It offer in a nutshell and interesting historical perspective of each country."--Dato Zaid Ibrahim, Member of Parliament for Kato Bharu, Malaysia "A Short History of South-East Asia is one of my best references whenever I need to look for factual information and explanation about major events in South-East Asia, covering the most recent period and going back more than a thousand year."--Narongchai Akrasanee, Former Thailand Minister of Commerce "Any businessman doing or wanting to do business in SE Asia must understand the history of the area if he is to be successful. The history of each country plays an important part in understanding the country's culture and behaviour. This easily read book provides this invaluable information - ignore it at your peril."--Mike M. Courtnall, President, Asian Building and Manufacturing Markets, BHP Steel Limited "Succinct, reliable, historical surveys of each state of ASEAN, reaching right up to the present day. Such a country-by-country approach has real value for the business visitor of the tourist moving around this complex region. No one seeking to identify opportunities and dangers in Southeast Asia can ignore the historical processes that shape the different societies."--Anthony Milner, Basham Professor of Asian History, Australian National University "This authoritative, concise, balanced and accessible history neatly fills the gap between the tourist guides and the weighty academic tomes. It gives the reader an authentic "feed for history," so necessary to understand the present."--Stephen Grenville, Former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of Australia "The interpretation of events in this book has managed to capture to a considerable degree Southeast Asian perceptions of its history. To have achieved this in such a brief text is impressive."--Nono Anwar Makarim, Founder and Counsel to Makarim and Taira Chairman, Aksara Foundation, Jakarta

    As a child, she was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labor collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman. Miraculously selected for the film version of one of Madame Mao’s political operas, Min’s life changed overnight. Then Chairman Mao suddenly died, taking with him an entire world. A revelatory and disturbing portrait of China, Anchee Min’s memoir is exceptional for its candor, its poignancy, its courage, and for its prose.

    They will also develop a deeper understanding of the many interconnections that exist among the different areas of psychology. Goodwin's book not only provides accounts of the lives and contributions of psychology's pioneers set into historical context; it also contains original writings by these psychologists, interwoven with informative comments from the author. The text is written in a conversational and engaging style with discrete attention to recent scholarship in the history of psychology, especially that of the past 150 years.

    He returned with stories of exotic people, tremendous riches, and the most powerful ruler in the world – Kublai Khan. The explorer told of inventions ranging from gunpowder to paper money. The intellectual ferment and cultural diversity he described helped move Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. In his lifetime, people scoffed at his stories. But as this book explains, he changed the world.

    This text contains portions of great works in their original form to whet the appetite and to encourage discussion within the classroom. By providing historical context and current scholarship, Alan Ebenstein builds upon the framework of influences that have shaped current political thoughts and theories.

    In the most complete, well-ordered philosophical system of his day, Xunzi advocated the counteraction of man's evil through self-improvement, the pursuit of learning, the avoidance of obsession, and observance of ritual in life. Readers familiar with Xunzi's work will find that Burton Watson's lucid translation breathes new life into this classic. Those new to Xunzi will find his ideas on government, language, and order and safety in society surprisingly close to concerns of our own age.

    Whether foot soldier, samurai or trained assassin, these men were driven by strict codes of honor and bound by deep allegiances of rank, family or religion.This book examines the military lives of four formidable warrior types, covering the samurai and the ninja as well as the experiences of warrior monks and ashigaru foot soldiers, less familiar to western readers. The recruitment, training and equipment of each warrior type are described, and their beliefs, motivation and experience of warfare are explored. Rare material from Japanese sources makes this a highly authoritative treatment of the military elites of medieval Japan, brought to life by lavish illustrations and photography.

    Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and often gruesome battles—a sweeping yet intimate portrait of the conflict that shaped the fate of modern China.   The story begins in the early 1850s, the waning years of the Qing dynasty, when word spread of a major revolution brewing in the provinces, led by a failed civil servant who claimed to be the son of God and brother of Jesus. The Taiping rebels drew their power from the poor and the disenfranchised, unleashing the ethnic rage of millions of Chinese against their Manchu rulers. This homegrown movement seemed all but unstoppable until Britain and the United States stepped in and threw their support behind the Manchus: after years of massive carnage, all opposition to Qing rule was effectively snuffed out for generations. Stephen R. Platt recounts these events in spellbinding detail, building his story on two fascinating characters with opposing visions for China’s future: the conservative Confucian scholar Zeng Guofan, an accidental general who emerged as the most influential military strategist in China’s modern history; and Hong Rengan, a brilliant Taiping leader whose grand vision of building a modern, industrial, and pro-Western Chinese state ended in tragic failure.   This is an essential and enthralling history of the rise and fall of the movement that, a century and a half ago, might have launched China on an entirely different path into the modern world.

    First published by Yale University Press in 1981,[1] it examines how a number of seemingly insignificant events in 1587 might have caused the downfall of the Ming empire. The views expressed in the book follow the macro history perspective.

    Perfect for parents who wish to teach their children and for those who would like to learn or relearn the facts themselves, A Classical Education is informative and educational, but in a completely accessible way, including:• Latin and Greek• Logic and philosophy• Natural sciences• Art and architecture• Poetry and drama• History and Classical literatureAlso including suggestions for further reading and entertaining tit-bits of information on the classics, A Classical Education is a must for anyone feeling let down by modern schooling.

