The stories have been selected and introduced by Haruki Murakami.

    Now considered the standard canon of modern Japanese writing translated into English, Modern Japanese Literature includes concise introductions to the writers, as well as a historical introduction by Professor Keene. Includes: Growing Up by Ichiyo, a lyrical story of pre-adolescence in the 90s; Natsume’s story of Botchan, an illustarred and ineffectual Huck Finn; Nagai’s The Sumida River; Kokomitsu’s Kafkaesque Time; Kawabata’s The Mole; Firefly Hunt; a glimpse into Tanizaki’s masterpiece Thin Snow; and the postwar work of such writers as Dazai and Mishima.

    The ancient Arabian Peninsula city of Ubar vanishes, seemingly without trace. Find out how old maps and modern space shuttles help solve the mystery. Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage is never heard from again. Find out how spectroscopy points to some probable explanations. Case Closed? examines these and six other mysteries from ancient and modern times. Accompanied by photos, maps, diagrams and illustrations, this book reveals how modern science sheds new light on people, vessels and entire civilizations throughout history that simply vanished. In some cases, the mystery has been solved. In other cases, readers can examine the latest evidence and decide for themselves.

    Jasanoff delves beneath the grand narratives of power, exploitation, and resistance to look at the British Empire through the eyes of the people caught up in it.Written and researched on four continents, Edge of Empire enters a world where people lived, loved, mingled, and identified with one another in ways richer and more complex than previous accounts have led us to believe were possible. And as this book demonstrates, traces of that world remain tangible—and topical—today. An innovative, persuasive, and provocative work of history.

    Yet The Origin of Species (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological interrelatedness, revealing the complex mutual interdependencies between animal and plant life, climate and physical environment, and—by implication—within the human world. Written for the general reader, in a style which combines the rigour of science with the subtlety of literature, The Origin of Species remains one of the founding documents of the modern age.

    Having delved deep into the gray obscurity of official eighteenth-century records in Spanish, English, and French, Julius S. Scott has written a powerful “history from below.” Scott follows the spread of “rumors of emancipation” and the people behind them, bringing to life the protagonists in the slave revolution.By tracking the colliding worlds of buccaneers, military deserters, and maroon communards from Venezuela to Virginia, Scott records the transmission of contagious mutinies and insurrections in unparalleled detail, providing readers with an intellectual history of the enslaved.Though The Common Wind is credited with having “opened up the Black Atlantic with a rigor and a commitment to the power of written words,” the manuscript remained unpublished for thirty-two years. Now, after receiving wide acclaim from leading historians of slavery and the New World, it has been published by Verso for the first time, with a foreword by the academic and author Marcus Rediker.

    By fully integrating the three key actors in the story - the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan - Hasegawa for the first time puts the last months of the war into international perspective. From April 1945, when Stalin broke the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact and Harry Truman assumed the presidency, to the final Soviet military actions against Japan, Hasegawa brings to light the real reasons Japan surrendered. From Washington to Moscow to Tokyo and back again, he shows us a high-stakes diplomatic game as Truman and Stalin sought to outmaneuver each other in forcing Japan's surrender, as Stalin dangled mediation offers to Japan while secretly preparing to fight in the Pacific, as Tokyo peace advocates desperately tried to stave off a war party determined to mount a last-ditch defense, and as the Americans struggled to balance their competing interests of ending the war with Japan and preventing the Soviets from expanding into the Pacific. Authoritative and engrossing, Racing the Enemy puts the final days of World War II into a whole new light.

    Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up and overtake Britain in less than 15 years. The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives. Access to Communist Party archives has long been denied to all but the most loyal historians, but now a new law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era. Frank Dikotter's astonishing, riveting and magnificently detailed book chronicles an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented. Dikotter shows that instead of lifting the country among the world's superpowers and proving the power of communism, as Mao imagined, in reality the Great Leap Forward was a giant - and disastrous -- step in the opposite direction. He demonstrates, as nobody has before, that under this initiative the country became the site not only of one of the most deadly mass killings of human history (at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death) but also the greatest demolition of real estate - and catastrophe for the natural environment - in human history, as up to a third of all housing was turned to rubble and the land savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. Piecing together both the vicious machinations in the corridors of power and the everyday experiences of ordinary people, Dikotter at last gives voice to the dead and disenfranchised. Exhaustively researched and brilliantly written, this magisterial, groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

    Oe’s account of the lives of the many victims of Hiroshima and the valiant efforts of those who cared for them, both immediately after the atomic blast and in the years that follow, reveals the horrific extent of the devastation. It is a heartrending portrait of a ravaged city — the “human face” in the midst of nuclear destruction.

