Titres dans Asie

In August 1945, a handful of people raised a homemade cotton flag and announced the birth of a new nation. With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first country to rid itself of colonial rule after WWII.

Cette “Histoire générale de la Chine” (Tome 1), d’Henri Cordier, offre une entrée magistrale dans la longue durée chinoise: elle démonte les mythes d’origines (influences égyptiennes, chaldéennes ou indiennes) et expose avec rigueur les débats savants sur la préhistoire, la langue et l’écriture, pour mieux situer la Chine dans l’histoire universelle sans la réduire à des fables ou à un isolement immuable.

The Philippines is a nation forged in the crucible of colonial encounters. For more than three centuries, Spain imposed its rule over the islands, binding them to an empire of faith and monarchy. Then, in the late nineteenth century, the United States arrived, declaring its own brand of democracy, education, and modernisation. Faith, Flag, and Freedom tells the sweeping story of how Spanish Catholicism and American democracy came together—sometimes violently, sometimes harmoniously—to create the Philippines of today.

Singaporean-Canadian author Joanne Leow sheds light on the underbelly of Singapore's history and the human cost behind its glittering façade. "What unknowable chemical? How slow was this damage, this violence? . . . How might any of us stay uncontaminated by all that was built around us?" Sleek...

This book tells the story of Kazuo Odachi who—in 1943, when he was just 16 years-old—joined the Imperial Japanese Navy to become a pilot. A year later, he was unknowingly assigned to the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps—a group of airmen whose mission was to sacrifice their lives by crashing planes into enemy ships. Their call sign was "ten dead, zero alive." This book offers a new perspective on these infamous suicide pilots. It is not a chronicle of war, nor is it a collection of research papers compiled by scholars. It is a transcript of Odachi's words.

In this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose 63-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix describes what it was like to be trained from birth for a lone position at the apex of the nation's political hierarchy and as a revered symbol of divine status.

Mongol leader Genghis Khan was by far the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. His empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to Central Europe, including all of China, the Middle East, and Russia. So how did an illiterate nomad rise to such colossal power and subdue most of the known world, eclipsing Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon?

Genghis Khan built a formidable land empire, but he never crossed the sea. Yet by the time his grandson Kublai Khan had defeated the last vestiges of the Song empire and established the Yuan dynasty in 1279, the Mongols controlled the most powerful navy in the world. How did a nomad come to conquer China and master the sea? Based on ten years of research and a lifetime of immersion in Mongol culture and tradition, Emperor of the Seas brings this little-known story vibrantly to life.

The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.

This history of modern Iran is not a survey in the conventional sense but an ambitious exploration of the story of a nation. It offers a revealing look at how events, people, and institutions are shaped by currents that sometimes reach back hundreds of years. The book covers the complex history of the diverse societies and economies of Iran against the background of dynastic changes, revolutions, civil wars, foreign occupation, and the rise of the Islamic Republic.

A classic of Japanese history, this audiobook is the preeminent work on the history of Japan. Newly revised and updated, A History of Japan is a single-volume complete history of the nation of Japan. Starting in ancient Japan during its early pre-history period, A History of Japan covers every important aspect of history and culture through feudal Japan to the post-Cold War period and collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s. Recent findings shed additional light on the origins of Japanese civilization and the birth of Japanese culture.

The Last Mughal tells the story of the doomed Mughal capital, its tragic destruction, and the individuals caught up in one of the most terrible upheavals in history, as an army mutiny was transformed into the largest anti-colonial uprising to take place anywhere in the world in the entire course of the nineteenth century.

Based on years of forensic archaeology combined with interviews of more than two hundred survivors and their families, Ghosts of Hiroshima is a you-are-there account of ordinary human beings thrust into extraordinary events, during which our modern civilization entered its most challenging phase—a nuclear adolescence that, unless we are very wise and learn from our past, we may not survive.

In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea - and to freedom.

In The Silk Road, Valerie Hansen describes the remarkable archaeological finds that revolutionize our understanding of these trade routes. The Silk Road is a fascinating story of archaeological discovery, cultural transmission, and the intricate chains across Central Asia and China.

In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, Chiang Kai-shek, and their fellow victors, the question of justice seemed clear: Japan’s militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against civilians in China, the Philippines, and elsewhere; and rampant abuses of prisoners of war in notorious incidents such as the Bataan death march.

In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away.

Defending Heaven brings together, for the first time in one volume, a complete history of the Jin, Song, and Ming dynasties' wars fought against the Mongols. Lasting nearly two centuries, these wars, fought to defend Chinese civilization against a brutal and unrelenting foe, pitted personal heroics against the inexorable Mongol war machine and involved every part of the Chinese state.

In this classic account of the French war in Indochina, Bernard B. Fall vividly captures the sights, sounds, and smells of the savage eight-year conflict in the jungles and mountains of Southeast Asia from 1946 to 1954. The French fought well to the last, but even with the lethal advantages of airpower, they could not stave off the Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists, who countered with a hit-and-run campaign of ambushes, booby traps, and nighttime raids. Defeat came at Dien Bien Phu, in 1954, setting the stage for American involvement and opening another tragic chapter in Vietnam's history.

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 China. Far from front lines and prying eyes, Japanese doctors and their assistants subjected human guinea pigs to gruesome medical experiments in the name of science and Japan's wartime chemical and biological warfare research. Author Hal Gold draws upon a wealth of sources to construct a portrait of the Imperial Japanese Army's most notorious medical unit, giving an overview of its history and detailing its most shocking activities.