Book picks similar to
A Continuous Revolution: Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture by Barbara Mittler
china
history
chinese
non-fiction
The Inquisition
Michael Baigent - 2000
Baigent and Leigh tell the whole extraordinary story, taking it on into the nineteenth century and showing how after the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility in 1870 the Vatican attempted to establish new authorities that were an intellectual equivalent of the Inquisition. The Inquisition offers a fascinating narrative account of one of the most influential and horrifying movements in the history of western Europe.
Classic of Tea: Origins and Rituals
Lu Yu
Beautiful line drawings show the various components that go into the making of perfect tea.
A Single Tear: A Family's Persecution, Love, and Endurance in Communist China
Ningkun Wu - 1993
Two years later, he wa s arrested as an ultra-rightest. This illuminating narrative tells Wu's story over the next 30 years--the harrowing tale of a "class enemy" and a remarkable testament to a family's love and perseverance.
China: The Novel
Edward Rutherfurd - 2021
Now, in China: The Novel, Rutherfurd takes readers into the rich and fascinating milieu of the Middle Kingdom..The story begins in 1839, at the dawn of the First Opium War, and follows Chinese history through Mao's Cultural Revolution and up to the present day. Rutherfurd chronicles the rising and falling fortunes of members of Chinese, British, and American families, as they negotiate the tides of history. Along the way, in his signature style, Rutherfurd provides a deeply researched portrait of Chinese history and society, its ancient traditions and great upheavals, and China's emergence as a rising global power. As always, we are treated to romance and adventure, heroines and scoundrels, grinding struggle and incredible fortunes. China: The Novel brings to life the rich terrain of this vast and constantly evolving country. From Shanghai to Nanking to the Great Wall, Rutherfurd chronicles the turbulent rise and fall of empires as the colonial West meets the opulent and complex East in a dramatic struggle between cultures and people.Extraordinarily researched and majestically told, Edward Rutherfurd paints a thrilling portrait of one of the most singular and remarkable countries in the world.
The Man Who Stayed Behind
Sidney Rittenberg - 1993
military in the 1940s. A student activist and labor organizer who was fluent in Chinese, Rittenberg became caught up in the turbulence that engulfed China and remained there until the late 1970s. Even with access to China’s highest leaders as an American communist, however, he was twice imprisoned for a total of sixteen years. Both a memoir and a documentary history of the Chinese revolution from 1949 through the Cultural Revolution, The Man Who Stayed Behind provides a human perspective on China’s efforts to build a new society. Critical of both his own mistakes and those of the Communist leadership, Rittenberg nevertheless gives an even-handed account of a country that is now free of internal war for the first time in a hundred years.
No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems
Xiaobo Liu - 2011
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.
The Supreme Court: Landmark Decisions: 20 Cases that Changed America
Anthony Mauro - 2016
Hodges In the United States of America, the legislative branch is responsible for creating legislation, while the executive branch is responsible for signing that legislation and enforcing it. But how do senators, representatives, and presidents make sure that these laws don’t run afoul of the Constitution that guides the running of the country? The nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States serve as the final arbiters of which laws are and aren’t constitutional. Every year, thousands of contentious cases are submitted to the court for that reason; only about eighty of them are heard. Out of those cases, many are remembered only by the people directly involved. But over the years, many cases heard by the Supreme Court have gone on to affect the lives of many or even all American citizens. In The Supreme Court: Landmark Decisions, veteran court reporter Tony Mauro picks out the twenty most momentous Supreme Court cases in United States history. In his reviews of Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 case that first affirmed the Supreme Court’s status as the country’s final legal arbiter, to Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case that legalized same-sex marriage, Mauro summarizes each case and includes cogent summaries of the justices’ decisions, as well as notable dissents. With Mauro’s crisp language and sharp insights, The Supreme Court: Landmark Decisions serves as your quick, concise, and informative guide to one of the most important, and sometimes least-understood, institutions in the nation.
May at 10
Anthony Seldon - 2019
May at 10 tells the compelling inside story of the most turbulent period in modern British politics for 100 years.Written by one of Britain’s leading political and social commentators, May at 10 describes how Theresa May arrived in 10 Downing Street in 2016 with the clearest, yet toughest, agenda of any Prime Minister since the Second World War: delivering Brexit. What follows defies belief or historical precedent. This story has never been told.Including a comprehensive series of interviews with May’s closest aides and allies, and with unparalleled access to the advisers who shaped her premiership, Downing Street’s official historian Anthony Seldon decodes the enigma of the Prime Minister’s tenure. Drawing on all his authorial experience, he unpacks what is the most intriguing government and Prime Minister of the modern era.
