The killing season

The definitive account of one of the twentieth century’s most brutal, yet least examined, episodes of genocide and detentionThe Killing Season explores one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined, instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century—the shocking antileftis...

The king’s road

An exciting and richly detailed new history of the Silk Road that tells how it became more important as a route for diplomacy than for tradeThe King’s Road offers a new interpretation of the history of the Silk Road, emphasizing its importance as a diplomatic route, rather than a commercial one. ...

The languages of china

An incredible source of information about the Chinese language and China’s minority languagesIn this accessible and informative book, S. Robert Ramsey lucidly explains what the Chinese language is—its social and geographical situation, its history, its range of dialects, the structure of the mode...

The last embassy

From the acclaimed author of The Gunpowder Age, a book that casts new light on the history of China and the West at the turn of the nineteenth centuryGeorge Macartney's disastrous 1793 mission to China plays a central role in the prevailing narrative of modern Sino-European relations. Summarily d...

The last yakuza

The Last Yakuza tells the history of the yakuza like it’s never been told before in this gripping, true crime story by the author of Tokyo Vice. Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese, living in small-town Japan. He has two talents: playing guitar and picking fights. When his dream of be...

The making of barbarians

A groundbreaking account of translation and identity in the Chinese literary tradition before 1850—with important ramifications for todayDebates on the canon, multiculturalism, and world literature often take Eurocentrism as the target of their critique. But literature is a universe with many cen...

The mandate of heaven

The essential Marxist history of China under Mao.

The milk tea alliance

Why are activists in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Burma willing to court danger to help one another? The political situations in Burma, Thailand, and Hong Kong are radically different. Only Burma is in a state of civil war. Only Hong Kong has changed in just a few years from a place with virtually n...

The modern spirit of asia

A comparative look at religion and spirituality in postcolonial China and IndiaThe Modern Spirit of Asia challenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in unique and distinctive ...

The mustard seed garden manual of painting

Originally published as Volume 2 of The Tao of Painting, this is the first English translation of the famous Chinese handbook, the "Chieh Tzu Yüan Hua Chuan" (original, 1679-1701). Mai-mai Sze has translated and annotated the texts of instructions, discussions of the fundamentals of painting, not...

The perils of interpreting

A fascinating history of China’s relations with the West—told through the lives of two eighteenth-century translatorsThe 1793 British embassy to China, which led to Lord George Macartney’s fraught encounter with the Qianlong emperor, has often been viewed as a clash of cultures fueled by the East...

The reproductive bargain

An insightful analysis of gender relations’ role in the Japanese economy’s transition from unstoppable growth to inescapable stagnation.

The rise and fall of imperial china

How social networks shaped the imperial Chinese stateChina was the world’s leading superpower for almost two millennia, falling behind only in the last two centuries and now rising to dominance again. What factors led to imperial China’s decline? The Rise and Fall of Imperial China offers a syste...

The road to dien bien phu

A multifaceted history of Ho Chi Minh’s climactic victory over French colonial might that foreshadowed America’s experience in VietnamOn May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could fight a mighty colonial power and win. After n...

The sino-soviet split

A decade after the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China established their formidable alliance in 1950, escalating public disagreements between them broke the international communist movement apart. In The Sino-Soviet Split, Lorenz Lüthi tells the story of this rupture, which became one...

The state, identity, and the national question in china and japan

The first decades of the twentieth century witnessed an explosion of nationalist sentiment in East Asia, as in Europe. This comprehensive work explores how radical Chinese and Japanese thinkers committed to social change in this turbulent era addressed issues concerning national identity, social ...

The story of tibet

The subplot

What does contemporary China's diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics? The Subplot takes us on a lively journey through a literary landscape like you’ve never seen before: a vast migrant-worker poetry movement, homoerotic romances by ...

The tragedy of the chinese revolution

The story of how China's modern development rests on the tragically suppressed struggle for true socialism.

The united states, southeast asia, and historical memory

Exposes the horrifying criminality of US policy in Indochina was during the Vietnam war.

