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Egg on Mao: the story of an ordinary man who defaced an icon and unmasked a dictatorship
By Denise Chong. 2009
On May 23, 1989, as student protests raged, Lu Decheng and two other men hurled 30 paint-filled eggs at the…
immense portrait of Mao Zedong that dominates Beijing's Tiananmen Square. His poli-art stunt stranded Lu in prison for almost a decade, cost him his wife and daughter, and led to his eventual defection to Canada. While hoping to bring true democracy and to unmask the repression of Mao's reign, Lu learned that in China, preserving the Chairman's legacy mattered more. 2009.Disarming Iraq
By Hans Blix. 2004
Blix reluctantly came out of retirement in 2000 to lead the U.N. weapons inspections team in Iraq because he was…
the only man everyone could agree on for the job. Three years later, those clamouring for military intervention grumbled at his inability (or, as they saw it, refusal) to present evidence of weapons of mass destruction, but he reminds readers that his assignment was to assess and report on the available evidence. A play-by-play account of the months of diplomacy and inspection efforts leading up to the Iraq war. Some descriptions of violence. 2004.Reaping the whirlwind: the Taliban movement in Afghanistan
By Michael Griffin. 2001
Griffin chronicles the rise of the Taliban from their first appearance in 1994, examines their place in the context of…
Afghanistan's political instability, and discusses the significance of their brand of Islamic fundamentalism. 2001.The island of seven cities: the discovery of a lost Chinese settlement in the Americas
By Paul Chiasson. 2006
2002. Architect Paul Chiasson climbed a mountain on Cape Breton and found an old wide, well-made road, once flanked by…
walls. After two years of study, he believed that these ruins were originally built by the Chinese, as part of a large colony that thrived on Canadian shores well before the European Age of Discovery. Chiasson addresses how the colony was abandoned and forgotten except in the storytelling and culture of the Mi'kmaq, whose written language, clothing, technical knowledge, religious beliefs and legends expose deep cultural roots in China. 2006.The sleeping buddha: the story of Afghanistan through the eyes of one family
By Hamida Ghafour. 2007
In 2003, journalist Ghafour was sent to Afghanistan, which she had fled in 1981, to cover the country's reconstruction. In…
a place totally changed from the world her parents had described, she discovered a school which teaches women a new kind of independence, her cousin's determined parliamentary campaign, and the archaeologist digging for his country's lost civilization in the form of a giant sleeping Buddha. Some descriptions of violence. 2007.Istanbul: a tale of three cities
By Bettany Hughes. 2017
For much of its history it was known simply as The City, but Istanbul is not just a city, but…
a story. From the Qu'ran to Shakespeare, this city with three names - Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul - resonates as an idea and a place, and overspills its real and imagined boundaries. Based on meticulous research and new archaeological evidence, this is a captivating portrait of the momentous life of Istanbul. 2017.The Iraq invasion of 2003 was only the latest in a long line of episodes of Western manipulation in that…
country, which owes its existence - and its complex and troubled demographics - to the designs of British imperialists. The brunt of Lando's argument is that the U.S. has routinely played Iraq for profit and strategic advantage yet consistently evaded responsibility for exacerbating the carnage of its destructive wars and humanitarian crises. Descriptions of violence and strong language. 2007.The last governor: Chris Patten and the hand over of Hong Kong
By Jonathan Dimbleby. 2000
Children of Cambodia's killing fields: memoirs by survivors
By Dith Pran, Kim DePaul. 1997
India: a history
By John Keay. 2001
Accommodating Pakistan and Bangladesh and other embryonic nation states like the Sikh Punjab, Muslim Kashmir and Assam, this text examines…
the legacy of the 1947 partition, and looks at the colonial era from the overall context of Indian history. The peoples of the Indian subcontinent, while sharing a common history and culture, are not now, and never have been, a single unitary state.Beds in the East
By Anthony Burgess. 1959
Burgess dissects the racial and social prejudices of post-war Malaya during the chaotic upheaval of independence. Through a succession of…
colourful characters he delineates the conflict and confusion arising from the enforced mingling of cultures.Letters from Burma
By Aung San Suu Kyi. 1996
Since 1995, Aung San Suu Kyi has been writing a column in a Japanese newspaper in which she gives her…
impressions of the political, cultural and social scene in Burma today. Subjects range from what the Burmese have for breakfast, through a description of her first visit after release from house arrest to a national shrine, to overt political pieces on the repression in the country.Age of ambition: chasing fortune, truth and faith in the new China
By Evan Osnos. 2014
Age of Ambition describes some of the billion individual lives that make up China’s story. It is a story that…