China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa
Howard W. French - 2014
A prizewinning foreign correspondent and former New York Times bureau chief in Shanghai and in West and Central Africa, Howard French is uniquely positioned to tell the story of China in Africa. Through meticulous on-the-ground reporting—conducted in Mandarin, French, and Portuguese, among other languages—French crafts a layered investigation of astonishing depth and breadth as he engages not only with policy-shaping moguls and diplomats, but also with the ordinary men and women navigating the street-level realities of cooperation, prejudice, corruption, and opportunity forged by this seismic geopolitical development. With incisiveness and empathy, French reveals the human face of China’s economic, political, and human presence across the African continent—and in doing so reveals what is at stake for everyone involved. We meet a broad spectrum of China’s dogged emigrant population, from those singlehandedly reshaping African infrastructure, commerce, and even environment (a self-made tycoon who harnessed Zambia’s now-booming copper trade; a timber entrepreneur determined to harvest the entirety of Liberia’s old-growth redwoods), to those just barely scraping by (a sibling pair running small businesses despite total illiteracy; a karaoke bar owner–cum–brothel madam), still convinced that Africa affords them better opportunities than their homeland. And we encounter an equally panoramic array of African responses: a citizens’ backlash in Senegal against a “Trojan horse” Chinese construction project (a tower complex to be built over a beloved soccer field, which locals thought would lead to overbearing Chinese pressure on their economy); a Zambian political candidate who, having protested China’s intrusiveness during the previous election and lost, now turns accommodating; the ascendant middle class of an industrial boomtown; African mine workers bitterly condemning their foreign employers, citing inadequate safety precautions and wages a fraction of their immigrant counterparts’. French’s nuanced portraits reveal the paradigms forming around this new world order, from the all-too-familiar echoes of colonial ambition—exploitation of resources and labor; cut-rate infrastructure projects; dubious treaties—to new frontiers of cultural and economic exchange, where dichotomies of suspicion and trust, assimilation and isolation, idealism and disillusionment are in dynamic flux. Part intrepid travelogue, part cultural census, part industrial and political exposé, French’s keenly observed account ultimately offers a fresh perspective on the most pressing unknowns of modern Sino-African relations: why China is making the incursions it is, just how extensive its cultural and economic inroads are, what Africa’s role in the equation is, and just what the ramifications for both parties—and the watching world—will be in the foreseeable future.
India vs Pakistan: Why Can't We Just Be Friends?
Husain Haqqani - 2016
What stops India and Pakistan from being friends? In this provocative, deeply analysed book, full of riveting revelations and anecdotes, Husain Haqqani, adviser to four Pakistani prime ministers, looks at the key pressure points in the relationship and argues that Pakistan has a pathological obsession with India, which lies at the heart of the problems between the two countries.
John F. Kennedy: A Life
New Word City - 2012
Kennedy’s assassination has been the subject of public and cultural fascination (a film by Oliver Stone, a novel by Stephen King, endless conspiracy theories) for nearly 50 years. It’s time, this brief biography argues, to give equal consideration to Kennedy’s life.
The Edge: Is the Military Dominance of the West Coming to an End?
Mark Urban - 2015
Meanwhile, growing nationalism is hampering international cooperation and fuelling conflict everywhere. The west's will - as well as its capability - to shape the world is ebbing away.Beset by economic woes, western countries are continuing the post-Cold War process of disarmament at the very moment that many believe a new Cold War is starting. NATO members have compared Vladimir Putin's foreign policy to that of Adolf Hitler, newly empowered groups such as ISIS, not to mention some governments, are tearing up the rulebook of acceptable international behaviour, and the military prowess that the western world once regarded as its prerogative is being dwarfed by countries like India and China.Tightly argued by Newsnight's diplomatic and defence editor Mark Urban, THE EDGE is a sharp polemic that breaks new ground in examining the workings and consequences of these geo-political tectonics, and shows just how rapidly the balance of power has been upended.
Hong Kong
Jan Morris - 1988
No one has depicted that world - the dazzlingly modern, obdurately traditional Crown Colony of Hong Kong - more faithfully, shrewdly, or affectionately than Jan Morris, who in this contemporary classic of travel writing celebrates the city's charm and squalor, unravels the tangle of its history, and gives us an informed glimpse into its future. Combining firsthand reportage with exemplary research, Morris takes us from Hong Kong's clamorous back alleys to the luxurious Happy Valley racecourse, where taipans place their bets between sips of champagne and bird's nest soup. Morris chronicles the exploits of opium traders and pirates, colonists and financiers, and shows how their descendants view the prospect of reunification with the Chinese mainland. What emerges is an epic tableau, vastly informed and pungently evocative.
Elizabethans: How Modern Britain Was Forged
Andrew Marr - 2020
Marcus Rashford. Jan Morris. Diana Dors. Bob Geldof. David Olusoga. Elizabeth David. Zaha Hadid. Frank Crichlow. Quentin Crisp. Dusty Springfield. Captain Tom.Who made modern Britain the country it is today? How do we sum up the kind of people we are? What does it mean to be the new Elizabethans?In this wonderfully told history, spanning back to when Queen Elizabeth became queen in 1953, Andrew Marr traces the people who have made Britain the country it is today. From the activists to the artists, the sports heroes to the innovators, these people pushed us forward, changed the conversation, encouraged us to eat better, to sing, think and to protest. They got things done. How will our generation be remembered in a hundred years’ time? And when you look back at Britain’s toughest moments in the past seventy years, what do you learn about its people and its values?In brilliantly entertaining style and with unexpected insights into some of our sung and unsung heroes, Andrew Marr offers up a first draft of the history we are all living. This is our story as the new Elizabethans – the story of how 1950s Britain evolved into the diverse country we live in today. In short, it is the history of modern Britain.
The Leadership Secrets of Genghis Khan
John Man - 2009
As a teenager he was an outcast, fleeing enemies on a mountain in northern Mongolia, an exile, a nobody. Yet it took only twenty years for Genghis to build the largest land empire in history: four times the size of Alexander’s, twice the size of Rome’s. How did he do it? What lessons does his life reveal about the nature of leadership? What is “greatness” in leadership? What traits did Genghis possess exactly? Might they apply in other times and other places — even here and today?John Man re-examines the life of Genghis Khan to discover the qualities, characteristics and strategies that made him the great leader that he was. The answers are sometimes surprising. Far from being just the tyrant that history records, he was a leader of exceptional vision and modernity. And many of the secrets of his success are as useful in today’s competitive business world as they were in rallying the Mongol hordes.