But beneath our social media frenzy and reality-television politics, the deeper reality is one of drift, repetition, and dead ends. The Decadent Society explains what happens when a rich and powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemates, cultural exhaustion, and demographic decline creates a strange kind of “sustainable decadence,” a civilizational malaise that could endure for longer than we think..

    Yet it has not been an easy path; military catastrophe, political atrophy, and economic upheavals have made regular appearances from the feudal era to the present. Today, Japan is seen as a has-been with a sluggish economy, an aging population, dysfunctional politics, and a business landscape dominated by yesterday's champions. Though it is supposed to be America's strongest ally in the Asia-Pacific region, it has almost entirely disappeared from the American radar screen.In Japan and the Shackles of the Past, R. Taggart Murphy places the current troubles of Japan in a sweeping historical context, moving deftly from early feudal times to the modern age that began with the Meiji Restoration. Combining fascinating analyses of Japanese culture and society over the centuries with hard-headed accounts of Japan's numerous political regimes, Murphy not only reshapes our understanding of Japanese history, but of Japan's place in the contemporary world. He concedes that Japan has indeed been out of sight and out of mind in recent decades, but contends that this is already changing. Political and economic developments in Japan today risk upheaval in the pivotal arena of Northeast Asia, inviting comparisons with Europe on the eve of the First World War. America's half-completed effort to remake Japan in the late 1940s is unraveling, and the American foreign policy and defense establishment is directly culpable for what has happened. The one apparent exception to Japan's malaise is the vitality of its pop culture, but it's actually no exception at all; rather, it provides critical clues to what is going on now.With insights into everything from Japan's politics and economics to the texture of daily life, gender relations, the changing business landscape, and popular and high culture, Japan and the Shackles of the Past is the indispensable guide to understanding Japan in all its complexity.

    Over the next three months, 800,000 Tutsis were murdered in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews. Philip Gourevitch's haunting work is an anatomy of the killings in Rwanda, a vivid history of the genocide's background, and an unforgettable account of what it means to survive in its aftermath.

    First serial to Esquire.

    Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in education, crime, family disintegration, and other social pathology. In this book, "politically correct" theory is repeatedly confronted with facts -- and sharp contradictions between the two are explained in terms of a whole set of self-congratulatory assumptions held by political and intellectual elites. These elites -- the anointed -- often consider themselves "thinking people," but much of what they call thinking turns out, on examination, to be rhetorical assertion, followed by evasions of mounting evidence against those assertions.

    Although there are hundreds of books on Hinduism, there are only a few which provide a lucid, accessible, yet deeply layered account of the religion’s numerous belief systems, schools of thought, sects, tenets, scriptures, deities, rituals, customs, festivals and philosophies. This book is one of them. In the tradition of classics of the genre like K. M. Sen’s Hinduism and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s The Hindu View of Life, this book captures the essence of Hinduism with brevity, insight and an enviable grasp of the myriad layers and intricacies of one of the world’s greatest religions. It is a book that is especially timely given the rather controversial role that religion has played in countries around the world. The author tells us why Hinduism is a religion that is well-suited to the needs of the world today: ‘In the twenty-first century, Hinduism has many of the attributes of a universal religion—a religion that is personal and individualistic, privileges the individual and does not subordinate one to a collectivity; a religion that grants and respects complete freedom to the believer to find his or her own answers to the true meaning of life; a religion that offers a wide range of choice in religious practice, even in regard to the nature and form of the formless God; a religion that places great emphasis on one’s mind, and values one’s capacity for reflection, intellectual enquiry, and self-study; a religion that distances itself from dogma and holy writ, that is minimally prescriptive and yet offers an abundance of options, spiritual and philosophical texts and social and cultural practices to choose from. In a world where resistance to authority is growing, Hinduism imposes no authorities; in a world of networked individuals, Hinduism proposes no institutional hierarchies; in a world of open-source information-sharing, Hinduism accepts all paths as equally valid; in a world of rapid transformations and accelerating change, Hinduism is adaptable and flexible, which is why it has survived for nearly 4,000 years.The text of The Hindu Way is embellished with over a hundred photographs and illustrations, many of them in colour, on various aspects of the religion. Based on Dr. Tharoor’s extensive writing on the subject, including the bestselling Why I Am a Hindu, this book gives the reader an unrivaled understanding of Hinduism.

    David K. Wyatt has also added new sections examining the social and economic changes that have transformed the country in the past two decades. Praise for the previous edition:“Wyatt knows his subject well enough and has enough enthusiasm for it to make his book . . . entertaining as well as eminently educational.”—David McElveen, Asiaweek“A very readable account. . . .We come away from reading it with a clearer understanding of where Thailand stands in relation to its neighbors, who the Thai people are, how the Thai government evolved into its present form.”—James Stent, Asian Wall Street Journal“Concise, thorough, and readable.”—John Gabree, New York Newsday

    In A Generation of Sociopaths, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations.Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off. Gibney argues that younger generations have a fleeting window to hold the Boomers accountable and begin restoring America.

