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Hong Kong Movers and Stayers: Narratives of Family Migration (Studies of World Migrations)
By Janet W. Salaff, Siu-Lun Wong, Arent Greve. 2010
Half a million Hong Kong residents fled their homeland during the thirteen years before Hong Kong's reversion to China in…
1997. Nearly half of those returned within the next several years. Filled with detailed, first-hand stories of nine Hong Kong families over nearly two decades, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers is a multifaceted yet intimate look at the forces behind Hong Kong families' successful, and failed, efforts at migration and settlement. Defining migration as a process, not a single act of leaving, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers provides an antidote to ethnocentric and simplistic theories by uncovering migration stories as they relate to social structures and social capital. The authors meld survey analysis, personal biography, and sociology and compare multiple families in order to give voice to the interplay of gender, age, and diverse family roles as motivating factors in migration.This book explores the location of spirituality and mysticism in modern Indian religious and intellectual life. It examines select personalities…
and their ideas since the early twentieth century, their role in the interwoven spheres of socio-religious and political thought, and in burgeoning spiritual imaginaries, often at the intersection of academic and public discourse. As part of a global ecumene connected by affective bonds, these spiritual cosmopolitans often defied binary frameworks (East/ West; imperial core/ periphery; colonizer/ colonized), and in the upshot reappraised and recast the very concept of religion in response to overarching ‘this-worldly’ exigencies.The first complete narrative of the pursuit & capture of SS Nazi officer and Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann, by a…
New York Times–bestselling author.When the Allies stormed Berlin in the last days of the Third Reich, Adolf Eichmann shed his SS uniform and vanished. Following his escape from two American POW camps, his retreat into the mountains and out of Europe, and his path to an anonymous life in Buenos Aires, his pursuers are a bulldog West German prosecutor, a blind Argentinean Jew and his beautiful daughter, and a budding, ragtag spy agency called the Mossad, whose operatives have their own scores to settle (and whose rare surveillance photographs are published here for the first time).The capture of Eichmann and the efforts by Israeli agents to secret him out of Argentina to stand trial is the stunning conclusion to this thrilling historical account, told with the kind of pulse-pounding detail that rivals anything you’d find in great spy fiction.Includes Mossad’s Rare Surveillance PhotographsPraise for Hunting Eichmann“A fantastic true spy story.” —Associated Press“[Bascomb’s] work is well researched, including interviews with former Israeli operatives and El Al staff who participated in the capture, as well as Argentine fascists. This is a gripping read.” —Publishers Weekly“An outstanding account of a sustained and worthy manhunt.” —BooklistThe Memorial Feast for Kökötöy Khan: A Kirghiz Epic Poem in the Manas Tradition
By Saghïmbay Orozbaq Uulu. 2022
This great Central Asian epic, passed down through generations and now brought to life in a new translation, carries the…
reader into a world of nomads, warriors and horselords'I am a steel-fanged lion, a dragon ready to pounce, a mighty poplar with golden branches rising up to the sky'The bard Saghïmbay Orozbaq uulu composed his oral telling of the great Central Asian Manas epic in the early twentieth century, although it draws on far older sources. This vivid episode from his narrative tells the bravura story of an uncertain new khan, Boqmurun, who holds a great feast to commemorate his predecessor, Kökötöy. From east and west, warriors and their turbulent retinues come to compete in horse races, jousting and wrestling, and soon insults are hurled and scores settled violently. Yet none can beat the supreme hero, the mighty, truculent Manas. By turns earthy, stirring, bombastic and funny, Saghïmbay's work stands as a monument to the oral culture of a nomadic people.Daniel Prior's landmark translation includes a 'How to Read the Epic' section, commentary, maps and illustrations.Composed in oral performance by Saghïmbay Orozbaq uulu Translated by Daniel PriorThe Last Days of the Ottoman Empire
By Ryan Gingeras. 2022
'A tour de force of accessible scholarship' The Guardian'Impressive ... It is a complicated story that still reverberates, and Gingeras…
