Asian history Books

Book SynopsisIf the story of the Soong family were told as fiction, people would say it was fascinating but too improbable.... A dramatic human chronicle... engrossing. The New York Times Book Review In the early twentieth century, few women in China were to prove so important to the rise of Chinese nationalism and liberation from tradition as the three extraordinary Soong sistersEling, Chingling and Maylingwho would each marry historic figures. Told with wit and verve by New Yorker correspondent Emily Hahn, a remarkable woman in her own right, the biography of the Soong sisters reveals the story of China through both World Wars. It also chronicles the changes to Shanghai as they relate to a very eccentric family that had the courage to speak out against the ruling regime. Greatly influencing the history of modern China, they interacted with their government and military to protect the lives of those who could not be heard, and appealed to the West to support China during the Japanese invasion.

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Book SynopsisA “very dramatic [and] compelling” World War II story of murder, mutiny, and a military cover-up, from the author of The Phoenix Program (The New York Times). Captured by the Japanese while on patrol in the fetid jungles of New Guinea, Douglas Valentine’s father, who’d enlisted in the US Army at age sixteen, was sent to a prison camp in the Philippines, where he was interned with Australian and British soldiers. The events that followed make up this “well-told, chilling” story of betrayal and brutality—a powerful tale of a son uncovering the traumatic events that shaped the rest of his father’s life (Los Angeles Times Book Review). “Not just a searing picture of life in a terrible POW camp, it is also a significant historical document about a place that the U.S. military says never existed.” —Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisAcclaimed by Critics, Historians, and Military Leaders the World OverTrade Review"A compelling book...Mr. Spurr bases his narrative on extensive interviews with survivors from both sides." - The New York Times Book Review."

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Book SynopsisCentral Asia in ancient and medieval times was the crossroads of civilization, connecting China with the West. What we now call Central Asia was part of the empires conquered by Cyrus, Alexander the Great, Timur, and their successors during antiquity and the Middle Ages. At the turn of the millennium, Central Asia became the Turkish center of rule. After the Turkish expansion, political rule belonged to the Turks, but the culture remained Iranian. Over the course of the centuries, ancient polytheistic religions gave way to Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Islam, and merchants founded trading empires around the legendary silk route. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the peoples of Central Asia are seeking to rediscover their heritage, which blends cultural elements from Iran, China, and India. This book provides a concise, authoritative history of the region that includes modern Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Xinjiang. The author, who has made many visits to the region and lived in Tajikistan, draws on sources in several Central Asian languages, as well as materials from the fields of archaeology, art history, linguistics, ethnography, and folklore.

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Book SynopsisThe first study in English that examines barefoot doctors in China from the perspective of the social history of medicine. In 1968, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party endorsed a radical new system of health-care delivery for the rural masses. Soon every village had at least one barefoot doctor to provide basic medical care, creating a national network of health-care services for the very first time. The barefoot doctors were portrayed nationally and internationally as revolutionary heroes, wading undaunted through rice paddies to bring effective, low-cost care to poor peasants. This book is the first comprehensive study to look beyond the nostalgia dominating present scholarship on public health in China and offer a powerful and carefully contextualized critiqueof the prevailing views on the role of barefoot doctors, their legacy, and their impact. Drawing on primary documents from the Cultural Revolution and personal interviews with patients and doctors, Xiaoping Fang examines the evidence within the broader history of medicine in revolutionary and postreform China. He finds that rather than consolidating traditional Chinese medicine, as purported by government propaganda, the barefoot doctor program introducedmodern Western medicine to rural China, effectively modernizing established methods and forms of care. As a result, this volume retrieves from potential oblivion a critical part of the history of Western medicine in China. Xiaoping Fang is assistant professor of Chinese history at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.Trade ReviewXiaoping Fang gives the English-reading world a reliable account of the barefoot doctor movement and its tremendous importance in the creation of the Chinese health-care system. Contrary to received opinion, Fang shows how the movement prompted a decline in the popularity of traditional healing methods while promoting biomedicine in the countryside. This study greatly advances our understanding of the history of medicine in modern China. -- Bridie Andrews, associate professor of history, Bentley UniversityThe barefoot doctors were a historic advance in the provision of health care to hundreds of millions of people in China and a model in extending and improving health services to hundreds of millions more around the world. Dr. Fang Xiaoping tells this extraordinary story with a strong sense of the ethos of the times, in China and beyond. I commend his important volume to those who seek to understand the history of medicine, China, and advances in the delivery of health care to the poor and vulnerable around the world. --Victor W. Sidel, MD, former president, American Public Health Association * APHA *The focus on one village in Hangzhou Prefecture gives the book a specificity and immediateness that bring history to life in sometimes dramatic ways....Recommended. * CHOICE *Paints a richly textured picture of medicine in rural China....This relatively short book is a gem....An excellent book that deserves to be widely read. * AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *This book will be of wide interest to anyone wishing to understand the state of health care in China today and the roots of its successes and dilemmas. * PACIFIC AFFAIRS *Discussing the barefoot doctor program, processes of knowledge transmission, pharmaceutical prices and supply chains, medical consumption, group identity and professionalism, and institutional shifts, this book successfully advances our understanding of how the three-tier medical network was gradually set up in China's countryside. * THE CHINA JOURNAL *This illuminating study corrects what we thought we knew about that evanescent character the Barefoot Doctor, invented in 1968, widely acclaimed inside and outside China, and officially discarded in 1985. Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China is based not only on research on the ground, but on a thorough study of the pertinent scholarly literature. * THE CHINA REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction Village Healers, Medical Pluralism, and State Medicine Revolutionizing Knowledge Transmission Structures Pharmaceuticals Reach the Villages Healing Styles and Medical Beliefs: The Consumption of Chinese and Western Medicines Relocating Illness: The Shift from Home Bedside to Hospital Ward Group Identity, Power Relationships, and Medical Legitimacy Conclusion Appendixes The Organization of the Three-Tiered Medical System in Rural China, 1968-83 Common Medicines in Chinese Villages during the 1960s-70s

