Asia Politics

In 1526, when the nomadic Timurid warrior-scholar Babur rode into Hindustan, his wives, sisters, daughters, aunts and distant female relatives travelled with him. These women would help establish a dynasty and empire that would rule India for the next 200 years and become a byword for opulence and grandeur. In Daughters of the Sun, we meet remarkable characters like Khanzada Begum who, at 65, rode on horseback through 750 kilometres of icy passes and unforgiving terrain to parley on behalf of her nephew, Humayun....

In The Devil and Communist China, Steven Mosher lays out in great detail the diabolical self-aggrandizement with deep roots in Chinese ancient political theory, called Legalism, which established the prototype for the totalitarian rule that the Chinese people suffer under today.

Through a study of the way of the samurai, Nitobe identifies the seven virtues most widely recognized by the Japanese: rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, veracity, honor, and loyalty. In sharing these moral guidelines, handed down over generations, Nitobe gives the world unique insight into a previously unexplored code of honor.

In January of 1965, 24-year-old US Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world's most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for 40 years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick).

One of the most acclaimed books of our time—the definitive Vietnam War exposé and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. When he came to Vietnam in 1962, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann was the one clear-sighted participant in an enterprise riddled with arrogance and...

Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects.

“THE BOOK CHINA DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ.” —CNN​ SELECTED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by THE ECONOMIST and FINANCIAL TIMES This “powerful and disturbing” (Bill Browder, author of Red Notice) New York Times bestseller is narrated by a man who, with his wife, Whitney Duan, rose to the...

An estimated 36 million Chinese men, women, and children starved to death during China's Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early '60s. One of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, the famine is poorly understood, and in China is still euphemistically referred to as "the three years of natural disaster". As a journalist with privileged access to official and unofficial sources, Yang Jisheng spent 20 years piecing together the events that led to mass nationwide starvation, including the death of his own father.

An exciting, hugely revealing account of China’s burgeoning presence in Africa - a developing empire already shaping, and reshaping, the future of millions of people. A prizewinning foreign correspondent and former New York Times bureau chief in Shanghai and in West and Central Africa, Howard French is uniquely positioned to tell the story of China in Africa. Through meticulous on-the-ground reporting, French crafts a layered investigation of astonishing depth and breadth.

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.

Korea was one of the last countries in Asia to be visited by Westerners, and its borders have remained largely unchanged since it was unified in the seventh century. Though it is one of the world's oldest and most ethnically homogeneous states, Korea was not born in a vacuum. Geographically isolated, the country was heavily influenced by powerful China and was often used as a bridge to the mainland by Japan. Calling themselves as "a shrimp among whales", Koreans borrowed elements of government, culture, and religion, all the while fiercely fighting to maintain independence.

In India Positive, best-selling author and columnist Chetan Bhagat brings together essays that work as a manifesto for change. Examining a gamut of subjects—from education to employment, from GST to infrastructure, from corruption to casteism—Bhagat reflects on what we can do right in order to move forward and become a truly modern, progressive country. He expresses in this book his belief that, if we want to see reform, we—as citizens—need to be the solution. If our country is to shine, Bhagat says, we need to stand up and be 'India Positive Citizens'.

In 1908, at the age of two, Henry Pu Yi ascended to become the last emperor of the centuries-old Manchu dynasty. After revolutionaries forced Pu Yi to abdicate in 1911, the young emperor lived for 13 years in Peking’s Forbidden City, but with none of the power his birth afforded him. The remainder of Pu Yi’s life was lived out in a topsy-turvy fashion: fleeing from a Chinese warlord, becoming head of a Japanese puppet state, being confined to a Russian prison in Siberia, and enduring taxing labor.

This is a reporter’s chronicle spanning three generations, backed by firsthand accounts of luminaries, peppered with numerous anecdotes and a passionate examination of his own beliefs. It is as scathing in its takedown of bigotry as it is lucid in charting a blow-by-blow account of our recent past. It is a tribute to the making of India and its founders as well as the affirmation of the will of the Indians to place the power in the hands of the people.

Peter Mattis and Matthew Brazil present an unprecedented look into the murky world of Chinese espionage both past and present, enabling a better understanding of how pervasive and important its influence is, both in China and abroad.

In this fully revised and updated third edition, Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham provide cogent answers to urgent questions regarding the world's newest superpower and offer a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise from developing country to superpower. Framing their answers through the historical legacies that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom and Cunningham introduce listeners to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the environmental fallout of rapid Chinese industrialization.

Listeners of this book will gain a clear understanding of what makes the Japanese, and their society, tick.

The dramatic real-life stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China's 1949 Communist revolution. Benny must decide either to escape to Hong Kong or navigate the intricacies of a newly Communist China. Annuo, forced to flee with her father, a defeated Nationalist official, becomes an unwelcome exile in Taiwan. The financially strapped Ho fights deportation from the US in order to continue his studies while his family struggles at home. Bing, given away by her poor parents, faces the prospect of a new life among strangers in America.

From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country's 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product.

Love your country? Want to make it truly great? Tired of loud debates and complex arguments which lead to no solutions? Welcome to Making India Awesome. Following the phenomenal success of his first nonfiction book, What Young India Wants, Chetan Bhagat, the country's biggest-selling writer, returns with another audiobook of essays in which he analyses and provides inspired solutions to the country's most intractable problems - poverty, unemployment, corruption, violence against women, communal violence, religious fundamentalism, illiteracy and more.