through China and tightens its stranglehold on Shanghai, a city that becomes the last haven for thousands of desperate European Jews. Dr. Franz Adler, a renowned surgeon, is swept up in the wave of anti-Semitic violence and flees to Shanghai with his daughter. At a refugee hospital, Franz meets an enigmatic nurse, Soon Yi Sunny Mah. The chemistry between them is intense and immediate, but Sunnyâ's life is shattered when a drunken Japanese sailor murders her father. The danger escalates for Shanghaiâ's Jews as the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Facing starvation and disease, Franz struggles to keep the refugee hospital open and protect his family from a terrible fate. The Far Side of the Sky focuses on a short but extraordinary period of Chinese, Japanese, and Jewish history when cultures converged and heroic sacrifices were part of the everyday quest for survival.

    Now, in a gripping, personal account, Girardet delivers a story of that nation's resistance fighters, foreign invaders, mercenaries, spies, aid workers, Islamic extremists, and others who have defined Afghanistan's last thirty years of war, chaos, and strife.As a young foreign correspondent, Girardet arrived in Afghanistan just three months prior to the Soviet invasion in 1979. Over the next decades, he trekked hundreds of miles across rugged mountains and deserts on clandestine journeys following Afghan guerrillas in battle as they smuggled French doctors into the country, and as they combated each other as well as invaders. He witnessed the world's greatest refugee exodus, the bitter Battle for Kabul in the early 1990s, the rise of the Taliban, and, finally, the US-led Western military and recovery effort that began in 2001.Girardet's encounters with key figures-including Ahmed Shah Massoud, the famed "Lion of Panjshir" assassinated by al Qaeda two days before 9/11, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Islamic extremist massively supported by the Americans during the 1980s only to become one of today's most ruthless anti-Western insurgents, and Osama bin Laden-shed extraordinary light on the personalities who have shaped the nation, and its current challenges, from corruption and narcotics trafficking to selfish regional interests.Killing the Cranes provides crucial insights into why the West's current involvement has turned into such a disaster, not only rekindling a new insurgency, but squandering billions of dollars on a recovery process that has shown scant success.

    The Chinese Communist state, however, seems to have become increasingly adept at responding to challenges ranging from leadership succession and popular unrest to administrative reorganization, legal institutionalization, and global economic integration. What political techniques and procedures have Chinese policymakers employed to manage the unsettling impact of the fastest sustained economic expansion in world history?As the authors of these essays demonstrate, China's political system allows for more diverse and flexible input than would be predicted from its formal structures. Many contemporary methods of governance have their roots in techniques of policy generation and implementation dating to the revolution and early PRC--techniques that emphasize continual experimentation. China's long revolution had given rise to this guerrilla-style decisionmaking as a way of dealing creatively with pervasive uncertainty. Thus, even in a post-revolutionary PRC, the invisible hand of Chairman Mao--tamed, tweaked, and transformed--plays an important role in China's adaptive governance.

    Often defined by its references to manga or anime, contemporary Japanese art in fact has much broader roots. By drawing parallels between the art of Japan past and present, this compelling volume reveals how current artists rework the traditional forms and techniques of Japanese art history. Modern takes on time-honored conventions are illustrated by the work of a star-studded roster of contemporary artists including Tabaimo, Makoto Aida, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, and Yayoi Kusama. Aficionados of both contemporary and traditional Japan are sure to appreciate this fresh perspective on art and the power of visual culture.

    From 2006-10, he was editorial director of Muse magazine, and taught Asian cinema as adjunct professor of Syracuse University Hong Kong Center. He is now Editorial director assistant of Oxford University Press and writes columns in Chinese for Hong Kong Economic Journal and Yazhou Zhoukan. Once A Hero: The Vanishing Hong Kong Cinema is his first English book.In Once A Hero, his latest collection of essays, Lam describes the decline of Hong Kong cinema since 1997 and gives an eyewitness account of its attempt to reinvent itself. He examines successes and failures of famous auteurs; spotlights talented newcomers seeking to inject new life into cinema; and, with the future of Hong Kong cinema now bound up with the mainland, discusses the works of major Chinese filmmakers.From the Book:“The real story about Hong Kong films isn’t the dramatic decline in their creativity, or power to draw people to theaters. It is the surgical removal of their distinctiveness as movies of Hong Kong. In their eagerness to please the mainland audience, Hong Kong filmmakers now churn out movies with ready-made plots, powered by simple demographics. I smell more desperation than inspiration in the race to make the Hong Kong cinema mainland-friendly.”