narrates it with lucid authority' New StatesmanThe Ottoman Empire had been one of the major facts in European history since the Middle Ages. Stretching from the Adriatic to the Indian Ocean, the Empire was both a great political entity and a religious one, with the Sultan ruling over the Holy Sites and, as Caliph, the successor to Mohammed.Yet the Empire's fateful decision to support Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914 doomed it to disaster, breaking it up into a series of European colonies and what emerged as an independent Saudi Arabia.Ryan Gingeras's superb new book explains how these epochal events came about and shows how much we still live in the shadow of decisions taken so long ago. Would all of the Empire fall to marauding Allied armies, or could something be saved? In such an ethnically and religiously entangled region, what would be the price paid to create a cohesive and independent new state? The story of the creation of modern Turkey is an extraordinary, bitter epic, brilliantly told here.Life on the Golden Horn
By Mary Wortley Montagu. 2007
Travelling through the wartorn Balkans with her husband on what proved to be a wholly useless diplomatic mission to Constantinople,…
Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) left a vivid, informative, clever account of her adventures in the mysterious, sophisticated culture of Ottoman palaces, bathing places and courts which - even as her husband's career was falling apart - she could not have enjoyed more.Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives
By Christopher Harding. 2020
A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020'Mightily impressive ... a marvellous read' Sunday TimesFrom the acclaimed author of Japan…
Story, this is the history of Japan, distilled into the stories of twenty remarkable individuals. The vivid and entertaining portraits in Chris Harding's enormously enjoyable new book take the reader from the earliest written accounts of Japan right through to the life of the current empress, Masako. We encounter shamans and warlords, poets and revolutionaries, scientists, artists and adventurers - each offering insights of their own into this extraordinary place. For anyone new to Japan, this book is the ideal introduction. For anyone already deeply involved with it, this is a book filled with surprises and pleasures.The Hong Kong Diaries
By Chris Patten. 2022
The diaries of the last British Governor of Hong Kong, published on the 25th anniversary of the handoverIn June 1992…
Chris Patten went to Hong Kong as the last British governor, to try to prepare it not (as other British colonies over the decades) for independence, but for handing back in 1997 to the Chinese, from whom most of its territory had been leased 99 years previously. Over the next five years he kept this diary, which describes in detail how Hong Kong was run as a British colony and what happened as the handover approached. The book gives unprecedented insights into negotiating with the Chinese, about how the institutions of democracy in Hong Kong were (belatedly) strengthened and how Patten sought to ensure that a strong degree of self-government would continue after 1997. Unexpectedly, his opponents included not only the Chinese themselves, but some British businessmen and civil service mandarins upset by Patten's efforts, for whom political freedom and the rule of law in Hong Kong seemed less important than keeping on the right side of Beijing. The book concludes with an account of what has happened in Hong Kong since the handover, a powerful assessment of recent events and Patten's reflections on how to deal with China - then and now.Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North
By Ibn Fadlan. 2012
In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper…
reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion and sexual practices, as well as the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation.Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arab travellers such as Ibn Fadlan journeyed widely and frequently into the far north, crossing territories that now include Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Their fascinating accounts describe how the numerous tribes and peoples they encountered traded furs, paid tribute and waged wars. This accessible new translation offers an illuminating insight into the world of the Arab geographers, and the medieval lands of the far north.The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
By Avi Shlaim. 2014
Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World is the outstanding book on Israeli foreign policy, now thoroughly…
