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Showing 1 - 20 of 381 items
By Lucy Birmingham, David McNeill. 2012
A riveting account of Japan's triple disaster and an insightful look into what the responses of its people reveal about…
the national characterBlending history, science, and gripping storytelling, Strong in the Rain brings the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan in 2011 and its immediate aftermath to life through the eyes of the men and women who experienced it. Following the narratives of six individuals, the book traces the shape of a disaster and the heroics it prompted, including that of David Chumreonlert, a Texan with Thai roots, trapped in his school's gymnasium with hundreds of students and teachers as it begins to flood, and Taro Watanabe, who thought nothing of returning to the Fukushima plant to fight the nuclear disaster, despite the effects that he knew would stay with him for the rest of his life. This is a beautifully written and moving account from Lucy Birmingham and David McNeill of how the Japanese experienced one of the worst earthquakes in history and endured its horrific consequences.By Diane Wolff. 2010
A fabled country in the far reaches of the Himalayas, Tibet looms large in the popular imagination. The original home…
of the Dalai Lama, one of the great spiritual leaders of our time, Tibetan Buddhism inspires millions worldwide with the twin values of wisdom and compassion. Yet the Chinese takeover six decades ago also shows another side of Tibet—that of a passionate symbol of freedom in the face of political oppression. International sympathy has kept the Dalai Lama's appeals for autonomy on the world's political agenda, but in light of China's political and economic gains there is fear that Tibet is in danger of being forgotten by the world. As the Dalai Lama grows older, and the Chinese threaten to intervene in the selection of Tibet's next spiritual leader, many wonder if there is any hope for the Tibetan way of life, or if it is doomed to become a casualty of globalization.In Tibet Unconquered East Asia expert Diane Wolff explores the status of Tibet over eight-hundred-years of history. From the Mongol invasion, to the emergence of the Dalai Lama, Wolff investigates the history of political and economic relations between China and Tibet. Looking to the long rule of Chinggis Khan as a model, she argues, that by thinking in regional terms both countries could usher in a new era of prosperity while maintaining their historical and cultural identities. Wolff creates a forward-thinking blueprint for resolving the China and Tibet problem, grounded in the history of the region and the reality of today's political environment that, will guide both countries to peace.By Yair Lapid. 2017
From leading political figure and bestselling Hebrew author Yair Lapid comes a mesmerizing portrait of the author's father, one of…
modern Israel's leading figures.Memories After My Death is the astonishing true story of Tommy Lapid, a well-loved and controversial Israeli figure who saw the development of the country from all angles over its first sixty years. From seeing his father taken away to a concentration camp to arriving in Tel Aviv at the birth of Israel, Tommy Lapid lived every major incident of Jewish life since the 1930s first-hand. This sweeping narrative will captivate anyone with an interest in how Israel became what it is today. Tommy Lapid's uniquely unorthodox opinions - he belonged to neither left nor right, was Jewish, but vehemently secular - expose the many contradictions inherent in Israeli life today.By Dexter Roberts. 2020
The untold story of how restrictive policies are preventing China from becoming the world’s largest economyDexter Roberts lived in Beijing…
for two decades working as a reporter on economics, business and politics for Bloomberg Businessweek. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Roberts explores the reality behind today’s financially-ascendant China and pulls the curtain back on how the Chinese manufacturing machine is actually powered.He focuses on two places: the village of Binghuacun in the province of Guizhou, one of China’s poorest regions that sends the highest proportion of its youth away to become migrants; and Dongguan, China’s most infamous factory town located in Guangdong, home to both the largest number of migrant workers and the country’s biggest manufacturing base. Within these two towns and the people that move between them, Roberts focuses on the story of the Mo family, former farmers-turned-migrant-workers who are struggling to make a living in a fast-changing country that relegates one-half of its people to second-class status via household registration, land tenure policies and inequality in education and health care systems. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Dexter Roberts brings to life the problems that China and its people face today as they attempt to overcome a divisive system that poses a serious challenge to the country’s future development. In so doing, Roberts paints a boot-on-the-ground cautionary picture of China for a world now held in its financial thrall.Dexter Roberts is an award-winning journalist and a regular commentator on the U.S.-China trade and political relationship. His prior speaking engagements include traditional news media outlets (NPR, Fox News, CNN International) as well as universities and institutes (George Washington University, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Overseas Press Club). He is available for virtual classroom visits to courses that adopt The Myth of Chinese Capitalism. Please contact academic@macmillan.com for more information.By Frances Wood. 2007
