This guidebook includes the island's history, culture and all of its significant archaeological sites. It also contains all of the practical information needed for your visit, including island activities and up-to-date restaurant and shopping recommendations. It will also tell you the best times to visit the sites in order to get the optimal light for photography and to avoid the crowds, as well as many other 'local' tips that no other guidebook will tell you. Contains over 100 color photos of Easter Island, as well as color maps of both the island and the one town, Hanga Roa. New, Updated edition (2014).

    Some enlisted. Some were true war heroes, but most were just trying to survive. As everyone "in-country" knew, Vietnam was all about luck, good or bad. If you were there, you understand. If you weren't, grab a copy and start reading, anywhere in the book. The stories are like Doritos. Try a few and you won't be able to stop.The Vietnam War was the seminal event of my generation and affected so many lives. Over 58,200 of us paid the ultimate price, but the war didn't end when the last US helicopter lifted off from the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon. It continues to take its ugly toll on many who did come home. Instead of bands and parades, we got PTSD and Agent Orange, diabetes, ischemic heart disease, neuropathy, leukemia, Hodgkin's Disease, and prostate cancer, and many more. As they say, "Vietnam is the gift that keeps on giving."Unfortunately, what little our kids and grandkids know of the war comes from books that only focus on one soldier, one unit, and one year, or movies like Oliver Stone's Platoon and Hamburger Hill, leaving people to think that all we did was crawl through the jungle on the Cambodian border smoking dope. But that wasn't how most of us spent our year. In February, I published Volume 1. Due to the amazing response it received from vets and their families, I'm publishing Volume 2, with even more interesting, exciting, and informative stories. Hopefully, they will help correct that narrative.William F Brown is the author of nine action adventure and suspense novels on Kindle, including the highly successful Bob Burke series, and Our Vietnam Wars, Volumes 1 and 2, personal stories of the veterans who served there. His ministry and suspense novels include 'The Undertaker,' 'Amongst My Enemies,' 'Thursday at Noon,' 'Aim True, My Brothers,' 'Winner Lose All,' and 'The Cold War Trilogy,' as well as Burke's War, Burke's Gamble, and Burke's Revenge. You can them out on my web site and Enjoy!

    Along it travelled precious cargoes of silk, gold and ivory, as well as revolutionary new ideas. Its oasis towns blossomed into thriving centres of Buddhist art and learning. In time it began to decline. The traffic slowed, the merchants left and finally its towns vanished beneath the desert sands to be forgotten for a thousand years. But legends grew up of lost cities filled with treasures and guarded by demons. In the early years of the last century foreign explorers began to investigate these legends, and very soon an international race began for the art treasures of the Silk Road. Huge wall paintings, sculptures and priceless manuscripts were carried away, literally by the ton, and are today scattered through the museums of a dozen countries. Peter Hopkirk tells the story of the intrepid men who, at great personal risk, led these long-range archaeological raids, incurring the undying wrath of the Chinese.

     It also explores the circumstances surrounding the true-life event of my grandmother's gift of a concubine to my grandfather on his birthday to enhance the chance of an heir to the Family.

    Most books on world history overly emphasize the role of Western nations in the vast saga of mankind - the author of this book rectifies the gaps in books by Western historians by beginning the narration of world history with East Asia, and progresses from there through the rest of Asia to the Middle East.

    Book by

    Gavin Menzies makes the argument that in the year 1434, China—then the world's most technologically advanced civilization—provided the spark that set the European Renaissance ablaze. From that date onward, Europeans embraced Chinese intellectual ideas, discoveries, and inventions, all of which form the basis of western civilization today.

    Previous novels by Williams include 'The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure' and 'The Emperor's Bones'.

