A writer may accomplish all this while sympathising heartily, as I do, with Ireland and her people.” A Concise History of Ireland by P. W. Joyce is a seminal work covering the history of the nation from ancient times through to the political turmoil of the nineteenth century. Joyce provides a detailed look at the customs and culture of ancient Ireland, its language, literature, art, and religion. Before the first Anglo-Norman invasion in 1169, Ireland was ruled by high kings who variously ruled all or parts of Ireland. The struggle for power between these kings resulted in many conflicts and produced such famous Irish war-kings as Brian Boru, Malachi and Dermot MacMurrogh. The book tracks the development of religion in Ireland from the pagan beliefs of ancient Ireland to the coming of St Patrick and the spread of Christianity. It also follows the religious effects of centuries of plantations and the religious divides that emerged as a result. Joyce examines the development of Anglo-Irish relations spanning from 1169, through to the Plantations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the rebellions of the nineteenth century. A Concise History of Ireland is a fascinating account at the complex history of this small country. P. W. Joyce was an Irish historian and writer who specialized in creating histories of localities all throughout Ireland. As a result of his efforts, he became one of the most important Irish cultural figures of the late 19th century, producing works about the languages, music, literature, folklore, and the background of the names of places all throughout Ireland. This work was published in 1893 and he passed away in 1914.

    The dream of a railroad across America had at last come true. This book tells the story of swaggering men with big plans, of an America emerging from the Civil War and reaching its manifest destiny. The men who imagined the transcontinental railroad were impassioned profiteers, an unlikely, often ruthless band, guilty of both financial double-dealing and ferocious ingenuity. When ice delayed operations in the Sierra Nevadas, the men of the Central Pacific formed the Summit Ice Company and sold their problem to California saloons. When herds of buffalo ripped up the tracks, the men of the Union Pacific brutally slaughtered tens of thousands of them. (Thus the legend of Buffalo Bill was born.) While his partners finagled in Washington and on Wall Street, Jack Casement, a former Union general, dressed in a fur coat, a Cossack hat, and shining cavalry boots and carrying a pistol and a bullwhip, drove the workers of the Union Pacific to new track-laying records. Meanwhile, from the West, thousands of Chinese immigrants blasted, climbed, and inched their way through the perilous California mountains. The railroad transformed the country forever. It decimated the Plains Indian culture by destroying the herds of buffalo that sustained it. It augmented the timber and steel industries; it opened up the West for commerce. Farms grew up along the length of the rails. Thousands of immigrants from Asia and Europe came here to build the iron road. Most important, it united a nation. The story of the railroad is capitalist theater, starring powerful politicians and generals and con artists. Set in opulent parlor cars, well-heeled boardrooms, and rowdy frontier towns, on desolate plains and deadly gorges, it is a story of vision and corruption, of empire building at its most vulgar and glorious. John Williams combines scholarship with personalities, historical analysis with plain old tall tales, to tell a story that will appeal to readers of American history and adventure and to lovers of the American West. The Transcontinental Railroad is an epic of every sense.

    In this sumptuously illustrated single-volume history, noted historian Patricia Ebrey traces the origins of Chinese culture from prehistoric times to the present. She follows its development from the rise of Confucianism, Buddhism, and the great imperial dynasties to the Mongol, Manchu, and Western intrusions and the modern communist state. Her scope is phenomenal--embracing Chinese arts, culture, economics, society and its treatment of women, foreign policy, emigration, and politics, including the key uprisings of 1919 and 1989 in Tiananmen Square. Both a comprehensive introduction to an extraordinary civilization, and an expert exploration of the continuities and disjunctures of Chinese history, Professor Ebrey's book has become an indispensable guide to China past and present. Patricia Ebrey is Professor of East Asian Studies and History and the author of Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook (1993).

    The search for little Pearl consumed the next several weeks, and the story became front page news all over the United States. Hundreds of residents from the nearby towns of Waldron and Booneville Arkansas helped in the search, and a mysterious mountain hermit seemed to hold the secret to Pearl's disappearance. The incredible events that followed contributed to a mountain legend that still exists today.