Unifier or destroyer, law-maker or tyrant? China's First Emperor (258-210 BC) has been the subject of debate for over 2,000…
years. He gave us the name by which China is known in the West and, by his unification or elimination of six states, he created imperial China. He stressed the rule of law but suppressed all opposition, burning books and burying scholars alive. His military achievements are reflected in the astonishing terracotta soldiers—a veritable buried army—that surround his tomb, and his Great Wall still fascinates the world.Despite his achievements, however, the First Emperor has been vilified since his death. China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors describes his life and times and reflects the historical arguments over the real founder of China and one of the most important men in Chinese history.By Stephen P. Cohen. 2009
AN INCISIVE "WHITE PAPER" ON THE UNITED STATES'S STRUGGLE TO FRAME A COHERENT MIDDLE EAST POLICY In this book, the…
Middle East expert Stephen P. Cohen traces U.S. policy in the region back to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, when the Great Powers failed to take crucial steps to secure peace there. He sees in that early diplomatic failure a pattern shaping the conflicts since then—and America's role in them. A century ago, there emerged two dominant views regarding the uses of America's newfound power. Woodrow Wilson urged America to promote national freedom and self-determination through the League of Nations—in stark contrast to his predecessor Theodore Roosevelt, who had advocated a vigorous foreign policy based on national self-interest. Cohen argues that this running conflict has hobbled American dealings in the Middle East ever since. In concise, pointed chapters, he shows how different Middle East countries have struggled to define themselves in the face of America's stated idealism and its actual realpolitik. This conflict came to a head in the confused, clumsy Middle East policy of George W. Bush—but Cohen suggests the ways a greater awareness of our history in the region might enable our present leaders to act more sensibly.By Mary Anne Weaver. 2002
An eyewitness account by an acclaimed New Yorker reporterWedged between India and Afghanistan, Pakistan is the second-largest nation in the…
Islamic world, and is situated in what is currently one of the most volatile regions on earth. It has assumed a commanding role in militant Islam, a frightening portent being its creation of Afghanistan's bizarre fundamentalist student militia, the Taliban; and with some fifteen private Islamist armies and at least twenty nuclear weapons, it is considered to be one of the most terrifying places in the world. Its disintegration would pose an unthinkable threat to the United States and the West, and the man who will determine Pakistan's future course is the little-known, enigmatic General Pervez Musharraf. Mary Anne Weaver presents her personal journey through a country in turmoil, reconstructing, largely in the voices of the key participants themselves--Generals Musharraf and Zia, and Benazir Bhutto--the legacies now haunting Pakistan in the aftermath of the U.S.-sponsored jihad of the 1980s in Afghanistan. Fusing geopolitical choices with a vivid portrait of a land--of its people, its mystery, and its clans--Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan, provides an essential background for those seeking to understand the problems the international community now faces, and poses some deeply disturbing questions about the future of conflict in South Asia.By Lakshmi D. Bulathsinghala. 2024
This book explores the development of Sinhala stylistic drama from its earliest manifestations to the post-independence era.Bulathsinghala examines the impact…
of indigenous and imported folk theatrical forms on the work of the most significant postcolonial stylistic dramatists and on key plays that they produced. In the process, the book explores a number of myths and misunderstandings regarding Sri Lanka’s folk heritage and seeks to establish more reliable information on the principal indigenous Sri Lankan folk dramatic forms and their characteristics. At the same time, by drawing connections between folk drama and the post-independence stylistic theatrical movement, the author demonstrates the essential role of the former in Sinhala culture prior to the advent of Western and other influences and shows how both continue to inflect Sri Lankan drama today.This book will help to open the field of South Asian drama studies to an audience consisting not only of scholars and students but also of general readers who are interested in the fields of drama and theatre and Asian studies.By Sanghamitra Misra. 2024