    foreign policy. Many view it as the unfortunate stage upon which American and Communist forces battled during the Vietnam War in a savage struggle that tore up the land and shattered the fragile populace. Starting with the overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970, South East Asia correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Kamm recalls 30 years of revolution and genocide in Cambodia. He begins with the establishment of the Khmer Rouge, detailing the vicious Communist occupation that took place between 1975 to 1979, then moves on to the Vietnamese invasion, the 1991 Paris peace settlement, and the demise of Pol Pot. Kamm pays special attention to the foreign influences that played a significant role in crippling the evolution of the Cambodian people. This sobering perspective on Cambodia's recent, often tragic, history explains how years of political turbulence and violence has strangled the economy and stagnated the social growth of the people to this day. Kamm intrepidly attempts to answer the questions of "why" and "how" even as he contemplates the uncertain future of the country as the new millennium approaches. Kamm writes with poise and grace, while his 30 years of experience in the region gives him unique insight into the plight of the Cambodians. Those who were moved by The Killing Fields, will find Cambodia a gripping read. --Jeremy Storey Cambodia has long been regarded as one of the lost causes of U.S. foreign policy. Many view it as the unfortunate stage upon which American and Communist forces battled during the Vietnam War in a savage struggle that tore up the land and shattered the fragile populace. Starting with the overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970, South East Asia correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Kamm recalls 30 years of revolution and genocide in Cambodia. He begins with the establishment of the Khmer Rouge, detailing the vicious Communist occupation t

    . . Auslin argues that the conditions are building for major-power conflict in Asia and the Pacific."—David Frum, Atlantic Since Marco Polo, the West has waited for the “Asian Century.” Today, the world believes that Century has arrived. Yet from China’s slumping economy to war clouds over the South China Sea and from environmental devastation to demographic crisis, Asia’s future is increasingly uncertain. Historian and geopolitical expert Michael Auslin argues that far from being a cohesive powerhouse, Asia is a fractured region threatened by stagnation and instability. Here, he provides a comprehensive account of the economic, military, political, and demographic risks that bedevil half of our world, arguing that Asia, working with the United States, has a unique opportunity to avert catastrophe – but only if it acts boldly. Bringing together firsthand observations and decades of research, Auslin’s provocative reassessment of Asia’s future will be a must‑read for industry and investors, as well as politicians and scholars, for years to come.

    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.

    Maarten Troost has charmed legions of readers with his laugh-out-loud tales of wandering the remote islands of the South Pacific. When the travel bug hit again, he decided to go big-time, taking on the world’s most populous and intriguing nation. In Lost on Planet China, Troost escorts readers on a rollicking journey through the new beating heart of the modern world, from the megalopolises of Beijing and Shanghai to the Gobi Desert and the hinterlands of Tibet. Lost on Planet China finds Troost dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai; eating Yak in Tibet; deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as Cattle Penis with Garlic); visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead, very orange); and hiking (with 80,000 other people) up Tai Shan, China’s most revered mountain. But in addition to his trademark gonzo adventures, the book also delivers a telling look at a vast and complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think. As Troost shows, while we may be familiar with Yao Ming or dim sum or the cheap, plastic products that line the shelves of every store, the real China remains a world—indeed, a planet--unto itself. Maarten Troost brings China to life as you’ve never seen it before, and his insightful, rip-roaringly funny narrative proves that once again he is one of the most entertaining and insightful armchair travel companions around.

    He takes students from the days of the shogunate--the feudal overlordship of the Tokugawa family--through the modernizing revolution launched by midlevel samurai in the late nineteenth century; the adoption of Western hairstyles, clothing, and military organization; and the nation's first experiments with mass democracy after World War I. Gordon offers the finest synthesis to date of Japan's passage through militarism, World War II, the American occupation, and the subsequent economic rollercoaster. But the true ingenuity and value of Gordon's approach lies in his close attention to the non-elite layers of society. Here students will see the influence of outside ideas, products, and culture on home life, labor unions, political parties, gender relations, and popular entertainment. The book examines Japan's struggles to define the meaning of its modernization, from villages and urban neighborhoods, to factory floors and middle managers' offices, to the imperial court. Most importantly, it illuminates the interconnectedness of Japanese developments with world history, demonstrating how Japan's historical passage represents a variation of a process experienced by many nations and showing how the Japanese narrative forms one part of the interwoven fabric of modern history. With a sustained focus on setting modern Japan in a comparative and global context, The Modern History of Japan is ideal for undergraduate courses in modern Japanese history, Japanese politics, Japanese society, or Japanese culture.

    In the wake of the Fail Decade, Americans have historically low levels of trust in their institutions; the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters.How did we get here? With Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes offers a radically novel answer. Since the 1960s, as the meritocracy elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power, they learned to embrace the accelerating inequality that had placed them near the very top. Their ascension heightened social distance and spawned a new American elite--one more prone to failure and corruption than any that came before it.Mixing deft political analysis, timely social commentary, and deep historical understanding, Twilight of the Elites describes how the society we have come to inhabit – utterly forgiving at the top and relentlessly punitive at the bottom – produces leaders who are out of touch with the people they have been trusted to govern. Hayes argues that the public's failure to trust the federal government, corporate America, and the media has led to a crisis of authority that threatens to engulf not just our politics but our day-to-day lives.Upending well-worn ideological and partisan categories, Hayes entirely reorients our perspective on our times. Twilight of the Elites is the defining work of social criticism for the post-bailout age.

    Democracy on the Road takes readers on a rollicking ride with Ruchir and his merry band of fellow writers as they talk to farmers, shopkeepers and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu, and interview leaders from Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi.No book has traced the arc of modern India by taking readers so close to the action. Offering an intimate view inside the lives and minds of India’s political giants and its people, Sharma explains how the complex forces of family, caste and community, economics and development, money and corruption, Bollywood and Godmen, have conspired to elect and topple Indian leaders since Indira Gandhi. The ultimately encouraging message of Ruchir’s travels is that, while democracy is retreating in many parts of the world, it is thriving in India.