    This book paints an interesting picture of the lifestyle behind the grandeur of the Tang culture. Various aspects of day-to-day life are presented, including crime, entertainment, fashion, marriage, food, hygiene, dwellings, and transportation

    Here at last is a completely revised and expanded edition of this classic sourcebook, compiled by noted China scholars Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom. Updated to reflect recent scholarly developments, with extensive material on popular thought and religion, social roles, and women's education, this edition features new translations of more than half the works from the first edition, as well as many new selections.Arranged chronologically, this anthology is divided into four parts, beginning at the dawn of literate Chinese civilization with the Oracle-Bone inscriptions of the late Shang dynasty (1571-1045 B.C.E.) and continuing through the end of the Ming dynasty (C.E. 1644). Each chapter has an introduction that provides useful historical context and offers interpretive strategies for understanding the readings.The first part, The Chinese Tradition in Antiquity, considers the early development of Chinese civilization and includes selections from Confucius's "Analects, " the texts of Mencius and Laozi, as well as other key texts from the Confucian, Daoist, and Legalist schools. Part 2, The Making of a Classical Culture, focuses on Han China with readings from the "Classic of Changes" ( "I Jing"), the "Classic of Filiality, " major Han syntheses, and the great historians of the Han dynasty. The development of Buddhism, from the earliest translations from Sanskrit to the central texts of the Chan school (which became Zen in Japan), is the subject of the third section of the book. Titled Later Daoism and Mahayana Buddhism in China, this part also covers the teachings of Wang Bi, Daoist religion, and texts of the major schools of Buddhist doctrine and practice. The final part, The Confucian Revival and Neo-Confucianism, details the revival of Confucian thought in the Tang, Song, and Ming periods, with historical documents that link philosophical thought to political, social, and educational developments in late imperial China.With annotations, a detailed chronology, glossary, and a new introduction by the editors, "Sources of Chinese Tradition" will continue to be a standard resource, guidebook, and introduction to Chinese civilization well into the twenty-first century.

    Discover the events that have shaped your Clan and hear about the people who form part of your Scottish ancestry.

    This phenomenally diverse tradition includes not only frescoes, relief carvings, colossal statues, silk embroideries and bronze ritual objects but also rock-cut shrines with a thousand Buddhas, the glorious stupas of South-East Asia and the pagodas of the Far East, the massive "mandala in stone" of Borobudur in Java and entire 13th-century temple complexes at Angkor in Cambodia. The author describes all the Buddhist schools and cultures, and explains their imagery, from Tibetan cosmic diagrams and Korean folk art to early Sri Lankan sites and Japanese Zen gardens.

    This is why Professor Michael Puett says to his students, “The encounter with these ideas will change your life.” As one of them told his collaborator, author Christine Gross-Loh, “You can open yourself up to possibilities you never imagined were even possible.”These astonishing teachings emerged two thousand years ago through the work of a succession of Chinese scholars exploring how humans can improve themselves and their society. And what are these counterintuitive ideas? Good relationships come not from being sincere and authentic, but from the rituals we perform within them. Influence comes not from wielding power but from holding back. Excellence comes from what we choose to do, not our natural abilities. A good life emerges not from planning it out, but through training ourselves to respond well to small moments. Transformation comes not from looking within for a true self, but from creating conditions that produce new possibilities.In other words, The Path upends everything we are told about how to lead a good life. Above all, unlike most books on the subject, its most radical idea is that there is no path to follow in the first place—just a journey we create anew at every moment by seeing and doing things differently.Sometimes voices from the past can offer possibilities for thinking afresh about the future.A note from the publisher: To read relevant passages from the original works of Chinese philosophy, see our free ebook Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi: Selected Passages, available on Kindle, Nook, and the iBook Store and at Books.SimonandSchuster.com.

    The latest in the best-selling Isms series, which includes Isms: Understanding Art, Isms: Understanding Architectural Styles and Isms: Understanding Religion, is Isms: Understanding Fashion. Concisely written, this book packs loads of detail into a handy small format, tracing the evolution of costume history and fashion through a series of interconnected trends and movements (a.k.a. "isms") from the Greco-Roman toga and the antebellum hoop skirt to the latest from the runway. This guide is organized chronologically and covers the evolution of costume, the beginning of haute couture, and the rise of fashion as we know it— documented throughout with a combination of line drawings, costume illustration, and fashion photography. It includes an overview of designers from the classic—Coco Chanel, Dior—to the contemporary design greats, such as Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs. While the book traces the influences and links between designers, it also includes patrons, from Marie-Antoinette to Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana, as well as fashion muses from Sarah Bernhardt to Sarah Jessica Parker. Related topics such as accessories and accoutrements are included as well. Anyone interested in costume and fashion will delight in this book.

    The book is informed by a wide knowledge of the Asian context and an approach devoid of Euro-centric bias. The book also examines the many non-Chinese elements in China's history, such as the impact of Buddhism, foreign trade, etc.