Asian history Books

This fascinating book tells the story of the people of Japan, from ancient teenage priest-queens to teeming hordes of salarymen, a nation that once sought to conquer China, yet also shut itself away for two centuries in self-imposed seclusion...

*Finalist for the US National Book Award for Poetry 2020*A powerful work of cultural memory that recovers voices from Korea's heartbreakingly violent postcolonial history.Woven from poems, prose, photographs, and drawings, Don Mee Choi's DMZ...

There are many books published in English on Chinese gardens, but the majority are primarily picture books with little informative content. With a large number of illustrations of Chinese gardens, ancient paintings, block prints, and other artefacts,...

How did a venerable Indian spiritual discipline turn into a 20 billion-a-year mainstay of the wellness industry? What happened along yoga's winding path from the caves and forests of the sages to the gyms, hospitals and village halls of the modern...

A gripping royal saga of charmed lives in a changing world.The Jaipurs were India's mid-century golden couple; its answer to the Kennedys, or Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Jai and Ayesha, as they were known to friends like Frank Sinatra, Truman...

In late-eighteenth-century India, the glory of the Mughal emperors was fading, and ambitious newcomers seized power, changing the political map forever. Enter the legendary Maharajah Ranjit Singh, whose Sikh Empire stretched throughout northwestern India...

A richly illustrated history of textiles in the Mughal Empire.In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a vast array of textiles circulated throughout the Mughal Empire. Made from rare fibers and crafted using virtuosic techniques, these exquisite...

A multifaceted history of Ho Chi Minh's climactic victory over French colonial might that foreshadowed America's experience in Vietnam.On May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could...

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...

Vigil takes you to the frontlines of the battle for democracy in China, helping readers truly understand what's at stake, and how China rules. The story of Hong Kong's struggles can also bring into sharper focus issues associated with China's...

In The Making of Modern Japan, Myles Carroll offers a sweeping account of post-war Japanese political economy, exploring the transition from the post-war boom to the crisis of today and the connections between these seemingly discrete periods.Carroll...

The Chinese Revolution changed the face of the twentieth century, and the politics that issued from it-often referred to as "Maoism"-resonated with colonized and oppressed people from the 1970s down to the anticapitalist movements of today. But how did...

In existence for 258 years, the English East India Company ran a complex, highly integrated global trading network. Over time, the Company developed a pronounced and aggressive colonialism that laid the foundation for Britain's Eastern empire. A study of...

Translated into English for the first time here, the Sanguozhi pinghua (thirteenth century CE) provides a complete and fast-paced narrative account of the events of the period, from the beginning of the civil wars to the demise of the Three Kingdoms and...

This book is an accessible collection of primary sources on the life of the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci and the Catholic mission that he helped establish in China. Ricci's missionary career indeed constituted a key moment in modern history, for...

The landmark alternative history of the Cold War from the perspective of the Global South, reissued in paperback with a new introduction by the author, praised by critics as a welcome antidote to apologists for empire, has defined for a generation of...

Named a Best Book of the Year by The EconomistA chilling work of true crime about the midair murder of a human rights activist, set against a riveting political drama in the world's fourth-largest nationOn a warm Jakarta night in September 2004, Munir...

Prolific, award-winning translator of classical and modern Japanese poetry Hiroaki Sato recorded his thoughts on American society in mainly two columns across 30-plus years, collected here for the first time.This anthology of over 60 of Sato's...

How the mindset of traditional Japanese society can guide our own efforts to lead a green lifestyle today.If we want to live sustainably, how should we feel about nature? About waste? About our forests and rivers? About food? Just Enough is a book of...

An informal yet informed journey through the classic works of Japanese cinema and their directors.This is a passionate, personal journey through one of the world's greatest national cinemas, beginning with the classic directors who came to the fore in...

How China became the China we know today, through war and societal transformation.China entered the 20th century as an agrarian society, weakened under internal and external pressures. Revolutionaries came together to bring down the last imperial dynasty...

An accessible compendium of the most important aspects of Japanese arts, culture and history, for quick reference or a longer, in-depth read, for actual and armchair travellers alike..This friendly guide offers concise but detailed demystifications of...

Tokyo Stroll is the best guidebook for travelers who want to wander the streets and discover the city as it unfolds before their eyes. There is no "start at point A and go to point B" prescribed route. Instead you are invited to wander as whimsy takes...

this graphic novel dramatizes the story of "Minamata," famous around the world as one of the most egregious examples of environmental poisoning; identified in 1956, a final compensation settlement was not reached until 2010; over 2,000 people were...

An unforgettable memoir of the horrors suffered by a Japanese family trapped in Changchun, China, at the end of WW2.Over 150,000 innocents died of starvation in Changchun, northeastern China, after the end of WW2 when Mao's army laid siege during the...

