Suu Kyi's party will be a major contender in the 2015 elections, a revolutionary breakthrough after years of military dictatorship. Using exclusive interviews with Suu Kyi since her release from fifteen years of house arrest, as well as recently disclosed diplomatic cables, Pederson uncovers new facets to Suu Kyi’s extraordinary story.The Burma Spring will also surprise readers by revealing the extraordinary steps taken by First Lady Laura Bush to help Suu Kyi, and also how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton injected new momentum into Burma’s democratic rebirth. Pederson provides a never before seen view of the harrowing hardships the people of Burma have endured and the fiery political atmosphere in which Suu Kyi’s has fought a life-and-death struggle for liberty in this fascinating part of the world.

    In Home, the Time Team expert explores the first nine thousand years of life in Britain, from the retreat of the glaciers to the Romans' departure. Tracing the settlement of domestic communities, he shows how archaeology enables us to reconstruct the evolution of habits, traditions and customs. But this, too, is Francis Pryor's own story: of his passion for unearthing our past, from Yorkshire to the west country, Lincolnshire to Wales, digging in freezing winters, arid summers, mud and hurricanes, through frustrated journeys and euphoric discoveries. Evocative and intimate, Home shows how, in going about their daily existence, our prehistoric ancestors created the institution that remains at the heart of the way we live now: the family.'Under his gaze, the land starts to fill with tribes and clans wandering this way and that, leaving traces that can still be seen today . . . Pryor feels the land rather than simply knowing it' - Guardian Former president of the Council for British Archaeology, Dr Francis Pryor has spent over thirty years studying our prehistory. He has excavated sites as diverse as Bronze Age farms, field systems and entire Iron Age villages. He appears frequently on TV's Time Team and is the author of The Making of the British Landscape, Seahenge, as well as Britain BC and Britain AD, both of which he adapted and presented as Channel 4 series.Show More Show Less

    President Kennedy later explained to his close friend Paul "Red" Fay that the reason the United States made the fateful decision to get rid of the Ngos was in no small part because of South Vietnam’s first lady, Madame Nhu. "That goddamn bitch," Fay remembers President Kennedy saying, "She’s responsible ... that bitch stuck her nose in and boiled up the whole situation down there."The coup marked the collapse of the Diem government and became the US entry point for a decade-long conflict in Vietnam. Kennedy’s death and the atrocities of the ensuing war eclipsed the memory of Madame Nhu—with her daunting mixture of fierceness and beauty. But at the time, to David Halberstam, she was "the beautiful but diabolic sex dictatress, and Malcolm Browne called her "the most dangerous enemy a man can have."By 1987, the once-glamorous celebrity had retreated into exile and seclusion, and remained there until young American Monique Demery tracked her down in Paris thirty years later. Finding the Dragon Lady is Demery’s story of her improbable relationship with Madame Nhu, and—having ultimately been entrusted with Madame Nhu’s unpublished memoirs and her diary from the years leading up to the coup—the first full history of the Dragon Lady herself, a woman who was feared and fantasized over in her time, and who singlehandedly frustrated the government of one of the world’s superpowers.

     It’s generally assumed that this diaspora is the result of China’s approach to population control, but there is also the underlying belief that the majority of adoptees are daughters because the One-Child Policy often collides with the traditional preference for a son. While there is some truth to this, it does not tell the full story—a story with deep personal resonance to Kay Ann Johnson, a China scholar and mother to an adopted Chinese daughter.             Johnson spent years talking with the Chinese parents driven to relinquish their daughters during the brutal birth-planning campaigns of the 1990s and early 2000s, and, with China’s Hidden Children, she paints a startlingly different picture. The decision to give up a daughter, she shows, is not a facile one, but one almost always fraught with grief and dictated by fear. Were it not for the constant threat of punishment for breaching the country’s stringent birth-planning policies, most Chinese parents would have raised their daughters despite the cultural preference for sons. With clear understanding and compassion for the families, Johnson describes their desperate efforts to conceal the birth of second or third daughters from the authorities. As the Chinese government cracked down on those caught concealing an out-of-plan child, strategies for surrendering children changed—from arranging adoptions or sending them to live with rural family to secret placement at carefully chosen doorsteps and, finally, abandonment in public places. In the twenty-first century, China’s so-called abandoned children have increasingly become “stolen” children, as declining fertility rates have left the dwindling number of children available for adoption more vulnerable to child trafficking. In addition, government seizures of locally—but illegally—adopted children and children hidden within their birth families mean that even legal adopters have unknowingly adopted children taken from parents and sent to orphanages.             The image of the “unwanted daughter” remains commonplace in Western conceptions of China. With China’s Hidden Children, Johnson reveals the complex web of love, secrecy, and pain woven in the coerced decision to give one’s child up for adoption and the profound negative impact China’s birth-planning campaigns have on Chinese families.

