Book picks similar to
Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East? by Ted Rall
non-fiction
central-asia
travel
politics
Recycled Doonesbury
G.B. Trudeau - 1990
Featuring a generous dose of the uncompromising satire that won the cartoonist a Pulitzer Prize, this collection of daily and Sunday comic strips represents a retrospective look at the politics and events of the late 1980s.
Whose Boat Is This Boat?: Comments That Don't Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane
The Staff of the Late Show - 2018
It is the first children’s book that demonstrates what not to say after a natural disaster. On September 19, 2018, Donald Trump paid a visit to New Bern, North Carolina, one of the towns ravaged by Hurricane Florence. It was there he showed deep concern for a boat that washed ashore. “At least you got a nice boat out of the deal,” said President Trump to hurricane victims. “Have a good time!” he told them. The only way his comments would be appropriate is in the context of a children’s book—and now you can experience them that way, thanks to the staff of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Whose Boat Is This Boat? is an excellent teaching tool for readers of all ages who enjoy learning about empathy by process of elimination. Have a good time!
Chasing the Dragon: One Woman's Struggle Against the Darkness of Hong Kong's Drug Den
Jackie Pullinger - 1980
A 20 yr old young woman is called there by God. The true, rivveting story of how one girl lead hundreds of junkies, prostitues and a few drug lords to Christ.
A Passage to Shambhala
Jon Baird - 2015
The secrets they seek are hidden in mountain ranges and lost in deserts, buried in the ocean floor and lodged deep in polar ice. The aim of The Explorers Guild: to discover the mysteries that lie beyond the boundaries of the known world.Set against the backdrop of World War I, with Western Civilization on the edge of calamity, the first installment in The Explorers Guild series, A Passage to Shambhala, concerns the Guild’s quest to find the golden city of Buddhist myth. The search will take them from the Polar North to the Mongolian deserts, through the underground canals of Asia to deep inside the Himalayas, before the fabled city finally divulges its secrets and the globe-spanning journey plays out to its startling conclusion.The Explorers Guild is a rare publishing opportunity, powered by the creative passion of one of the world’s true storytelling masters, Kevin Costner.
Little White Duck: A Childhood in China
Na Liu - 2012
Da Qin—Big Piano—and her younger sister, Xiao Qin—Little Piano—live in the city of Wuhan with their parents. For decades, China's government had kept the country separated from the rest of the world. When their country's leader, Chairman Mao, dies, new opportunities begin to emerge. Da Qin and Xiao Qin soon learn that their childhood will be much different than the upbringing their parents experienced.
Vietnamerica: A Family's Journey
G.B. Tran - 2011
Born and raised in South Carolina as a son of immigrants, he knew that his parents had fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. But even as they struggled to adapt to life in America, they preferred to forget the past—and to focus on their children’s future. It was only in his late twenties that GB began to learn their extraordinary story. When his last surviving grandparents die within months of each other, GB visits Vietnam for the first time and begins to learn the tragic history of his family, and of the homeland they left behind. In this family saga played out in the shadow of history, GB uncovers the root of his father’s remoteness and why his mother had remained in an often fractious marriage; why his grandfather had abandoned his own family to fight for the Viet Cong; why his grandmother had had an affair with a French soldier. GB learns that his parents had taken harrowing flight from Saigon during the final hours of the war not because they thought America was better but because they were afraid of what would happen if they stayed. They entered America—a foreign land they couldn’t even imagine—where family connections dissolved and shared history was lost within a span of a single generation.In telling his family’s story, GB finds his own place in this saga of hardship and heroism. Vietnamerica is a visually stunning portrait of survival, escape, and reinvention—and of the gift of the American immigrants’ dream, passed on to their children. Vietnamerica is an unforgettable story of family revelation and reconnection—and a new graphic-memoir classic.
Lost in Tibet: The Untold Story of Five American Airmen, a Doomed Plane, and the Will to Survive
Richard Starks - 2004
To their astonishment, they found they had landed in the heart of Tibet. There they had to confront what, to them, seemed a bizarre--even alien--people. At the same time, they had to extricate themselves from the political turmoil that even then was raging around Tibet's right to be independent from China.Now back in print,
Lost in Tibet
is an extraordinary story of high adventure that sheds light on the remarkable Tibetan people, just at the moment when they were coming to terms with a hostile outside world.
The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia
Mary M. Talbot - 2016
Talbot and graphic-novel pioneer Bryan Talbot has produced some of the most challenging and entertaining graphic novels in recent memory, including 2012's Costa Award medalist Dotter of Her Father's Eyes. The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia explores the life of revolutionary French feminist Louise Michel, a visionary teacher, poet, and radical who took up arms against a reactionary regime that executed thousands. Even deportation to a distant penal colony could not stop Michel from taking up the cause of the indigenous population against French colonial oppression.
Jim Cornette Presents: Behind the Curtain - Real Pro Wrestling Stories
Jim Cornette - 2019
This is the graphic novel that old-school wrestling fans have been waiting for: a no-holds-barred representation of the moments that wrestling insiders couldn't talk about for years!Behind the Curtain - Real Pro Wrestling Stories presents three chapters of tales, personally curated by Jim Cornette and adapted by Brandon Easton and Denis Medri, the team behind the critically acclaimed Andre the Giant: Closer to Heaven.Featuring stories about Ric Flair, Jerry Lawler, Andy Kaufman, Sputnik Monroe, The Sheik, Junkyard Dog, the Fabulous Freebirds, the Midnight Express, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, and more. Also includes Jim's colorful Glossary of Pro Wrestling Terms, as well as photos and newspaper clippings from his personal archives!