    As a poet, thinker, teacher, playwright, he had a deep knowledge of the society of his days and was a staunch lover of Nature. Gurudev Tagore founded Santiniketan in a natural surrounding thereby giving vent to his passion for nature and a new education system. This biography of Rabindranath Tagore impressively records the development of the personality of the man through the various influences, the ordeals he faced in life and his zest for life. Krishna Kriplani (1907-1992), a freedom fighter, began his career as a teacher in Santiniketan. Between 1933 and 1941 he worked in close association with Rabindranath Tagore and edited Visva-Bharati Quarterly the journal started by Tagore. He was the first secretary of the Sahitya Akademi from 1954 to 1971. A nominated member of Rajya Sabha from 1974 to 1980, a Padmabhushan recipient, he was also the Chairman of National Book Trust, India, from 1980 to 1985. Gandhi - A Life, Gandhi - the Modern Mahatma, Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography, Dwarakanath Tagore, Modern India: Rammohan Roy to Rabindranath Tagore are some of his important books.

    Unlike existing scholarship on nationalism, Islam and the state in Pakistan, which tends to privilege events in a narrowly-defined ‘political’ realm, Saadia Toor highlights the significance of cultural politics in Pakistan from its origins to the contemporary period. This extra dimension allows Toor to explain how the struggle between Marxists and liberal nationalists was influenced and eventually engulfed by the agenda of the religious right.Timely and unique, this book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the roots of modern Pakistan and the likely outcome of current power struggles in the country.

    In this book, Natasha Fijn examines the process of animal domestication in a study that blends biological and social anthropology, ethology, and ethnography. She examines the social behavior of humans and animals in a contemporary Mongolian herding society. After living with Mongolian herding families, Dr. Fijn has observed through firsthand experience both sides of the human-animal relationship. Examining their reciprocal social behavior and communication with one another, she demonstrates how herd animals influence Mongolian herders lives and how the animals themselves are active partners in the domestication process.

    Pop music allowed Japanese artists and audiences to assume various identities, reflecting the country's uncomfortable position under American hegemony and its uncertainty within ever-shifting geopolitical realities. In the first English-language study of this phenomenon, Michael Bourdaghs considers genres as diverse as boogie-woogie, rockabilly, "enka," 1960s rock and roll, 1970s new music, folk, and techno-pop. Reading these forms and their cultural import through music, literary, and cultural theory, he introduces readers to the sensual moods and meanings of modern Japan. As he unpacks the complexities of popular music production and consumption, Bourdaghs interprets Japan as it worked through (or tried to forget) its imperial past. These efforts grew even murkier as Japanese pop migrated to the nation's former colonies. In postwar Japan, pop music both accelerated and protested the commodification of everyday life, challenged and reproduced gender hierarchies, and insisted on the uniqueness of a national culture, even as it participated in an increasingly integrated global marketplace. Each chapter in "Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon" examines a single genre through a particular theoretical lens: the relation of music to liberation; the influence of cultural mapping on musical appreciation; the role of translation in transmitting musical genres around the globe; the place of noise in music and its relation to historical change; the tenuous connection between ideologies of authenticity and imitation; the link between commercial success and artistic integrity; and the function of melodrama. Bourdaghs concludes with a look at recent Japanese pop music culture.

    Born in Hawaii of Japanese descent in 1922, Takaezu worked actively in clay, fiber, and bronze for over sixty years. Influenced by midcentury modernism, her work transformed from functional vessels to abstract sculptural forms and installations. Over the years, continued to draw on a combination of Eastern and Western techniques and aesthetics, as well as her love of the natural world. In particular, Takaezu's vertical closed forms became a symbol of her work, created through a combination of wheel-throwing and hand-building techniques that allowed her to grow her vessels vertically and eased the circular restrictions of the wheel. In addition to her art, Takaezu was renowned for her teaching, including twenty years at Princeton University.This beautifully illustrated book offers the first scholarly analysis of Takaezu's life work and includes essays by Paul Smith, director emeritus of the American Craft Museum, and Janet Koplos, former senior editor of Art in America. Jack Lenor Larsen, a textile designer, author, collector, and advocate of traditional and contemporary craftsmanship, provides a foreword.

    Across time, people have gone beyond the known boundaries to seek new experiences, find new land, or test their theories. This atlas brings their stories together in a richly graphic way. Newly commissioned maps, timelines, illustrations, and carefully researched photography all contribute to make The Illustrated Atlas of Exploration an authoritative reference and a compelling read.

    The cargo was a remarkable assemblage of lead ingots, bronze mirrors, spice-filled jars, intricately worked vessels of silver and gold, and more than 60,000 glazed bowls, ewers, and other ceramics. The ship remained buried at sea for more than a millennium, its contents protected from erosion by their packing and the conditions of the silty sea floor. Shipwrecked explores this precious cargo and the story of the men who sailed it, with more than 250 gorgeous photographs and essays by international experts in Arab ship-building methods, pan-Asian maritime trade, ceramics, precious metalwork, and more.