    It is the story of Premier Zhao Ziyang, the man who brought liberal change to that nation and who, at the height of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, tried to stop the massacre and was dethroned for his efforts.When China's army moved in, killing hundreds of students and other demonstrators, Zhao was placed under house arrest at his home on a quiet alley in Beijing. China's most promising change agent had been disgraced, along with the policies he stood for. The premier spent the last sixteen years of his life, up until his death in 2005, in seclusion. An occasional detail about his life would slip out: reports of a golf excursion, a photo of his aging visage, a leaked letter to China's leaders. But China scholars often lamented that Zhao never had his final say.As it turns out, Zhao did produce a memoir in complete secrecy. He methodically recorded his thoughts and recollections on what had happened behind the scenes during many of modern China's most critical moments. The tapes he produced were smuggled out of the country and form the basis for Prisoner of the State. In this audio journal, Zhao provides intimate details about the Tiananmen crackdown; he describes the ploys and double crosses China's top leaders use to gain advantage over one another; and he talks of the necessity for China to adopt democracy in order to achieve long-term stability.The China that Zhao portrays is not some long-lost dynasty. It is today's China, where the nation's leaders accept economic freedom but continue to resist political change.If Zhao had survived -- that is, if the hard-line hadn't prevailed during Tiananmen -- he might have been able to steer China's political system toward more openness and tolerance.Zhao's call to begin lifting the Party's control over China's life -- to let a little freedom into the public square -- is remarkable coming from a man who had once dominated that square. Although Zhao now speaks from the grave in this moving and riveting memoir, his voice has the moral power to make China sit up and listen.

    Warlords, Western businessmen, soldiers, missionaries and Japanese all ruled China, exploited and fought one another and the Chinese. In 1949, Mao Zedong came to power. China Witness is both a journey through time and through the author’s own country, and a memorial to an extraordinary generation of men and women who have survived war, invasion, revolution, famine and modernization — to tell the story of their times. It is an extraordinary personal testimony from a normally silent generation who, in their lifetimes have seen China transformed from a largely peasant, agricultural country of more than 1.3 billion people into a modern state. These are ordinary people — a herb woman at a market, retired teachers, a legendary “bandit” woman, Red Guards, oil pioneers, an acrobat, a naval general, a shoe mender, a lantern maker, taxi drivers, and others — from west to east, across the vast country, now in their seventies, eighties and nineties, and whose memories will soon die with them.Here, for the first time many of them speak out about their lives and private thoughts about what they witnessed. Together their intimate stories are perhaps the only accurate record of modern Chinese history.

    Written by Amy Eldridge, founder and CEO of Love Without Boundaries, this poignant chronicle of LWB's life-changing work, told through the stories of individual children, offers personal insight into the complex issues surrounding orphan care, abandonment, international aid, and adoption. Both thought-provoking and inspirational, "The Heart of an Orphan" reminds us all that while the needs of vulnerable children around the world may seem overwhelming, the human heart triumphs in believing that every life has value and every child deserves love.

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

    What she does not know is that, in a few years, she will become Queen of England. However, she has to go through many obstacles to get there, and, even then, is it worth it?

    The reason is Thucydides’s Trap, a deadly pattern of structural stress that results when a rising power challenges a ruling one. This phenomenon is as old as history itself. About the Peloponnesian War that devastated ancient Greece, the historian Thucydides explained: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” Over the past 500 years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times. War broke out in twelve of them. Today, as an unstoppable China approaches an immovable America and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promise to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case looks grim. Unless China is willing to scale back its ambitions or Washington can accept becoming number two in the Pacific, a trade conflict, cyberattack, or accident at sea could soon escalate into all-out war. In Destined for War, the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains why Thucydides’s Trap is the best lens for understanding U.S.-China relations in the twenty-first century. Through uncanny historical parallels and war scenarios, he shows how close we are to the unthinkable. Yet, stressing that war is not inevitable, Allison also reveals how clashing powers have kept the peace in the past — and what painful steps the United States and China must take to avoid disaster today.