This book is an enquiry into the elision of the figure of the sovereign, cotton-producing Garo in the colonial archive…
and its savage transformation into imperialism’s quintessential ‘primitive’ in the period between 1760 CE and 1900 CE.The precolonial political economy of hill cotton produced by the Garos, its unhinging from the exercise of Garo sovereignty and its eventual commodification twined with the deterritorialization of the community as it made way for elephant mehals and reserved forests form the kernel of the book. This history is seen as participating in and mirroring analogous processes of colonization across vast contiguous swathes of India, including Mymensingh, Chittagong, Bhagalpur, the Khasi hills and the Cachar valley. A central theme explored is the long history of Garo rebellions and their rationality, examined in conjunction with contiguous polities such as that of the Khasis; even as the book follows the growing arc of colonial power in eastern and northeastern India as it converted territory and revenue appropriated through conquest, into dominium.The book makes an original contribution to the historiography of the colonial state, the ‘tribe’ and primitivism by making a case for the welded histories of war, ethnogenesis, revenue extraction and anthropological knowledge otherwise often studied as disparate fields of scholarship. It therefore also offers a new interpretation of the history of the colonization of eastern and northeastern India. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers of these regions and of empire and political economy, law and ‘primitivism’, and anthropology and colonial revenue.By Nasser Abu Srour. 2022
This passionate autobiography—at once history lesson, prison memoir, metaphysical inquiry, love story, and cry for justice—provides insights into the Israeli…
occupation and the struggle of the Palestinian people.One of more than 5,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons before October 7, 2023, Nasser Abu Srour serves a life sentence with no possibility of parole. From the Nakba to the disastrous consequences of the Oslo Accords, he explains with great acumen how the Intifada of the Stones (1987–1993) ultimately provided the only option for young Palestinians in refugee camps to infuse meaning into their lives, especially as they faced a constant threat of humiliation and manipulation by Israeli intelligence. This uprising leads to Abu Srour&’s incarceration, after he was forced to confess, under torture, to involvement in the killing of a Shin Bet officer who recruited his cousin as an informant.Within his cell, Abu Srour turns the Wall that has deprived him of freedom into his interlocutor and the source of stability that allows him to endure a chaotic, hopeless existence. The limitations of this survival strategy—and singular literary device—become painfully evident when falling in love causes Abu Srour to lose his grip on the Wall. Only by writing the story of his imprisonment and the story of his love does Abu Srour find his way back. In doing so, he has created a work of art that transcends his pain while shining a glaring light on the ongoing tragedy of the Palestinian situation.By Null Aziza Shanazarova. 2024
Through revealing the fascinating story of the Sufi master Aghā-yi Buzurg and her path to becoming the 'Great Lady' in…
sixteenth-century Bukhara, Aziza Shanazarova invites readers into the little-known world of female religious authority in early modern Islamic Central Asia, revealing a far more multifaceted gender history than previously supposed. Pointing towards new ways of mapping female religious authority onto the landscapes of early modern Muslim narratives, this book serves as an intervention into the debate on the history of women and religion that views gender as a historical phenomenon and construct, challenging narratives of the relationship between gender and age in Islamic discourse of the period. Shanazarova draws on previously unknown primary sources to bring attention to a rich world of female religiosity involving communal leadership, competition for spiritual superiority, and negotiation with the political elite that transforms our understanding of women's history in early modern Central Asia.Since at least the high point of the civil rights movement, African American Christianity has been widely recognized as a…