    Now he must find out who kidnapped his only daughter, and why. Can he rescue her before it's too late?The lives of a father, a daughter, and a yakuza's daughter are all intertwined in this fast-paced 7,500 word short story. This is the first in a series of thrilling adventures featuring Tanaka.

    It traces the origin, formation, and various historical stages through which the language has passed, from Old Korean through to the present day. Each chapter begins with an account of the historical and cultural background. A comprehensive list of the literature of each period is then provided and the textual record described, along with the script or scripts used to write it. Finally, each stage of the language is analyzed, offering new details supplementing what is known about its phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. The extraordinary alphabetic materials of the 15th and 16th centuries are given special attention, and are used to shed light on earlier, pre-alphabetic periods.

    The book focuses on both maritime exploration and overland discovery via the ancient Silk Road: a network of trading posts that encompassed China, Tibet, Pakistan, India, Kurdistan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and dozens of other places known in ancient times by fabled names, including Abyssinia, Malacca, Macassar, Siam, and Cathay.The maps provide detailed visual keys to the fascinating history of Asia and the Middle East: altogether they illuminate a cast of historical figures ranging from great leaders (the Queen of Sheba, Mohammed the prophet, King Charles V) to legendary explorers (Marco Polo, Columbus, Magellan, Sir Francis Drake, Capt. James Cook) and influential cartographers.Mapping the Silk Road and Beyond depicts over eighty maps organized in clear chronology - from Alexander the Great's map of the world, first created in 323 BC and reproduced in a sixteenth-century atlas, to maps from the nineteenth century by French and Dutch explorers that detail the growing interaction between Europeans and Eastern cultures. These maps represent the finest examples in existence in museums, libraries, and archives around the world, chosen because they depict the most important milestones in the mapping of Asia.

    I began my journey as a spirited child of a well-to-do family in Shanghai. The day when I started primary school, I learned that my first name, Qiyin, meant spring grass in Chinese, blessing me to be like grass, not as charming as flowers, but always to be alive and thriving. I became unusually bold for a girl. The book reveals the gradual changes to my life and to the lives of my family and friends as Mao Zedong issued directives for the new China. With the start of the Cultural Revolution, my older brother and I, both ardent believers in Mao's words and policies, joined the Red Guards to sweep away all vestiges of capitalism and the Four Olds: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas. I found myself with the power to make life altering decisions about the lives of suspected traitors to the cause of class struggle, all the while a naive teenager struggling with the issues of adolescence. The second volume, Shanghai Winter, shows how my family and my fate were turned upside down by events during the Cultural Revolution.

    I'll be a prince in China, and lord over these heathen beggars, or I'll make a great many of them wish they'd better joss - better luck - than to cross my bow."Arriving in the midst of the bloodiest civil war in human history, Fletcher Thorson Wood takes up the imperial cause against the "Christian" rebels, trains and fights beside native Chinese troops, mandarins, and "Manilamen," builds the most powerful Army in China, and as reward for his achievements grateful Chinese appoint Fletcher a mandarin of high rank, a general, and even honor him with a temple near Shanghai.Yang Shen makes the reader see, feel, and understand the tumult of 1860s China - "the ships and weapons, the countryside with its intricate network of canals, the arcane maneuverings of Chinese politicians and merchants and the equally complex rivalries among the foreign powers, the squalid bars and brothels whose denizens simply struggled to survive each day, and the equally squalid conditions of the Chinese people in their villages."Yang Shen is also about the encounter, sometimes the clash, of Americans and Chinese. More than a historical adventure, this novel recreates times long past, places long lost in China, and long-silent voices of people in America, China, England and the Philippines who lived through cataclysmic events that echo still.[Note: Yang Shen, the God from the West, Book I (2nd Edition) is the same story as Yankee Mandarin (Yankee Mandarin is reduced to bare essentials, removing all the paraphernalia having to do with the print edition, all the Chinese language, and the notes and reading list, but leaving the glossary.)]