    Today, millions of fans still mourn the loss of actor Jim Varney, who portrayed Ernest and who died at age 50 in 2000 of cancer. Ernest fans are finally getting the biography they have been waiting for in this comprehensive work by Jim’s nephew, Justin Lloyd. “The Importance of Being Ernest: The Life of Actor Jim Varney” traces Jim’s journey from a child in Lexington, Kentucky, with dreams of being a stage and film actor to becoming an iconic entertainment figure in the tradition of Charlie Chaplin’s “The Little Tramp.”The book is based on numerous interviews with family members and intimates of Jim who have never spoken publicly before about what drove the actor and how he overcame many personal and professional obstacles to attain success. But with that success came a price: Jim longed for stage and film roles beyond Ernest, and they were difficult to come by because of his symbiosis with the character. Yet Jim persevered, ultimately winning major movie roles such as Jed Clampett in “The Beverly Hillbillies” and (the voice of) Slinky Dog in the first two “Toy Story” films. The book also explores the genius of the small Nashville advertising agency that created Ernest and how it spread his popularity decades before “going viral” became associated with achieving global stardom.Even at the height of his career, Jim never forgot he was a descendant of Appalachian coal miners, and he remained true to his values, his friends and his family. Jim always strove for authenticity and humanity inside his hillbilly humor, endearing him to fans from every walk of life. “The Importance of Being Ernest: The Life of Actor Jim Varney” documents the life of an unforgettable figure in American comedy whose legacy endures today.

    A unique memoir of the first half of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of one born to be an absolute monarch, the book begins with the author's vivid account of the last, decadent days of the Ching Dynasty, and closes with an introspective self-portrait of the last Ching emperor transformed into a retiring scholar and citizen of the People's Republic of China.In detailing the events of the fifty years between his ascension to the throne and the final period of his life as a quiet-living resident of Beijing, Pu Yi reveals himself to be first and foremost a survivor, caught up in the torrent of global power struggles and world conflict that played itself out on the Asian continent through many decades of violence and upheaval.The firsthand description of the dramatic events of Pu Yi's life was the basis for the internationally acclaimed 1987 Bernardo Bertolucci film The Last Emperor which was named Best Picture of the Year by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. From Emperor to Citizen readily lends itself to cinematic adaptation as a personal narrative of continuously significant and revealing episodes.Becoming emperor and then forced to abdicate with the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911, all before he is seven years old, Pu Yi continues to live in the Forbidden City for another decade, still treated as the Son of Heaven by the moribund Ching court, but in reality a virtual prisoner with little genuine human contact apart from his beloved nurse Mrs. Wang, his teacher Chen Pao-shen and his English teacher Reginald Johnston.When at the age of nineteen Pu Yi is finally forced to vacate his isolated existence within the Forbidden City, he begins his long odyssey as the dependent of the occupying imperial Japanese regime, first in Tientsin, and eventually installed as "emperor" of the Japanese puppet state styled Manchukuo in China's northeast provinces. With the defeat of Japan and the end of the Second World War, Pu Yi faces a very uncertain future as he is shunted off to Russia for five years before returning to a new China transformed by revolution, where he is confined in the Fushun War Criminal Prison. Here he undergoes several years of rehabilitation, "learning how to become a human being," as he calls it, before receiving an official pardon and being allowed to finally live as an ordinary citizen of Beijing.This autobiography is the culmination of a unique and remarkable life, told simply, directly and frankly by a man whose circumstances and experiences were like no other.

    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.

    Hs� discusses the end of the last vestiges of foreign imperialism in China, as well as China's emergence as a regional and global superpower. U.S.-China rivalry and the prospect of unification between China and Taiwan are also considered.

    The war began in China, two years before Hitler invaded Poland, and China eventually became the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West.Rana Mitter focuses his gripping narrative on three towering leaders: Chiang Kai-shek, the politically gifted but tragically flawed head of China’s Nationalist government; Mao Zedong, the Communists’ fiery ideological stalwart, seen here at the beginning of his epochal career; and the lesser-known Wang Jingwei, who collaborated with the Japanese to form a puppet state in occupied China. Drawing on Chinese archives that have only been unsealed in the past ten years, he brings to vivid new life such characters as Chiang’s American chief of staff, the unforgettable “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, and such horrific events as the Rape of Nanking and the bombing of China’s wartime capital, Chongqing. Throughout, Forgotten Ally shows how the Chinese people played an essential role in the wider war effort, at great political and personal sacrifice.Forgotten Ally rewrites the entire history of World War II. Yet it also offers surprising insights into contemporary China. No twentieth-century event was as crucial in shaping China’s worldview, and no one can understand China, and its relationship with America today, without this definitive work.