updated with a new preface and chapters on Israel's most recent leadersIn the 1920s, hard-line Zionists developed the doctrine of the 'Iron Wall': negotiations with the Arabs must always be from a position of military strength, and only when sufficiently strong Israel would be able to make peace with her Arab neighbours.This doctrine, argues Avi Shlaim, became central to Israeli policy; dissenters were marginalized and many opportunities to reconcile with Palestinian Arabs were lost. Drawing on a great deal of new material and interviews with many key participants, Shlaim places Israel's political and military actions under and uncompromising lens.His analysis will bring scant comfort to partisans on both sides, but it will be required reading for anyone interested in this fascinating and troubled region of the world.'The Iron Wall is strikingly fair-minded, scholarly, cogently reasoned and makes enthralling ... reading' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph'Anyone wanting to understand the modern Middle East should start by reading this elegantly written and scrupulously researched book' Trevor Royle, Sunday Herald'A milestone in modern scholarship of the Middle East' Edward Said'Fascinating ... Shlaim presents compelling evidence for a revaluation of traditional Israeli history' Ethan Bronner, The New York Times Book ReviewAvi Shlaim is Professor of International Relations at St. Antony's College, Oxford. His previous books include Collusion Across the Jordan (1988) and War and Peace in the Middle East (1995).A History of India
By Romila Thapar. 1966
Into Iraq
By Michael Palin. 2022
In March 2022, Michael Palin travelled the length of the River Tigris through Iraq to get a sense of what…
life is like in a region of the world that once formed the cradle of civilisation, but that in recent times has witnessed turmoil and appalling bloodshed. In the journal he kept during his trip he describes the war-ravaged city of Mosul and the children he encounters growing up amid its ruins. He contemplates the graffiti-strewn ruins of Saddam Hussein's former palaces, and he notes the constant presence of armed guards. But there are patches of light amid the dark: boisterous New Year celebrations in Akre, the friendliness of generals and colonels at 'Checkpoint Cheerful', and public poetry readings in Baghdad. People getting on with their lives.At the same time, Michael charts the course of one of the great rivers of the world, showing how the water that gave life to such ancient settlements as Babylon and Ur is now becoming a scarce and hotly contested resource. And he considers the role that Iraq's other great natural resource - oil - plays in both providing wealth and threatening political stability.Illustrated throughout with colour photographs taken on the trip, and permeated with his warmth and humour, this is a vivid and varied portrait of a complex country.The History and Topography of Ireland
By Gerald Of Wales. 1982
Gerald of Wales was among the most dynamic and fascinating churchmen of the twelfth century. A member of one of…
the leading Norman families involved in the invasion of Ireland, he first visited there in 1183 and later returned in the entourage of Henry II. The resulting Topographia Hiberniae is an extraordinary account of his travels. Here he describes landscapes, fish, birds and animals; recounts the history of Ireland's rulers; and tells fantastical stories of magic wells and deadly whirlpools, strange creatures and evil spirits. Written from the point of view of an invader and reformer, this work has been rightly criticized for its portrait of a primitive land, yet it is also one of the most important sources for what is known of Ireland during the Middle Ages.Fourteen Byzantine Rulers: The Chronographia of Michael Psellus
By Michael Psellus. 1966
Elusive Peace: How the Holy Land Defeated America
By Dr Ahron Bregman. 2005
Ehud Barak's election as Prime Minister of Israel on 17th May 1999 and his determination to conclude a peace deal…
with the Palestinians inspired both Israeli voters and the international community. So where did it all go wrong? How did it end, less than two years later, in the total failure of Barak's peace efforts, his defeat at the polls and ejection from office? How did he open the way not to peace, but to Ariel Sharon?Drawing on exclusive interviews with all the major international figures involved, this book traces the history of the Middle East peace process from Barak's election, through the peace talks at Camp David to the current Road Map. It illuminates the characters of Clinton, Arafat, Sharon and many others, and offers many insights into one of the most complex political political situations in the world today.Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun.