    In a complete revision of his 1998 hardcover, Jones tells for the first time the whole story of his investigation of the case, including what he was told by McVeigh and what he learned about others involved in the conspiracy. His account differs significantly from the tale McVeigh is telling as he faces execution for his crimes. In interviews with Buffalo News journalists, reported in their recently released book American Terrorist(ReganBooks, April 2000), McVeigh claims total responsibility for the bombing, saying "It was my choice and my control to hit that building when it was full." In Others Unknown Jones sets the record straight, saying what he could not say when he first wrote this book, before McVeigh effectively waived attorney-client privilege: that based on what he learned as McVeigh's counsel, Jones knows that the bombing was a conspiracy, and that McVeigh was not its mastermind. "I'm not trying to say he was innocent. He has exaggerated his guilt to protect others. He played a role, but he was a foot soldier, a mule, not the general," says Jones. "I know it did not happen the way he tells it in his book." Jones reports in detail what McVeigh told him as the case progressed; explains why McVeigh did not plead guilty; and shows McVeigh's real role in the conspiracy and how he obstructed his own defense. This is the definitive historical record of a heinous act of murderous rage; an account indispensable to understanding what happened. And, says PublicAffairs CEO and publisher Peter Osnos: "We think it's important that Tim McVeigh not be given the final word."

    Since fieldwork is situated, Raybeck's treatment also includes rich descriptions of Kelantanese society and culture, addressing such topics as kinship, linguistics, gender relations, economics, and political structures. Through the lively pages of this narrative, readers gain insight into the human dimension of the fieldwork undertaking, a sense of how the anthropologist builds rapport in a research setting, and how reliable information is obtained.

    

    It concludes with the Mauryan Empire, which, in the 3rd century BC, united an enormous area of the Indian subcontinent. As in The Mughal Throne, Abraham Eraly provides a superb portrait of Indian life and culture.

    He would protect himself with techniques not of assassination but rather of sensation and an acute awareness of his natural surroundings. He would avoid unnecessary conflict, and even if armed with a blade, would find a way to win without staining it. These are the true techniques of Ninjutsu, and the art in which Ninja persistently trained.Ninja exercised endurance throughout their secretive lives in order to protect their families, their clans, and their country. Their harsh training endowed them with a tough but pliant spirit, and martial skills suitable for coping with any situation, together with a sense of awareness that had universal application.Dr. Masaaki Hatsumi, Ph. D, is the most famous Ninja grandmaster in the world today. In this book, he explains the essence, truth, and wisdom of Ninjutsu, an art of a thousand forms and innumerable variations. Through perceptive observations and many detailed pictures, the author reveals the hidden reality behind this mysterious and fascinating martial art. The Way of the Ninja will help widen readers' perceptions and deepen their understanding of two essential principles. One is that Ninjutsu is the very backbone of the martial arts; the other, that Ninjutsu reveals their true spiritual significance.

    Reprinted many times, this classic, of Agnes Keith's observations and reflections of the time, is a true-to-life record of society and culture then and of the captivating natural beauty of Sabah. Today, Sabah continues to be known as the "land below the wind", a phrase used by seafarers in the past to describe all the lands south of the typhoon belt, but which Agnes effectively reserved for Sabah through her book. One of few written accounts of contemporary life in Borneo in the 1930s, this book is an invaluable record of a world gone by.