The war on the uyghurs

How China is using the US-led war on terror to erase the cultural identity of its Muslim minority in the Xinjiang regionWithin weeks of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Chinese government warned that it faced a serious terrorist threat from its Uyghur ethnic minority, who ...

The way forward

How China became the China we know today, through war and societal transformation.

Toward a free economy

The unknown history of economic conservatism in India after independenceNeoliberalism is routinely characterized as an antidemocratic, expert-driven project aimed at insulating markets from politics, devised in the North Atlantic and projected on the rest of the world. Revising this understanding...

Twilight prisoners

An incisive, lyrical, and deeply reported account of India’s descent into authoritarianism. Traveling across India, interviewing Hindu zealots, armed insurgents, jailed dissidents, and politicians and thinkers from across the political spectrum, Siddhartha Deb reveals a country in which forces ol...

Two buddhas seated side by side

An essential companion to a timeless spiritual classicThe Lotus Sūtra is among the most venerated scriptures of Buddhism. Composed in India some two millennia ago, it asserts the potential for all beings to attain supreme enlightenment. Donald Lopez and Jacqueline Stone provide an essential readi...

Under the shadow of the rising sun

Japan was a party to the Axis Alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. However, it ignored repeated German demands to harm the 40,000 Jews who found themselves under Japanese occupation during World War Two. This book attempts to answer why they behaved in a relatively humane fashion towards...

Until my freedom has come

A collection of authoritative essays mapping Kashmir's turbulent past, present, and possible futures.

Venice and the mongols

A global history of commercial and cultural exchange between two great powers of the medieval ageIn the mid-thirteenth century, Europe was shaken by the Mongol invasions. Realizing the immense potential for accessing remote markets in the East, Venetian merchants, diplomats, and seafarers establi...

Vietnam: the (last) war the u.s. lost

As the connection between Vietnam and Iraq grows more urgent, lessons for today's antiwar movement.

Violent fraternity

A groundbreaking history of the political ideas that made modern IndiaViolent Fraternity is a major history of the political thought that laid the foundations of modern India. Taking readers from the dawn of the twentieth century to the independence of India and formation of Pakistan in 1947, the...

Warriors of the cloisters

How science in medieval Europe originated in Buddhist AsiaWarriors of the Cloisters tells how key cultural innovations from Central Asia revolutionized medieval Europe and gave rise to the culture of science in the West. Medieval scholars rarely performed scientific experiments, but instead conte...

What is religious authority?

An anthropologist's groundbreaking account of how Islamic religious authority is assembled through the unceasing labor of community building on the island of JavaThis compelling book draws on Ismail Fajrie Alatas's unique insights as an anthropologist to provide a new understanding of Islamic rel...

Why ancient chinese political thought matters

An entertaining introduction to ancient Chinese thinkers—and what they can teach us about today’s most pressing political questions in China and beyondChina’s most original, diverse, and fascinating political debates took place more than two millennia ago, but they have profoundly shaped Chinese ...

Wild profusion

Wild Profusion tells the fascinating story of biodiversity conservation in Indonesia in the decade culminating in the great fires of 1997-98--a time when the country's environment became a point of concern for social and environmental activists, scientists, and the many fishermen and farmers nati...

Words for the heart

A richly diverse collection of classical Indian terms for expressing the many moods and subtleties of emotional experienceWords for the Heart is a captivating treasury of emotion terms drawn from some of India’s earliest classical languages. Inspired by the traditional Indian genre of a “treasury...

Worse than a monolith

In brute-force struggles for survival, such as the two World Wars, disorganization and divisions within an enemy alliance are to one's own advantage. However, most international security politics involve coercive diplomacy and negotiations short of all-out war. Worse Than a Monolith demonstrates ...

Yoga in modern india

Yoga has come to be an icon of Indian culture and civilization, and it is widely regarded as being timeless and unchanging. Based on extensive ethnographic research and an analysis of both ancient and modern texts, Yoga in Modern India challenges this popular view by examining the history of yoga...

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