    Lifting North Korea's curtain of self-imposed isolation, this book will take readers inside a society, that to a Westerner, will appear to be from another planet. Subsisting on a diet short on food grains and long on lies, North Koreans have been indoctrinated from birth to follow unquestioningly a father-son team of megalomaniacs.To North Koreans, the Kims are more than just leaders. Kim Il-Sung is the country's leading novelist, philosopher, historian, educator, designer, literary critic, architect, general, farmer, and ping-pong trainer. Radios are made so they can only be tuned to the official state frequency. "Newspapers" are filled with endless columns of Kim speeches and propaganda. And instead of Christmas, North Koreans celebrate Kim's birthday--and he presents each child a present, just like Santa.The regime that the Kim Dynasty has built remains technically at war with the United States nearly a half century after the armistice that halted actual fighting in the Korean War. This fascinating and complete history takes full advantage of a great deal of source material that has only recently become available (some from archives in Moscow and Beijing), and brings the reader up to the tensions of the current day. For as this book will explain, North Korea appears more and more to be the greatest threat among the Axis of Evil countries--with some defector testimony warning that Kim Jong-Il has enough chemical weapons to wipe out the entire population of South Korea.

    It transformed Japan from a country of hundreds of feudal domains under the hegemony of the Tokugawa Shogun, into a modern industrialized world power under the unifying rule of the Emperor. The shogun was head of the ruling Tokugawa family, and his regime was known as the Tokugawa Bakufu (Bakufu, for short).The first chapter of Samurai Revolution opens with the arrival of American warships commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853, sparking the revolution that would end with the fall of the Bakufu in 1868. The last chapter ends with the crushing defeat in 1877 of an army of former samurai who stood against the Imperial government they had created, marking the end of the samurai era, and with it the last vestiges of feudal Japan.The series of tumultuous events between 1853 and 1868 are collectively called the Meiji Restoration (i.e., the restoration of Imperial rule). The Meiji Restoration was Japan’s modern revolution. It was different from other great revolutions in that it was brought about by men of the ruling caste—i.e., samurai. It is a human drama of epic proportion, which is how author Romulus Hillsborough treats it in Samurai Revolution. And just as the Meiji Restoration was “the dawn of modern Japan,” knowledge of this history is essential for understanding the complexities of today’s Japan.The overthrow of the Bakufu in 1868 sparked a contained civil war that would have spread throughout the country, endangering Japan’s sovereignty, had Katsu Kaishu, as commander in chief of the fallen shogun’s still formidable military, not negotiated an eleventh-hour peace with Saigo Takamori, commander of the Imperial Army.While Katsu is a household name in Japan, Samurai Revolution, based largely on primary sources, is the first comprehensive English language treatment of the man’s life, mind, and important role in the Meiji Restoration, though Hillsborough has written about him in other books as well. And though the focus is on Katsu Kaishu, this book is more of a history than a traditional biography. In telling this history from the perspective of Katsu Kaishu, commissioner of the shogun’s navy and later supreme commander of the Tokugawa military, Hillsborough also portrays an array of other leading players in the Meiji Restoration drama – examining their values and social systems, their culture and ideals, their desires and fears, and their historical perspectives – against a backdrop of tumultuous events that would change their world forever.OverviewThe Introduction provides the historical and political background of Japan under the hegemony of the Tokugawa Bakufu. The body of Samurai Revolution (not including the Epilogue) is divided into two Books (published as one volume), comprising a brief Prologue and five distinct Parts in 37 Chapters, and ending with the lengthy Epilogue and Appendix.Book 1: The Fall of the Tokugawa Bakufu (1853-1868) covers the cataclysmic fifteen-year history of the fall of the Bakufu and the restoration of Imperial rule–i.e., the Meiji Restoration (1853-1868). The Prologue and Parts I through III comprise Book 1.Book 2: The Rise of Imperial Japan (1868-1878), comprised of Parts IV and V, chronicles the first decade of Imperial Japan (1868-1877) under the newly restored monarchy.The Epilogue summarizes the last two decades of Katsu Kaishu’s life (1879-1899).Throughout the volume, Hillsborough quotes Katsu Kaishu, a prolific writer, focusing on his journals, letters, histories, biographical sketches, and oral memoirs. (All citations are Hillsborough’s own translations of the original texts.) As such, Kaishu’s unique personality – the down-to-earth attitude, magnanimity, scathing humor, genius in overcoming adversity, and humanity – come forth.Fourteen of the thirty-seven chapters focus on historical events and sociocultural phenomena in which Katsu Kaishu had little or no direct involvement–but which nonetheless had a profound effect on him personally and on Japanese society and history overall. The remaining twenty-three chapters focus either on Katsu Kaishu or events in which he was directly involved.The revolution, broadly speaking, pitted three of the most powerful samurai clans – Satsuma, Choshu and Tosa – against the Bakufu and its allies, with the Emperor and his Court caught in the middle. Beside Katsu Kaishu, among the most prominent men are: Ii Naosuké, the boy-shogun’s dictatorial regent whose assassination in the spring of 1860 marked the beginning of the end of the Bakufu; Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shogun, whose rise and fall is integral to this history; Saigo Takamori and Okubo Toshimichi, who emerged, respectively, as the military and political leaders of Satsuma, the former the driving force behind the revolution, the latter the most powerful man in the early Imperial government; Yoshida Shoin, Takasugi Shinsaku, and Katsura Kogoro, respectively the spiritual/academic, military and political leaders of Choshu, without whom the revolution, as it happened, would have been unachievable; and the outlaw samurai Sakamoto Ryoma of Tosa, who, formerly Katsu Kaishu’s protégé, brokered the military alliance between Satsuma and Choshu to overthrow the government his mentor represented.Samurai Revolution is the first English-language presentation and analyses of these powerful and alluring personalities in one volume aimed at a general international audience.