    It includes important contributions from a respected group of scholars across a range of generations, disciplines, and sites of study. Describes the new theoretical framework of 'worlding' Substantially expands and updates the themes of capital and culture Includes a unique collection of authors across generations, disciplines, and sites of study Demonstrates how references to Asian power, success, and hegemony make possible urban development and limit urban politics

    However, for thousands of years, they were a central feature of military practice in China and essential for the smooth functioning of society. Individuals who were adept in using weapons were highly regarded, not simply as warriors but also as tacticians and performers. This book, which opens with an intriguing account of the very first female martial artist, charts the history of combat and fighting techniques in China from the Bronze Age to the present. This broad panorama affords fascinating glimpses into the transformation of martial skills, techniques, and weaponry against the background of Chinese history, the rise and fall of empires, their governments, and their armies. Quotations from literature and poetry, and the stories of individual warriors, infuse the narrative, offering personal reflections on prowess in the battlefield and techniques of engagement. This is an engaging and readable introduction to the authentic history of Chinese martial arts.

    Tokita emigrated from Japan in the early twentieth century and settled in Seattle's Japanese American immigrant community. By the 1930s, he was established as a prominent member of the Northwest art scene and allied with the region's progressive artists. His art shares qualities of American Realism while it embodies a ditinctively Issei perspective on his new home.On the day Pearl Harbor was bombed, Tokita started a diary that he vowed to keep until the war ended. In it he recorded with great vividness and insight the events, fears, rumors, restrictions, and his own emotional turmoil before and during his detention at Minidoka. The diary in this book is a rare personal account of this time written as events were unfolding and by a person of maturity and stature.This book contextualizes Tokita's paintings and diary within the art community and Japanese America. It also introduces us to an amazing man who embraced life despite living through challenging and disheartening times.

    This book chronicles the miracles of several Cambodian refugees who found their way out of the killing fields and into the light and joy of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Inspirational and touching, this fascinating volume will fill you with awe.

    A daily battle for rights and freedoms in cyberspace is being waged in Asia. At the epicenter of this contest is China--home to the world's largest Internet population and what is perhaps the world's most advanced Internet censorship and surveillance regime in cyberspace. Resistance to China's Internet controls comes from both grassroots activists and corporate giants such as Google. Meanwhile, similar struggles play out across the rest of the region, from India and Singapore to Thailand and Burma, although each national dynamic is unique. Access Contested, the third volume from the OpenNet Initiative (a collaborative partnership of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and the SecDev Group in Ottawa), examines the interplay of national security, social and ethnic identity, and resistance in Asian cyberspace, offering in-depth accounts of national struggles against Internet controls as well as updated country reports by ONI researchers.The contributors examine such topics as Internet censorship in Thailand, the Malaysian blogosphere, surveillance and censorship around gender and sexuality in Malaysia, Internet governance in China, corporate social responsibility and freedom of expression in South Korea and India, cyber attacks on independent Burmese media, and distributed-denial-of-service attacks and other digital control measures across Asia.

    What is it like for them to handle working with Americans?The eight case studies illustrate many of the cultural issues that bewilder Americans and Chinese when they interact with one another. The Chinese contributors simply tell their story from their perspective. These stories are followed up with outstanding explanations and recommendations from experts, both American and Chinese, who have worked in this environment for years.When We Are the Foreigners, although informal in style, provides insightful commentary for both the novice and the experienced, and for the student as well as the professional.

    Collection includes landscape paintings, figure paintings, ceramics, lacquer ware and calligraphic scrolls. Chinese classical poems are an international culture code in East Asia. Many diverse factors account for the phenomenon of cross-cultural merging in this region. Using works from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, this catalogue concentrates on the classical Chinese poetry that Japanese and Korean elites learned and then applied to their own arts. The aristocracy first introduced the aesthetics of painted poetry and focused on specific images illustrated through a diverse range of media from painting to ceramics.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Yet politeness is an impressively complex linguistic process, and studying it can tell us a lot about the social and cultural values of social groups or even a whole society, helping us to understand how humans 'encode' states of mind in their words. The traditional, stereotypical view is that people in East Asian cultures are indirect, deferential and extremely polite - sometimes more polite than seems necessary. This revealing book takes a fresh look at the phenomenon, showing that the situation is far more complex than these stereotypes would suggest. Taking examples from Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Singaporean Chinese, it shows how politeness differs across countries, but also across social groups and subgroups. The first comprehensive study of the subject, this book is essential reading for those interested in intercultural communication, linguistics and East Asian languages.

    Volume 1 - The life and Manners of the DayVolume 2 - The Whole Earth CatalogueVolume 3 - Fanciful, Mythical and Supernatural

    Contemplating a series of seemingly banal subjects--maps, public art, parks--Joseph Allen peels back layers of obscured history to reveal forces that caused cultural objects to be celebrated, despised, destroyed, or transformed as Taipei experienced successive regime changes and waves of displacement. In this thoughtful stroll through the city, we learn to look beyond surface ephemera, moving from the general to the particular to see sociocultural phenomena in their historical and contemporary contexts.Watch the book trailer: https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBdGIoox7zM