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Book SynopsisPreeminant gamelan performer and scholar Sumarsam explores the concept of hybridity in performance traditions that have developed in the context of Javanese encounters with the West. Javanese Gamelan and the West studies the meaning, forms, and traditions of the Javanese performing arts as they developed and changed through their contact with Western culture. Authored by a gamelan performer, teacher, and scholar, the book traces the adaptations in gamelan art as a result of Western colonialism in nineteenth-century Java, showing how Western musical and dramatic practices were domesticated by Javanese performers creating hybrid Javanese-Western art forms, such as with the introduction of brass bands in gendhing mares court music and West Javanese tanjidor, and Western theatrical idioms in contemporary wayang puppet plays. The book also examines the presentation of Javanese gamelan to the West, detailing performances in World's Fairs and American academia and considering its influence on Western performing arts and musical and performance studies. The end result is a comprehensive treatment of the formation of modern Javanese gamelan and a fascinating look at how an art form dramatizes changes and developments in a culture. Sumarsam is a University Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. He is the author of Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java (University of Chicago Press, 1995) and numerous articles in English and Indonesian. As a gamelan musician and a keenamateur dhalang (puppeteer) of Javanese wayang puppet play, he performs, conducts workshops, and lectures throughout the US, Australia, Europe, and Asia.Trade ReviewThis book offers a sweeping overview of Javanese musical and cultural interactions with the rest of the world, providing critique and reconsideration of the prevalent themes and ideas that have fascinated scholars for decades. It will be essential reading, not only for Javanists but for scholars of postcolonialism in general. -- Sarah Weiss, Associate Professor, Department of Music, Yale UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction Performing Colonialism Performing the Nation-State Opera Diponegoro Deterritorializing and Appropriating Gamelan Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Gamelan Theory: Metaphorical Readings of Gamelan Conclusion Notes Glossary Selected Discography Bibliography

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Book SynopsisFor two centuries Asians have been bystanders in world history, reacting defencelessly to the surges of Western commerce, thought, and power. That era is over. Asia is returning to the centre stage it occupied for eighteen centuries before the rise of the West. By 2050, three of the world's largest economies will be Asian: China, India, and Japan. In The New Asian Hemisphere , Kishore Mahbubani argues that Western minds need to step outside their comfort zone" and prepare new mental maps to understand the rise of Asia. The West, he says, must gracefully share power with Asia by giving up its automatic domination of global institutions from the IMF to the World Bank, from the G7 to the UN Security Council. Only then will the new Asian powers reciprocate by becoming responsible stakeholders in a stable world order.Trade Review"(S)uccinct, accessible and pointed" and say that "if you want to maintain notions of developed Western hemisphere countries benignly acting in the best interests of the world get a different book. If you are open instead to seeing the world through an Asian lens less sanguine about Western motives, you should find this book highly thought-provoking." Irish Times "This is no dry scholarly tome. It is an anti-Western polemic, designed to wake up Americans and Europeans by making them angry. In that goal it will certainly be successful." Economist"

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