Crashback: The Power Clash Between the U.S. and China in the Pacific
Michael Fabey - 2017
It is a “warm war,” a shoving match between the United States, since WWII the uncontested ruler of the seas, and China, which now possesses the world’s largest navy. The Chinese regard the Pacific, and especially the South China Sea, as their ocean, and they’re ready to defend it. Each day the heat between the two countries increases as the Chinese try to claim the South China Sea for their own, and the United States insists on asserting freedom of navigation. Throughout Southern Asia, countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and South Korea respond with outrage and growing fear as China turns coral reefs into manmade islands capable of supporting airstrips and then attempts to enforce twelve-mile-radius, shoot-down zones. The immediate danger is that the five trillion dollars in international trade that passes through the area will grind to a standstill. The ultimate danger is that the US and China will be drawn into all-out war. Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Michael Fabey has had unprecedented access to the Navy’s most exotic aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, aircraft, and submarines, as well as those who command them. He was among the only journalists allowed to board a Chinese war vessel and observe its operations. In Crashback, Fabey describes how every year the US is “losing sea.” He predicts the next great struggle between military superpowers will play out in the Pacific, and his book, more than any other, is an accurate preview of how that conflict might unfold.
A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice
Malalai Joya - 2009
An extraordinary young woman raised in the refugee camps of Iran and Pakistan, Joya became a teacher in secret girls' schools, hiding her books under her burqa so the Taliban couldn't find them; she helped establish a free medical clinic and orphanage in her impoverished home province of Farah; and at a constitutional assembly in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2003, she stood up and denounced her country's powerful NATO-backed warlords. She was twenty-five years old. Two years later, she became the youngest person elected to Afghanistan's new Parliament. In 2007, she was suspended from Parliament for her persistent criticism of the warlords and drug barons and their cronies. She has survived four assassination attempts to date, is accompanied at all times by armed guards, and sleeps only in safe houses. Joya takes us inside this massively important and insufficiently understood country, shows us the desperate day-to-day situations its remarkable people face at every turn, and recounts some of the many acts of rebellion that are helping to change it. A controversial political figure in one of the most dangerous places on earth, Malalai Joya is a hero for our times.
Carnet de Voyage
Craig Thompson - 2002
Spontaneous sketches and a travelogue diary document his adventures and quiet moments, creating a raw and intimate portrait of countries, culture and the wandering artist.
Hark! A Vagrant
Kate Beaton - 2011
No era or tome emerges unscathbed as Beaton rightly skewers the Western world's revolutionaries, leaders, sycophants, and suffragists while equally honing her wit on the hapless heroes, heroines, and villains of the best-loved fiction. She deftly points out what really happened when Brahms fell asleep listening to Liszt, that the world's first hipsters were obviously the Incroyables and the Merveilleuses from eighteenth-century France, that Susan B. Anthony is, of course, a "Samantha," and that the polite banality of Canadian culture never gets old. Hark! A Vagrant features sexy Batman, the true stories behind classic Nancy Drew covers, and Queen Elizabeth doing the albatross. As the 5600.000 unique monthly visitors to harkavagrant.com already know, no one turns the ironic absurdities of history and literature into comedic fodder as hilarious as Beaton.
Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration
Bryan Caplan - 2019
Those in favor of welcoming more immigrants often cite humanitarian reasons, while those in favor of more restrictive laws argue the need to protect native citizens.But economist Bryan Caplan adds a new, compelling perspective to the immigration debate: He argues that opening all borders could eliminate absolute poverty worldwide and usher in a booming worldwide economy—greatly benefiting humanity.With a clear and conversational tone, exhaustive research, and vibrant illustrations by Zach Weinersmith, Open Borders makes the case for unrestricted immigration easy to follow and hard to deny.
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
George Friedman - 2008
It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term shifts taking place in full view of the world.” —George Friedman In his long-awaited and provocative new book, George Friedman turns his eye on the future—offering a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the twenty-first century. He explains where and why future wars will erupt (and how they will be fought), which nations will gain and lose economic and political power, and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century.The Next 100 Years draws on a fascinating exploration of history and geopolitical patterns dating back hundreds of years. Friedman shows that we are now, for the first time in half a millennium, at the dawn of a new era—with changes in store, including:• The U.S.-Jihadist war will conclude—replaced by a second full-blown cold war with Russia.• China will undergo a major extended internal crisis, and Mexico will emerge as an important world power.• A new global war will unfold toward the middle of the century between the United States and an unexpected coalition from Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Far East; but armies will be much smaller and wars will be less deadly.• Technology will focus on space—both for major military uses and for a dramatic new energy resource that will have radical environmental implications.• The United States will experience a Golden Age in the second half of the century.Written with the keen insight and thoughtful analysis that has made George Friedman a renowned expert in geopolitics and forecasting, The Next 100 Years presents a fascinating picture of what lies ahead.For continual, updated analysis and supplemental material, go to www.Stratfor.com