Free History BONUS Inside! Japan, the country of the rising sun, is today known as one of the most prosperous and technologically advanced nations despite not having many natural resources. It is full of hardworking, ethical people that live with a mix of old-time traditions and new-age progressive lifestyles. It’s the land of famed and virtuous samurai warriors, for whom loyalty is everything, and of legendary and adept ninja assassins, capable of bypassing any obstacle. No less famed is Japanese art, unique in its style and form, from short haiku songs to breathtaking watercolor paintings, both amazingly vivid and simplistic in form. It’s the country of Buddhist Zen masters, who were wise and spiritual, symbols of moderation and morality. At the same time, it’s the culture of geishas, who represented indulgence, entertainment, and corporeal desires. Today, it is one of the most liberal and democratic countries, yet it still has an emperor on the throne and a long tradition of shōguns, who were more or less military dictators. All in all, Japan seems to be a country of paradoxes and oppositions, of yin and yang. Yet it doesn’t seem to suffer from it; instead, it is thriving, growing, and developing, and it has been doing so for a long time. From those contradictions, a sense of unity and pride arose, guiding Japanese history and civilizational development through the ages, leaving an unquestionable mark on the world heritage and mankind. But this is only the surface of an astonishing culture that deserves a deeper look. This guide will lead you into that dive, showing how those characteristics synonymous with the Japanese civilization gradually appeared, formed, and transformed through time. Learning about Japan’s history, its past failures and successes and how they shaped their nation, will also illuminate how this civilization developed, while at the same time presenting a full array of interesting stories, persons, and events. In Ancient Japan: A Captivating Guide to the Ancient History of Japan, Their Ancient Civilization, and Japanese Culture, Including Stories of the Samurai, you will discover topics such as Origins of Imperial Japan and Its People Birth of Imperial Japan and Its Culture History of Classical Japan Early Medieval Japan Late Medieval Japan Japanese Society Warriors of Ancient Japan Religious Life in Japan Japanese Culture And much, much more! So if you want to learn more about ancient Japan, scroll up and click the "add to cart" button!

    He dominated the waves, ruled his peers' imaginations, and—to this day—inspires the fantasies of decades of Dora wannabes who began to swarm his pristine paradise after the movie Gidget helped surfing explode into the mainstream and changed it forever—many say for the worse.Disenchanted, Dora railed against the ruination; angry that the waves were no longer his own, he fought back—or found better things to do. Dora was also an avid sportsman, raconteur, philosopher, traveler—and scam artist of wide repute. When, in 1973, he finally ran afoul of the law, he soon abandoned America and led the FBI and Interpol on a seven-year chase around the globe. At the same time, he never gave up searching for (and occasionally finding) the empty waves and spirit of the Malibu he'd lost. From homes in New Zealand to South Africa to France, he continued to personify the rebel heart of surfing and has been widely acknowledged as "the most relentlessly committed surfer of all time."The New York Times named him "the most renegade spirit the sport has yet to produce." Vanity Fair called him "a dark prince of the beach." The Times (London) wrote, "A hero to a generation of beach bums. He was tanned . . . good-looking . . . trouble."To capture Dora's never-before-told story, David Rensin spent four years interviewing more than three hundred of Dora's friends, enemies, family members, lovers, and peers—none of whom would previously talk in depth about him—to uncover the truth about surfing's most outrageous practitioner, charismatic prince, chief antihero, committed loner, and enduring mystery. The result is a riveting and living portrait of an uncommon character whose unique influence on surfing has never waned, and who became what most can never be: a legend in his own time.

     In 1942, following their lightning strikes on Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong, the Japanese invaded Burma. British forces were rapidly driven out, following a swift and total defeat. The British and Indian forces retaliated with limited offences and with mixed results. The Japanese advance continued, driving victoriously for the domination of Asia. Then came the Japanese attack of Imphal and Kohima, starting one of the most ferocious campaign of the war. Burma Victory portrays the “forgotten war” and the Allied fight to push the Japanese out of Burma. David Rooney – who saw war service in India and West Africa – tells the story of the campaigns of the new Fourteenth Army, under the command of the remarkable General Slim. Rooney captures the ebb and flow of battle and the roles of Wingate, Stilwell and the Chindits. In doing so, he offers a new analysis of the role of airpower and highlights the influence of British, American, Japanese and Chinese thinking at the highest level. Burma Victory is essential reading for anyone interested in General Slim, the Second World War and how defeat can be turned into victory. Recommended reading for fans of Max Hastings, Antony Beevor and Andrew Roberts.