potent force for social change. Most attention to the political significance of Black churches, however, focuses on domestic protest and electoral politics. Yet some Black churches take a deep interest in the global issue of Israel and Palestine. Why would African American Christians get involved—and even take sides—in Palestine and Israel, and what does that reveal about the political significance of “the Black Church” today?This book examines African American Christian involvement in Israel and Palestine to show how competing visions of “the Black Church” are changing through transnational political engagement. Considering cases ranging from African American Christian Zionists to Palestinian solidarity activists, Roger Baumann traces how Black religious politics transcend domestic arenas and enter global spaces. These cases, he argues, illuminate how the meaning of the ostensibly singular and unifying category of “the Black Church”—spanning its history, identity, culture, and mission—is deeply contested at every turn. Black Visions of the Holy Land offers new insights into how Black churches understand their political role and social significance; the ways race, religion, and politics both converge and diverge; and why the meaning of overlapping racial and religious identities shifts when moving from national to global contexts.By Dmitri Alperovitch, Garrett M. Graff. 2024
The leading national security expert who predicted Putin&’s intention to invade Ukraine argues that China&’s Xi Jinping is preparing to…
conquer Taiwan in the coming years—with dire stakes for America and the world if he is not deterred We are fully in the midst of Cold War II, this time with China. Taiwan is a new West Berlin, a perilous strategic flashpoint where localized events could trigger a devastating war between nuclear powers. But this outcome is far from inevitable. Laying out the grand strategy for the United States and allies to avoid this fate, the highly respected security analyst Dmitri Alperovitch reveals key actions that could enable America to win the race for the twenty-first century. This sharp, timely book is the essential blueprint for preventing a catastrophe.By Benny Morris. 2008
This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. A riveting account of…
the military engagements, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab sidewhere the archives are still closedis illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials. Morris stresses the jihadi character of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Throughout, he examines the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the refugee problem, which was a by-product of the disintegration of Palestinian Arab society. The book thoroughly investigates the role of the Great PowersBritain, the United States, and the Soviet Unionin shaping the conflict and its tentative termination in 1949. Morris looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making processes and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the successive battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world, a humiliation that underlies the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel.By M. Ehteshamul Bari, Uday Shankar. 2024
This book sheds light on the fact that the proclamation of an emergency can be a legitimate constitutional method to take…
prompt preventative measures in protecting the interests of the society in times of grave crises. However, the exercise of emergency powers should not undermine a nation’s commitment to democratic values, such as maintaining the rule of law and upholding fundamental human rights. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed grave threats to the lives and health of individuals. However, since the constitutions of South Asian nations do not permit the proclamation of an emergency on health grounds, executives of these nations were constrained to rely, among other things, on ordinary legislation to tide over the threats posed by the pandemic. Although these statutes entrust the executive with extensive emergency powers, they do not simultaneously stipulate any safeguards subjecting the exercise of such powers to a reliable system of checks and balances. Accordingly, this book critically examines the exercise of emergency powers in the South Asian nations to tide over threats posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a profoundly adverse impact on the human rights of individuals. Such exercise of powers was consistent with the general tendency demonstrated by succeeding generations of the executives in these nations to use emergency situations as the convenient means for imposing long-lasting limitations on the rights of individuals. Consequently, this book identifies the flaws, deficiencies, and lacunae of the legal framework in these nations, which permit the executive to assume unfettered power in the exercise of emergency measures at the expense of the liberty of individuals. Consequently, based on these findings, recommendations will be put forward for initiating reforms in these nations aimed at ensuring the maintenance of a delicate balance between the necessity to respond tograve threats and to simultaneously prevent undue intrusion on the fundamental human rights of individuals.By Mingwei Song, Nathaniel Isaacson, Hua Li. 2024
This volume brings together emerging approaches and addresses shifting paradigms in Chinese science fiction studies, offering a window on fan…