    James Achilles Kirkpatrick was the British Resident at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad when in 1798 he glimpsed Kahir un-Nissa—'Most excellent among Women'—the great-niece of the Nizam's Prime Minister and a descendant of the Prophet. Kirkpatrick had gone out to India as an ambitious soldier in the army of the East India Company, eager to make his name in the conquest and subjection of the subcontinent. Instead, he fell in love with Khair and overcame many obstacles to marry her—not least of which was the fact that she was locked away in purdah and engaged to a local nobleman. Eventually, while remaining Resident, Kirkpatrick converted to Islam, and according to Indian sources even became a double-agent working for the Hyderabadis against the East India Company.It is a remarkable story, involving secret assignations, court intrigue, harem politics, religious and family disputes. But such things were not unknown; from the early sixteenth century, when the Inquisition banned the Portuguese in Goa from wearing the dhoti, to the eve of the Indian mutiny, the 'white Mughals' who wore local dress and adopted Indian ways were a source of embarrassments to successive colonial administrations. William Dalrymple unearths such colourful figures as 'Hindoo Stuart', who travelled with his own team of Brahmins to maintain his temple of idols, and who spent many years trying to persuade the memsahibs of Calcutta to adopt the sari; and Sir David Ochterlony, Kirkpatrick's counterpart in Delhi, who took all thirteen of his wives out for evening promenades, each on the back of their own elephant.In White Mughals, William Dalrymple discovers a world almost entirely unexplored by history, and places at its centre a compelling tale of love, seduction and betrayal. It possesses all the sweep and resonance of a great nineteenth-century novel, set against a background of shifting alliances and the manoeuvring of the great powers, the mercantile ambitions of the British and the imperial dreams of Napoleon. White Mughals, the product of five years' writing and research, triumphantly confirms Dalrymple's reputation as one of the finest writers at work today.

    The Russian command structure was hopelessly confused, their generals old and incompetent, the Tsar cautious and uncertain. The Russian naval defeat at Tsushima was as farcical as it was complete. The Japanese had defeated a big European power, and the lessons for the West were there for all to see, had they cared to do so. From this curious war, so unsafely ignored for the most part by the military minds of the day, Richard Connaughton has woven a fascinating narrative to appeal to readers at all levels.

    Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn examine the controversy and criticism over how our nation's history should be taught, culminating in the debate about National History Standards. The book chronicles a media war spearheaded by conservatives from National Endowment for the Humanities veteran Lynne Cheney to Rush Limbaugh, posing questions with regard to history as it relates to national identity. What, the authors ask, is our objective in teaching history to children? Is the role of schools, textbooks, and museums to instill patriotism? Do we revise and reinterpret the past to tell stories that reflect present-day values? If so, who should articulate these values? Wonderfully clear, timely in its intentions, History on Trial provides a thoughtful account of the ways in which Americans have, since the beginning of the Republic, perceived and argued about our past.

    These girls are literally showing up everywhere—in movies, magazines, video games, advertising, and music. WIRED Magazine has kept an eye on the trends emerging from these stylish teens, following kick-ass schoolgirl characters in videogames like Street Fighter and assassin schoolgirls in movies like Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill.By talking to Japanese women, including former and current J-Pop idols, well-known actresses, models, writers, and artists—along with famous Japanese film directors, historians and marketers—authors Brian Ashcraft and Shoko Ueda (who have both contributed to WIRED's "Japanese Schoolgirl Watch" columns) reveal the true story behind Japan's schoolgirl obsessions.You'll learn the origins of the schoolgirls' unusual attire, and how they are becoming a global brand used to sell everything from kimchi to insurance. In Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential, you'll discover:Sailor-suited pop-idolsCult movie vixensSchoolgirl shopping powerThe latest uniform fashionsJapanese schoolgirls are a symbol of girl empowerment. Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential shows why they are so intensely cool. Don't miss this essential book on the Japanese youth culture craze that is driving today's pop culture worldwide.