    McCoy, USMCIf you read one book in your lifetime on the warrior culture, this is that book. Active-duty Marine Colonel B. P. McCoy expertly relates his innermost thoughts and feelings, drawing on his mastery of personal leadership. Colonel McCoy understands the intangibles that make up our modern-day warriors, those young Americans on whom we place so much responsibility when we send them into harm's way.The author begins with the institutional design that leads some to believe that because of a manifestation of the American culture in which we're taught to kill from a young age through the use of video games, the task of a warrior would somehow be easily executed, based solely on these inequities. To the contrary, Colonel McCoy points out that the battlefield commander is hampered by the societal digression and the simple fact that young Americans can point a video weapon and kill, never feeling the true effects or suffering associated with actual combat. He explains that our culture is not that of predator, but more of prey. Through examples, he concludes that the American society places grave consequence on the taking of a human life, while we still require our young to bear arms against our enemies and to extinguish life. Only through superb training, conducted by passionate leaders, do our young Americans become moral warriors.Colonel McCoy describes the total cost of combat and the price paid by all who choose to become warriors. By pointing to positive training examples and keying on the effects of situational training—battle drills—conducted prior to and during combat, he successfully trained his Marines and developed the proper habits that would be the difference between life and death during combat. He directed his Marines to become "experts in the application of violence," without sacrificing their humanity. In the book, it became clear that he found the combination that allowed his men to achieve tactical superiority in every aspect.The essence of war is violence and the act of killing legitimate human targets without hesitation. To accomplish this, he instituted meaningful training and used his refined principles as a human being to guide him in the leadership and administration on the moral code that rules the field of battle. He is the perfect example of all that we hold dear in our warrior culture. He loved his men, showed them the right way through his personal example, guided his actions with passion and relayed his feelings to his men completely. He is quick to note his own shortcomings and how he overcame them and was the inspiration to the team that triumphed when all Marines survived the day.Emotionally riveting, The Passion of Command provides inside information into the warrior culture and allows one to grasp the complexities when hardening the mind, body, and spirit for the rigors of combat. Most find it difficult to communicate the human effects of combat to people who have never experienced the harsh realities associated with actually engaging an enemy. Colonel McCoy doesn't have that problem. He has opened the door and let the reader in

     She’s Britney Spears shaving her head, Whitney Houston saying, “crack is whack,” and Amy Winehouse, dying in front of millions. But the trainwreck is also as old (and as meaningful) as feminism itself. From Mary Wollstonecraft—who, for decades after her death, was more famous for her illegitimate child and suicide attempts than for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman—to Charlotte Brontë, Billie Holiday, Sylvia Plath, and even Hillary Clinton, Sady Doyle’s Trainwreck dissects a centuries-old phenomenon and asks what it means now, in a time when we have unprecedented access to celebrities and civilians alike, and when women are pushing harder than ever against the boundaries of what it means to “behave.” Where did these women come from? What are their crimes? And what does it mean for the rest of us? For an age when any form of self-expression can be the one that ends you, Sady Doyle’s book is as fierce and intelligent as it is funny and compassionate—an essential, timely, feminist anatomy of the female trainwreck.

    Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a 'powerful site for intervention, challenge and change'. And intervene, challenge and change is what hooks does best.

    The Drive-By Truckers, as they named themselves, grew into one of the best and most consequential rock bands of the twenty-first century, a great live act whose songs deliver the truth and nuance rarely bestowed on Southerners, so often reduced to stereotypes.Where the Devil Don’t Stay tells the band’s unlikely story not chronologically but geographically. Seeing the Truckers’ albums as roadmaps through a landscape that is half-real, half-imagined, their fellow Southerner Stephen Deusner travels to the places the band’s members have lived in and written about. Tracking the band from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, to the author’s hometown in McNairy County, Tennessee, Deusner explores the Truckers’ complex relationship to the South and the issues of class, race, history, and religion that run through their music. Drawing on new interviews with past and present band members, including Jason Isbell, Where the Devil Don’t Stay is more than the story of a great American band; it’s a reflection on the power of music and how it can frame and shape a larger culture.

    Through combined theoretical and empirical study, Viviane K. Namaste argues that transgendered people are not so much produced by medicine or psychiatry as they are erased, or made invisible, in a variety of institutional and cultural settings. Namaste begins her work by analyzing two theoretical perspectives on transgendered people—queer theory and the social sciences—displaying how neither of these has adequately addressed the issues most relevant to sex change: everything from employment to health care to identity papers. Namaste then examines some of the rhetorical and semiotic inscriptions of transgendered figures in culture, including studies of early punk and glam rock subcultures, to illustrate how the effacement of transgendered people is organized in different cultural sites. Invisible Lives concludes with new research on some of the day-to-day concerns of transgendered people, offering case studies in violence, health care, gender identity clinics, and the law.

    She then looks at the historical practices of Chinese foot binding and Medieval European witch burning from a radical feminist perspective. The book's final section discusses the concept of androgyny within various cultures' creation myths and argues for "the development of a new kind of human being and a new kind of human community" free from gender and gendered roles.