    Grunwald’s meticulous reporting shows how the stimulus, though reviled on the right and the left, helped prevent a depression while jump-starting the president’s agenda for lasting change. As ambitious and far-reaching as FDR’s New Deal, the Recovery Act is a down payment on the nation’s economic and environmental future, the purest distillation of change in the Obama era. The stimulus has launched a transition to a clean-energy economy, doubled our renewable power, and financed unprecedented investments in energy efficiency, a smarter grid, electric cars, advanced biofuels, and green manufacturing. It is computerizing America’s pen-and-paper medical system. Its Race to the Top is the boldest education reform in U.S. history. It has put in place the biggest middle-class tax cuts in a generation, the largest research investments ever, and the most extensive infrastructure investments since Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. It includes the largest expansion of antipoverty programs since the Great Society, lifting millions of Americans above the poverty line, reducing homelessness, and modernizing unemployment insurance. Like the first New Deal, Obama’s stimulus has created legacies that last: the world’s largest wind and solar projects, a new battery industry, a fledgling high-speed rail network, and the world’s highest-speed Internet network. Michael Grunwald goes behind the scenes—sitting in on cabinet meetings, as well as recounting the secret strategy sessions where Republicans devised their resistance to Obama—to show how the stimulus was born, how it fueled a resurgence on the right, and how it is changing America. The New New Deal shatters the conventional Washington narrative and it will redefine the way Obama’s first term is perceived.

    Through most of its long history, Greece was poor. But in the classical era, Greece was densely populated and highly urbanized. Many surprisingly healthy Greeks lived in remarkably big houses and worked for high wages at specialized occupations. Middle-class spending drove sustained economic growth. Classical wealth produced a stunning cultural efflorescence lasting hundreds of years.Why did Greece reach such heights in the classical period--and why only then? And how, after "the Greek miracle" had endured for centuries, did the Macedonians defeat the Greeks, seemingly bringing an end to their glory? Drawing on a massive body of newly available data and employing novel approaches to evidence, Josiah Ober offers a major new history of classical Greece and an unprecedented account of its rise and fall.Ober argues that Greece's rise was no miracle but rather the result of political breakthroughs and economic development. The extraordinary emergence of citizen-centered city-states transformed Greece into a society that defeated the mighty Persian Empire. Yet Philip and Alexander of Macedon were able to beat the Greeks in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, a victory enabled by the Macedonians' appropriation of Greek innovations. After Alexander's death, battle-hardened warlords fought ruthlessly over the remnants of his empire. But Greek cities remained populous and wealthy, their economy and culture surviving to be passed on to the Romans--and to us.A compelling narrative filled with uncanny modern parallels, this is a book for anyone interested in how great civilizations are born and die.This book is based on evidence available on a new interactive website. To learn more, please visit http://polis.stanford.edu/

    In The Chinese Economy, Barry Naughton provides both an engaging, broadly focused introduction to China's economy since 1949 and original insights based on his own extensive research. The book will be an essential resource for students, teachers, scholars, business people, and policymakers. It is suitable for classroom use for undergraduate or graduate courses.After presenting background material on the pre-1949 economy and the industrialization, reform, and market transition that have taken place since, the book examines different aspects of the modern Chinese economy. It analyzes patterns of growth and development, including population growth and the one-child family policy; the rural economy, including agriculture and rural industrialization; industrial and technological development in urban areas; international trade and foreign investment; macroeconomic trends and cycles and the financial system; and the largely unaddressed problems of environmental quality and the sustainability of growth.The text is notable also for placing China's economy in interesting comparative contexts, discussing it in relation to other transitional or developing economies and to such advanced industrial countries as the United States and Japan. It provides both a broad historical and macro perspective as well as a focused examination of the actual workings of China's complex and dynamic economic development. Interest in the Chinese economy will only grow as China becomes an increasingly important player on the world's stage. This book will be the standard reference for understanding and teaching about the next economic superpower.

    In The Tao of Poker, prize-winning poker player Larry Phillips offers more than 280 rules to bring you to new levels of personal achievement, just when and where you need them most.Here are some of The Tao of Poker’s rules for success:Take the long viewOnce you commit to a hand, play it strongDon’t throw in good money after badIf you think you’re beat, get outTry out these rules and watch your game, and your life, improve. Now you can be a winner at home, at work, and at the casino - wherever the stakes for success are high!

    The guru of Sixties radicals, Alinsky urged his followers to be flexible and opportunistic and say anything to get power, which they can then use to radically change existing social and economic institutions. In this insightful new booklet, Horowitz discusses Alinsky’s work in the 60s—and his advice to radicals to seize any weapon to advance their cause. This became the philosophy of Alinskyite organizations such as ACORN and influenced the future President who came up through the Chicago network created by Alinsky’s network. After analyzing Saul Alinsky’s work and pointing out that the godfather of “social organizing” created “ not salvation but chaos,” Horowitz then he asks the crucial question: “And presidential disciples of Alinsky, what will they create?”