By Mark Thomas. 2011
'Good fences make good neighbours, but what about bad ones?'The Israeli separation barrier is probably the most iconic divider of…
land since the Berlin Wall. It has been declared illegal under international law and its impact on life in the West Bank has been enormous.Mark Thomas - as only he could - decided the only way to really get to grips with this huge divide was to use the barrier as a route map, to 'walk the wall', covering the entire distance with little more in his armoury than Kendal Mint Cake and a box of blister plasters.In the course of his ramble he was tear-gassed, stoned, sunburned, rained on and hailed on and even lost the wall a couple of times. But thankfully he was also welcomed and looked after by Israelis and Palestinians - from farmers and soldiers to smugglers and zookeepers - and finally earned a unique insight of the real Middle East in all its entrenched and yet life-affirming glory. And all without hardly ever getting arrested!Distant Voices
By John Pilger. 1990
Throughout his distinguished career as a journalist and film-maker, John Pilger has looked behind the 'official' versions of events to…
report the real stories of our time.The centrepiece of this new, expanded edition of his bestselling Distant Voices is Pilger's reporting from East Timor, which he entered secretly in 1993 and where a third of the population has died as a result of Indonesia's genocidal policies. This edition also contains more new material as well as all the original essays - from the myth-making of the Gulf War to the surreal pleasures of Disneyland. Breaking through the consensual silence, Pilger pays tribute to those dissenting voices we are seldom permitted to hear.The Diary of Lady Murasaki
By Murasaki Shikibu. 1996
The Diary recorded by Lady Murasaki (c. 973-c. 1020), author of The Tale of Genji, is an intimate picture of…
her life as tutor and companion to the young Empress Shoshi. Told in a series of vignettes, it offers revealing glimpses of the Japanese imperial palace - the auspicious birth of a prince, rivalries between the Emperor's consorts, with sharp criticism of Murasaki's fellow ladies-in-waiting and drunken courtiers, and telling remarks about the timid Empress and her powerful father, Michinaga. The Diary is also a work of great subtlety and intense personal reflection, as Murasaki makes penetrating insights into human psychology - her pragmatic observations always balanced by an exquisite and pensive melancholy.A Coup in Turkey: A Tale of Democracy, Despotism and Vengeance in a Divided Land
By Jeremy Seal. 2021
The most dramatic, revealing and little-known story in Turkey's history - which illuminates the nation'Through the spellbinding career of a…
single, ill-fated leader, Jeremy Seal illuminates a bitterly divided country' Colin Thubron'Read this book if you're interested in Turkey. Read it if you're interested in power, hubris and redemption. Read it' Christopher de Bellaigue, author of The Islamic EnlightenmentIn the spring of 2016 travel writer Jeremy Seal went to Turkey to investigate perhaps the most dramatic, revealing and little-known episode in the country's history - the 'original' coup of 1960, which deposed the traditionalist Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. The story of Menderes - to his adoring supporters the country's founding democrat; to his sworn enemies its most infamous traitor - goes to the heart of the feud that continues to rage between the Western and secular ambitions of a minority elite and the religious and conservative instincts of the small-town majority. A Coup in Turkey is a thrilling account of the events leading up to the coup and the trials and executions that followed, a story of political subterfuge and score-settling, courtroom drama, state execution, authoritarian intolerance and ideological division. Seal travels through President Erdogan's Turkey, tracking down eye-witness accounts from survivors of the Menderes era in Istanbul, the historic metropolis, and the new capital at Ankara. As he expertly guides us through this extraordinary story, so the compelling parallels between past and present become strikingly clear, and he illuminates this troubled nation with a deep sympathy and love for the people and places he writes about. By focussing on one key event - one which many Turks regard with shame - this evocative, gripping portrait of Turkey recentres our understanding of the past and makes sense of one of Europe's most bewildering yet intriguing neighbours.'A wonderful writer' Robert MacfarlaneThe Crossing: My journey to the shattered heart of Syria
By Samar Yazbek. 2015
'ONE OF THE FIRST POLITICAL CLASSICS OF THE 21st CENTURY'- Observer'EXTRAORDINARILY POWERFUL, POIGNANT AND AFFECTING. I WAS GREATLY MOVED' Michael…
PalinFOREWORD BY CHRISTINA LAMBJournalist Samar Yazbek was forced into exile by Assad's regime. When the uprising in Syria turned to bloodshed, she was determined to take action and secretly returned several times. The Crossing is her rare, powerful and courageous testament to what she found inside the borders of her homeland.From the first peaceful protests for democracy to the arrival of ISIS, she bears witness to those struggling to survive, to the humanity that can flower amidst annihilation, and why so many are now desperate to flee.