unfolds on remote farms, in glittering mansions, and in the halls of power of the world’s largest authoritarian regime. In a nation riven by contradictions the defining clash taking place today is between the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control. Here is a China infused with a sense of boundless possibility and teeming romance. National Book Award in Non-Fiction 2014.This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart: A Memoir in Halves
By Madhur Anand. 2020
“Wondrously and elegantly written in language that astonishes and moves the reader…This is an important book: an emotional and intellectual…
tour de force.” —Jane Urquhart An experimental memoir about Partition, immigration, and generational storytelling, This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart weaves together the poetry of memory with the science of embodied trauma, using the imagined voices of the past and the vital authority of the present. We begin with a man off balance: one in one thousand, the only child in town whose polio leads to partial paralysis. We meet his future wife, chanting Hai Rams for Gandhiji and choosing education over marriage. On one side of the line that divides this book, we follow them as their homeland splits in two and they are drawn together, moving to Canada and raising their children in mining towns and in crowded city apartments. And when we turn the book over, we find the daughter's tale—we see how the rupture of Partition, the asymmetry of a father's leg, the virus of a mother's rage, makes its way to the next generation. Told through the lenses of biology, physics, history and poetry, this is a memoir that defies form and convention to immerse the reader in the feeling of what remains when we've heard as much of the truth as our families will allow, and we're left to search for ourselves among the pieces they've carried with them.The Diary of Dukesang Wong: A Voice from Gold Mountain
By Dukesang Wong, Wanda Joy Hoe, David McIlwraith. 2020
Here is the only known first-person account from a Chinese worker on the famously treacherous parts of transcontinental railways that…
spanned the North American continent in the nineteenth century. The story of those Chinese workers has been told before, but never in a voice from among their number, never in a voice that lived through the experience. Here is that missing voice, a voice that changes our understanding of the history it tells and that so many believed was lost forever. Dukesang Wong’s written account of life working on the Canadian Pacific Railway, a Gold Mountain life, tells of the punishing work, the comradery, the sickness and starvation, the encounters with Indigenous Peoples, and the dark and shameful history of racism and exploitation that prevailed up and down the North American continent. The Diary of Dukesang Wong includes all the selected entries translated in the mid-1960s by his granddaughter, Wanda Joy Hoe, for an undergraduate sociology paper. Background history and explanations for the diary’s unexplained references are provided by David McIlwraith, the book’s editor, who also considers why the diarist’s voice and other Chinese voices have been silenced for so long.Whiskey tango foxtrot: strange days in Afghanistan and Pakistan
By Kim Barker. 2016
A foreign correspondent recounts her early years reporting in central and south Asia, beginning in Afghanistan. Discusses military and political…
actions observed, her fading hopes for stability in the region, and her personal life at the time. Originally published as The Taliban Shuffle. Some violence, some strong language, and some descriptions of sex. 2011The home that was our country: a memoir of Syria
By Alia Malek. 2017
With the advent of the Arab Spring, the author returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, the loss of…
which was central to her family's decision to build a life in America. She portrays the building's tenants, restores her family's home, and privately confronts her fears for Syria's future. 2017War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the twenty-first century
By David Patrikarakos. 2017
A foreign correspondent examines the role of social media in early-twenty-first-century warfare. Discusses its use as a recruitment tool, the…
manufacturing of fake news, and more. Some violence and some strong language. 2017A hope more powerful than the sea: one refugee's incredible story of love, loss, and survival
By Melissa Fleming. 2017
The author shares the story of young Syrian refugee Doaa Al Zamel. She recounts how Doaa and her family left…
war-torn Syria for Egypt, her relationship with a former Free Syrian Army fighter named Bassem, and Doaa and Bassem's harrowing flight from Egypt across the Mediterranean Sea. Violence. 2017Not in God's name: confronting religious violence
By Jonathan Sacks. 2015
Rabbi and author of The Great Partnership (DB 78791) examines foundational texts of the three Abrahamic faiths--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--to…
delve into causes for religious-based violence. Posits that rationalizing is based on misreading of texts, and presents reasons why people of faith should denounce extremists. 2015