    He had, therefore, full opportunities of seeing the country and its life from various points of view. He has utilized his observations in an entertaining book. It is not — and does not pretend lo be — a scientific work, or technical in any sense. It gives, however, an excellent idea of conditions and ways of living in the Klondike at all seasons, and of the hardships which the pioneers had to undergo. Nothing but gold — the prospect of wealth — could induce men to live in such a climate, and to combat the many difficulties which it entails. Mr. Lynch, a Californian of means and position, arrived at Dawson in the summer of 1898. As the first discoveries of gold in the Klondike valley were made in August of 1896, Mr. Lynch found a mining town not two years old, unpaved and insanitary, crowded with adventurers of every nation, in fact still a typical “ tough" mining-camp, except that lawlessness and crime were sternly repressed by the vigilant Mounted Police. He spent the following winter in the town, making expeditions to the gold-bearing creeks, examining mines and studying the methods of working them. Early in the spring of 1899 he bought a claim which he believed would repay him and set himself at once to develop it thoroughly. During his stay he had seen Dawson transformed into a paved, sewaged, well built, well lighted city, and the streets, no longer thronged with rough-mannered miners and adventurers, had become the promenade of well dressed business men and ladies (real ladies !) intent on shopping. As one of the earliest of the new species of Klondike miner, he is able to give an account of the transition that took place, largely owing to the enterprise of men of his own stamp, and the book is an interesting addition to Klondike literature. Mr. Lynch's narrative is plainly written, in a way which leads one to believe in its substantial truth. It reads well, and brings out many points which will interest the miner, as well as the casual reader. He had confidence in the future of the country, and believed that it would hold a large population for many years, in spite of the drawbacks of climate.

    Playing on women's compassion and ability to be hooked into "uplifting" stories with a moral or happy ending, American media has convinced the most well-educated, rich and healthy audience in history that they are miserable. She dissects why: --liberal celebrities' messages aren't scrutinized and in fact presented with a halo of approval --middle class American women have been sold stress as the new scourge of modern life --media paints a negative picture of women's lives today, at exactly the moment when women have more money, privlege and choices than ever before --the club of liberal women who run magazines and television shows have an outsize and lock-step affect on what we "know" about the major issues of the day--the incestuous relationship between celebrities and media has corrupted journalism --magazines rarely tell stories about the majority of women whose conservative views don't mesh with their own

    During our journey we will explore stories from Babylon, Greece, Ireland, Ethiopia, and various other cultures to fill in the missing pieces to one of the biggest mysteries on our planet. This 2nd Edition includes 40+ hours of additional audio and video content for your enjoyment. Make sure you download a free QR code scanner for your smart phone or tablet so you can take full advantage of the features in this book.

    Unspeakable Things is a book that is eye-opening not only in the critique it provides, but also in the revolutionary alternatives it imagines.

    From day one, the magazine has maintained a Tokyo bureau, which today also encompasses a Monocle shop and radio studio.Over the past decade, the magazine and its team have continued to build upon their appreciation for and understanding of the nation of Japan. Monocle’s stories have covered everything from a live journey on the emperor’s jet and the tastiest places to eat in Kagoshima to the fashion designers challenging conventions and the businesses with remarkable stories untold outside Japan.The Monocle Book of Japan reveals the best of the country in the run-up to the 2021 Olympics. Complete with striking photography and captivating essays, this volume showcases some of Japan’s most intriguing splendors.

    The Rape of Nanking, or Nanking Massacre, in which at least 369,366 people were slaughtered and 80,000 women were raped by Japanese invasion troops, has become little more than a historical footnote in the West. The horror began on the morning of December 13, 1937, when the Japanese Imperial Army captured Nanking (Nanjing), which was then China's capital. Soldiers went through the streets indiscriminately killing Chinese men, women, and children without apparent provocation or excuse until in places the streets and alleys were littered with the bodies of their victims. Thousands of women were raped by Japanese soldiers; death was frequently the penalty for the slightest resistance by a victim or members of her family. Even large numbers of young girls and old women were raped throughout the city, and many cases of abnormal and sadistic behavior in connection with these rapes were reported. Many women were killed after the act and their bodies mutilated. For the next six weeks, while horrific rape continued, wholesale murder of male civilians was conducted with the apparent sanction of the Japanese high command. Hundreds of thousands of civilians and disarmed ex-soldiers were arrayed in formation, their hands bound behind their backs, and marched outside the city wall where, in groups, they were beheaded, or buried alive, or bayoneted, or raked with machine-gun fire, or doused with gasoline and burned. This book, using more than 400 historical photographs, many of which were taken by Japanese soldiers themselves, is published to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Rape of Nanking, to remind the world of the forgotten holocaust of WWII, and to honor history and answer any attempt to deny or change it.