cultures, internet fiction, gender, eco-criticism, post-humanism and biomedical discourse. These studies present a “second wave” of Chinese sf studies, re-evaluating the canon of Chinese sf print and cinematic production, and expand the range of critical approaches to the subject. The structure of the volume is both chronological and theme-focused. These studies also demonstrate that Chinese science fiction represents a significant contribution to modern Chinese cultural production, both in terms of its value, speaking powerfully to our modern condition, and its sheer volume in terms of production and consumption. Chinese science fiction speaks to both China’s rapidly shifting reality, its political multiplicity and its formless future, voicing the anticipations and anxieties of a new epoch filled with accelerating alterations and increasing uncertainty.By Alfred M. Lilienthal. 2003
In this classic study, first published by H. Regnery Co. (Chicago, 1953), the anti-Zionist writer Alfred Lilienthal details the activities…
of Zionist organizations in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. He argues passionately that dual nationality is implicit in Zionist ideology and poses a potential negative impact on the majority of the world's Jews. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alfred M. Lilienthal is a leading Jewish-American anti-Zionist author and expert on the Middle East. He is the author of The Zionist Connection (1978), There Goes the Middle East (1957), and The Other Side of the Coin (1965).By Stephen Turnbull. 2017
This history of the ninja uncovers the truth behind the image—from the exploits of medieval ninjas to their modern incarnation…
as pop culture icons. The ninja is a legendary figure in Japanese military culture, a fighter widely regarded as the world&’s greatest expert in secret warfare. The word alone conjures the image of a masked assassin dressed in black, capable of extraordinary feats of daring; a mercenary who disposes of enemies by sending sharp iron stars spinning towards them. This is, of course, a popular myth, based on exaggerations and Hollywood movies. But the truth, as Stephen Turnbull explains in Ninja, is even more fascinating. A leading expert on samurai culture, Turnbull presents an authoritative study of ninja history based on original Japanese sources, many of which have never been translated before. These include accounts of castle attacks, assassinations and espionage, as well as the last great ninja manual, which reveals the spiritual and religious ideals that were believed to lie behind the ninja&’s arts. Turnbull&’s critical examination of the ninja phenomenon ranges from undercover operations during the age of Japan&’s civil wars to the modern emergence of the superman ninja as a comic book character. The book concludes with a detailed investigation of the ninja in popular culture.By Katell Berthelot. 2021
How encounters with the Roman Empire compelled the Jews of antiquity to rethink their conceptions of Israel and the TorahThroughout…
their history, Jews have lived under a succession of imperial powers, from Assyria and Babylonia to Persia and the Hellenistic kingdoms. Jews and Their Roman Rivals shows how the Roman Empire posed a unique challenge to Jewish thinkers such as Philo, Josephus, and the Palestinian rabbis, who both resisted and internalized Roman standards and imperial ideology.Katell Berthelot traces how, long before the empire became Christian, Jews came to perceive Israel and Rome as rivals competing for supremacy. Both considered their laws to be the most perfect ever written, and both believed they were a most pious people who had been entrusted with a divine mission to bring order and peace to the world. Berthelot argues that the rabbinic identification of Rome with Esau, Israel's twin brother, reflected this sense of rivalry. She discusses how this challenge transformed ancient Jewish ideas about military power and the use of force, law and jurisdiction, and membership in the people of Israel. Berthelot argues that Jewish thinkers imitated the Romans in some cases and proposed competing models in others.Shedding new light on Jewish thought in antiquity, Jews and Their Roman Rivals reveals how Jewish encounters with pagan Rome gave rise to crucial evolutions in the ways Jews conceptualized the Torah and conversion to Judaism."A chilling account of a killer who slipped through the hands of a daft justice system….Triple Cross chronicles one of…
the most vicious spies of our time."—Toronto SunIn the years prior to 2001, no single agent of al Qaeda was more successful in compromising the U.S. intelligence community than Ali Mohamed. For almost two decades the former Egyptian army commando succeeded in living a double life—marrying an American woman, becoming a naturalized citizen, and infiltrating the CIA in Europe, the Green Berets at Fort Bragg, and the FBI in California—even as he helped orchestrate the campaign of terror that culminated in the 9/11 attacks.Triple Cross is award-winning investigative reporter Peter Lance's chilling true account of the career of the master spy known to his al Qaeda brothers as "Ali the American"—an explosive narrative revealing the gaping holes in our nation's security net. Finally, coming off his previous FBI exposé, Cover Up, Lance also chronicles the collapse of the Brooklyn murder trial of former FBI agent Lin DeVecchio, a case that could well have revolutionized public understanding of the background of 9/11.