East Asia

In February 1944, in one of the most astonishing battles of World War II, a ragtag collection of British clerks, drivers, doctors, muleteers, and other base troops, stiffened by a few dogged Yorkshiremen and a handful of tank crews, managed to defeat a much larger and sophisticated contingent of some of the finest infantry in the Japanese army on their march toward India.

This landmark book, first published in 1978, remains one of the most influential books in the Social Sciences, particularly Ethnic Studies and Postcolonialism. Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In Orientalism Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."

For centuries, the Crusades have been central to the story of the medieval Near East, but these religious wars are only part of the region's complex history. As The Mongol Storm reveals, during the same era the Near East was utterly remade by another series of wars: the Mongol invasions. In a single generation, the Mongols conquered vast swaths of the Near East and upended the region's geopolitics. This is the definitive history of the Mongol assault on the Near East and its enduring global consequences.

Discover a fresh, contemporary, and objective outlook on significant global conflicts in our new eBook titled "Global Conflicts Unveiled.” The book fearlessly dives into the complex world of geopolitical conflicts, offering readers an in-depth understanding that goes beyond common headlines. Uncover what global conflict truly means through a comprehensive overview in Chapter 1, setting the foundation for the intricate narrative that unfolds. Learn how situations of conflict have evolved with each epoch, shaping our 21st-century world. The eBook's content is divided into easily digestible ...

Written by Gabriel Walker Land and Al Khemis, a grand introduction to Thailand! Thailand is known as the 'Land of Smiles' -- however it's not always an easy place to land as a long-term expat. In this memoir and self-help story, a digital nomad, expatriate and economic refugee finds himself in a foreign land where he is forced to unlock the endless mysteries of Asia. Along the way, our wayward traveler begins to smile with genuine happiness for the first time in his life, and he soon realizes that if he had never journeyed to the ASEAN region, he might not still be alive to write these ...

This account of Muammar Gaddafi takes us to his rise to power, to the moments when he was in the spotlight, and then to his travails and his swift elimination from the geopolitical developments in Libya in a procession that plunged the country into a turmoil that it is yet to recover from. With insight, lucidity, impartiality, breadth, and diligence, Janvier T, Chando manages to delineate the intricate threads that weaved the controversial character of Muammar Gaddafi. He not only finds the truth from the disparate accounts about the Libyan strongman, he shed light on him in a unique manner...

Paul Murphy desperately wants to be a big shot but the pursuit of fortune often comes with a heavy price. For Paul, it was the life of his best friend and partner, Tommy, apparently murdered for encroaching on a local drug gang's turf. Paul, a lowly hospital porter, fearful that he'll be next, flees to Thailand to lay low while reconnecting with Tommy's supplier in Pattaya. He meets the enchanting Yim and, veering from his intended plan, starts to rebuild his life running a chain of bars. Sonthi, a local heavy, offers protection for a price and the corrupt Mongkut ensures that the police ...

Author Stewart Gordon has fashioned a fascinating and unique look at Asia from AD 700 to 1500, a time when Asia was the world, by describing the personal journeys of Asia's many travelers - the merchants who traded spices along the Silk Road, the apothecaries who exchanged medicine and knowledge from China to the Middle East, and the philosophers and holy men who crossed continents to explore and exchange ideas, books, science, and culture.

Afghanistan traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the 16th century to the Taliban resurgence today. Thomas Barfield introduces listeners to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them.

Hi. This book has a new "Update After Covid" chapter that brings you up to speed so far. My name is Peter LeGrove, and I'm here to tell you my boots on the ground experience, about what it's like to get a job teaching English in Vietnam. I did it and it isn't easy, so I'll try to make it easier for you. Now I have spent most of my life travelling around the globe teaching English. From Mexico to Indonesia then onto China via Hong Kong. And the biggest change over the last few years, is how countries have tightened up on visas, and how long you can stay inside the country. Only a few years ...

Filled with unforgettable stories of emperors, generals, and religious patriarchs, as well as fascinating glimpses into the life of the ordinary citizen, Lost to the West reveals how much we owe to the Byzantine Empire that was the equal of any in its achievements, appetites, and enduring legacy. For more than a millennium, Byzantium reigned as the glittering seat of Christian civilization.

BESTSELLER travelogue mixes it up on the Asian Trail in a voice that's by turns personal, passionate and ohhhh so very soulful. "So I get up at dawn and marvel at fog burning off into mist tumbling down like the finest mosquito netting of silk. The hills beyond the rivers' confluence, like shoulders of a woman undressing, the way the misty shroud lifts off feminine curves, higher and higher ... I tingle all over, feeling there on Borneo the dream tug of Joseph Conrad's fiction, notably Lord Jim." By turns literarily pathbreaking and intimate, this smorgasbord of travel essays scales down ...

As most media outlets are reporting about COVID19 daily, even after we are twenty months into the pandemic, they are failing to report that what lead to the pandemic is more than three decades in the making and still haven't publicly stated that it was a bioterrorist attack by China. Regardless of where you think the origins of COVID19 are from, the fact remains that one of the biggest threats to world peace is East Asia's ethnocentrism, specifically China, and the male youth bulge that we are encountering in the region, in countries like China, as a result of multiple decades of committing...

Today, most Westerners still see the war in Afghanistan as a contest between democracy and Islamist fanaticism. That war is real, but it sits atop an older struggle between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan - a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam. Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out and to illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood.

Fourteen years after the publication of his landmark travel narrative Among the Believers, V.S. Naipaul returned to the four non-Arab Islamic countries he reported on so vividly at the time of Ayatollah Khomeini’s triumph in Iran. Beyond Belief is the result of his five-month journey in 1995 through lands where descendants of Muslim converts live at odds with indigenous traditions.

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.

Night Jasmine Tree, a Somerset award-winning contemporary novel, describes the hidden backstory of an Indian man’s immigration to the U.S. The high caste protagonist fell in love with a lower caste girl in college, but she was rejected by his very conservative family. They married, but deep emotional wounds continued to torment him even after they were well settled in the U.S. The past cannot be willed away. Later, the arresting stories of his childhood and youth he innocently tells his American grandchildren, reveal the silent torment and struggles that originated in India. These ...

Christmas has never been more complicated! Goldie Gill works in a recruiting firm in Toronto and has had it with his mother's single-minded desire to see him married off to a nice girl. Goldie has no wish to find himself a nice girl - he is perfectly happy living the life and hanging out with his cat, Billy. It takes a chance encounter with a dusky, doe-eyed, scatter-brained beauty, just before Christmas, for Goldie to seriously reconsider his plans. But then, he learns that his meeting with the girl isn't a happy coincidence - somebody has been meddling. What is the conspiracy and how is ...

Huge international companies and corporations are a normal part of our everyday lives today. For most, their unimaginable wealth and power, rivaling even some of the smaller countries of the world, is something we take for granted. And we see them as the living embodiment of the capitalist system, regardless if we take it as a good or a bad omen. However, this wasn’t always the case.

A period adventure book set in the East during the early 20th century."The Ship from China" chronicles the harrowing and transformative adventures of Grenville and Elaine, beginning with a journey that quickly turns perilous and evolves into a saga of survival, love, and redemption. Embark on a Thrilling JourneyThe story opens in London, where Sidney Grenville's friend, Fenton, persuades him to travel to China to accompany Fenton's fiancée, Elaine, back home. Despite harboring skepticism and cynicism over venturing on such a mission, Grenville accepts, hoping for some respite and adventure...