    A beautiful woman born in the American southwest into the long extinct Anasazi tribe, long before Columbus...whose blue eyes marked her as a witch and set her apart from the Indian tribe that raised her.Following her path of destiny in a vanished world of great stone cities and trackless wilderness warring tribes and mysterious trabelers from other lands, Kwani found love with Kokopelli, the Toltec magician, who rescued her from death and took her to the Place of the Eagle Clan. There she was transformed from an outcast to the Chosen of the Gods, where she became She Who Remembers and taught young girls the ancient secrets only women know...secrets that provided her with inner power to overcome and triumph--and change her life forever.

    In Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists than We Do, Napoleoni argues just the opposite: what we are witnessing instead is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism and the victory of "communism with a profit motive." Maonomics charts the prodigious ascent of the Chinese economic miracle and the parallel course of the West’s ongoing insistence on misconstruing China and its economy even as we acknowledge its growing influence and importance. Maonomics is a warning call whereby Western governments can avoid economic collapse by learning how to understand more clearly what the lessons of the Chinese economy really are. Based on first-hand reporting from China during frequent visits in the last several years, Maonomics lends credence to the Chinese view and translates it for Western readers. For example, the Chinese too are attached to their vision of democracy, but it is different from ours. It isn’t focused as much on voting as it is economic opportunity and the fair distribution of wealth and prosperity. Napoleoni also separates failed Leninist political ideology from true Marxist theory, showing that Marx’s writings do not reject profit so long as it is used to benefit the people. Marx’s dictatorship of the proletariat is being realized in China, she argues, where giant steps forward are being made in the name of progress and the wellbeing and prosperity of the Chinese people. Looking at the Chinese economy up close, any economist would be hard pressed to say that they are not on the right track. Here Loretta Napoleoni offers a front row seat on the greatest show on earth: the peaceful economic revolution that is shifting the balance of power in the world from West to East.

    This completely revised edition takes into account the fresh information that has appeared since the book was first published in 1959, especially that from archaeology's newest branch, marine archaeology. Casson does what no other author has done: he has put in a single volume the story of all that the ancients accomplished on the sea from the earliest times to the end of the Roman Empire. He explains how they perfected trading vessels from mere rowboats into huge freighters that could carry over a thousand tons, how they transformed warships from simple oared transports into complex rowing machines holding hundreds of marines and even heavy artillery, and how their maritime commerce progressed from short cautious voyages to a network that reached from Spain to India.

    While several of these are well known, for all those that have been recorded, many have been unjustly forgotten. Our history is overflowing with different cultures that have all evolved over time, sometimes dissolving or reforming, though ultimately shaping the way we continue to live. But for every culture that has been remembered, what have we forgotten?This thorough guide explores those civilizations that have faded from the pages of our textbooks but played a significant role in the development of modern society. Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World covers the Hyksos to the Hephthalites and everyone in between, providing a unique overview of humanity’s history from approximately 3000 BCE–550 CE. A wide range of illustrated artifacts and artworks, as well as specially drawn maps, help to tell the stories of forty lost peoples and allow readers to take a direct look into the past. Each entry exposes a diverse culture, highlighting their important contributions and committing their achievements to paper.Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World is an immersive, thought-provoking, and entertaining book for anyone interested in ancient history.

    But Pankaj Mishra shows that it was otherwise in this stereotype-shattering book. His enthralling group portrait of like minds scattered across a vast continent makes clear that modern Asia’s revolt against the West is not the one led by faith-fired terrorists and thwarted peasants but one with deep roots in the work of thinkers who devised a view of life that was neither modern nor antimodern, neither colonialist nor anticolonialist. In broad, deep, dramatic chapters, Mishra tells the stories of these figures, unpacks their philosophies, and reveals their shared goal of a greater Asia.       Right now, when the emergence of a greater Asia seems possible as at no previous time in history, From The Ruins Of Empire is as necessary as it is timely—a book essential to our understanding of the world and our place in it.