Who founded China? Are Chinese people religious? What is Chinese culture and how has it changed over time? The accessible and fun Understanding China Through Comics series answers those questions and more. For all ages, Foundations of Chinese...

Prophets Unarmed is an authoritative sourcebook on the Chinese Communist Party's main early opposition, the Chinese Trotskyists. Opposed from Moscow by Stalin, and by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong in China, the Trotskyists were China's most persecuted...

In his long-overdue first collection of essays, noted journalist and NPR commentator Andrew Lam explores his lifelong struggle for identity as a Viet Kieu, or a Vietnamese national living abroad. At age eleven, Lam, the son of a South Vietnamese general,...

Newly revised histories of photography as recorded via the photobook have added enormously to our understanding of the medium's culture, particularly in places that are often marginalized, such as Latin America and Africa. However, until now, only a...

This book fills a missing need for a solid socio-cultural breakdown referring to Okinawan karate. This is currently not found in the Western karate world. The author applies the laws of physics to modern karate, revealing the changes and negative...

After a failed push for political reform, the T'ang era's greatest prose-writer, Liu Tsung-yuan, was exiled to the southern reaches of China. Thousands of miles from home and freed from the strictures of court bureaucracy, he turned his gaze inward and...

A Queer Film Classic on IshmaelBernal's 1980 film that follows a dozencharacters, all denizens of Manila's sordid yet exuberant underworld, as theypursue life, love, and pleasure. Bernal cited Robert Altman's Nashville as one of the influences onhis...

The first account of one of the world's most pressing humanitarian catastrophes.This eye-opening book reveals how China has used the US-led Global War on Terror as cover for its increasingly brutal suppression of the Uyghur people.China's...

Through the center of China's historic capital, Long Peace Street cuts a long, arrow-straight line. It divides the Forbidden City, home to generations of Chinese emperors, from Tiananmen Square, the vast granite square constructed to glorify a New China...

For those interested in the assassination of JFK, the untold story of Indonesia, gold, JFK, Allen Dulles, the CIA, and secret military coups.Two of the most fascinating figures in history, John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth president of the United States, and...

Smartphones have to be made someplace, and that place is China. In just five years, a company names Xiaomi (which means "little rice" in Mandarin) has grown into the most valuable startup ever, becoming the third largest manufacturer of smartphones,...

Prior to contacting Dolores for a regression session, a 22-year-old American woman inexplicably became deeply traumatized and overwhelmed by a sudden rush of memories that had no rational explanation. The memories were triggered in the following settings...

Expertly researched and thought-out, yet approachable and witty, this book will immediately draw in anyone interested in global affairs, foreign policy and the future of America's role on the world stage.This book provides a fascinating...

A comprehensive guide to understanding Vietnam's long and tumultuous historyA Brief History of Vietnam explores the turbulent history of a land that has risen from the ashes of war to become the newest Asian tiger economy. This book expertly...

What is life in North Korea really like?This fascinating book by celebrated journalists Daniel Tudor and James Pearson explores that very question. The authors interview experts and tap a broad variety of sources to provide a startling insider's view of...

This is a riveting and disturbing account of the medical atrocities performed in and around Japan during WWII. Some of the cruelest deeds of Japan's war in Asia did not occur on the battlefield, but in quiet, antiseptic medical wards in obscure parts of...

Thailand is known for its picturesque beaches and famous temples, but there's much more to this popular holiday destination than many realise.A Brief History of Thailand offers an engaging look at the country's last 250 years -from...

Korean culture developed on a 600-mile-long peninsula, bordered on the north by mountains and three sides by the sea, set apart from the Asian mainland. Korea was one of the last countries in Asia to be visited by Westerners and its borders have remained...

To the Japanese, the sword is a spiritual weapon. It possesses a particular divinity, reflecting the soul of its maker, owner, and user. Around its mystical powers has grown the centuries-old ritual and practice of Samurai swordsmanship which is still...

The Eight Immortals, the five eleents, the dragon and the phoenix, yin and yang - presentations of these important cultural symbols ar pervasive in Chinese literature, art, and architecture and without an understanding of their significance, much Chinese...

For millennia, China was the largest and richest nation on earth. Two centuries ago, however, its economy sank into a depression from which it had not fully recovered-until now. China's modern resurgence as the world's largest nation in terms of...

Early Japanese Railways 1853-1914 is a cultural and engineering history of railway building in Japan during the Meiji era. The importance of early railways in the industrialization of the United States and Europe is a fact all of us are familiar with. To...

The weekly column "Ask a North Korean" published by NK News invites readers from around the globe to pose questions to North Korean defectors. By way of these provocative interviews, the North Koreans themselves provide authentic, first-person...