Showing titles in Asia

Bloomsbury presents A War of Empires by Robert Lyman, read by Roger May. SHORTLISTED FOR THE RUSI DUKE OF WELLINGTON MEDAL FOR MILITARY HISTORY 2022 'This is a superb book.' – James Holland In 1941 and 1942 the British and Indian Armies were brutally defeated and Japan reigned supreme in its...

Lynda Van Devanter was the girl next door, the cheerleader who went to Catholic schools, enjoyed sports, and got along well with her four sisters and parents. After high school she attended nursing school and then did something that would shatter her secure world for the rest of her life: in 1969, she joined the army and was shipped to Vietnam. When she arrived in Vietnam her idealistic view of the war vanished quickly. She worked long hours in cramped, ill-equipped, understaffed operating rooms. She saw friends die.

The Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe.

On his second combat tour, Nick Brokhausen served in Recon Team Habu, CCN. This unit was part of MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group), or Studies and Observations Group as it was innocuously called. The small recon companies that were the center of its activities conducted some of the most dangerous missions of the war, infiltrating areas controlled by the North Vietnamese in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The companies never exceeded more than 30 Americans, yet they were the best source for the enemy's disposition.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The national security expert who predicted Putin’s invasion of Ukraine argues that Xi Jinping is preparing to conquer Taiwan—with dire global stakes if he is not deterred “An excellent source.” —Economist We are fully in the midst of Cold War II, this time with...

Three years ago, a Carnelian bead came into Catrine Jarman's temporary possession. River Kings sees her trace the path of this ancient piece of jewelry back to eighth-century Baghdad and India, discovering along the way that the Vikings' route was far more varied than we might think—that with them came people from the Middle East, and that the reason for this unexpected integration between the Eastern and Western worlds may well have been a slave trade running through the Silk Road, all the way to Britain.

At 9:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, an American bomber pierced the skies over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The single bomb it dropped unleashed an atomic hurricane that toppled homes, vaporized birds in flight, and carbonized humans. Three days later, a second bomb flattened the port city of...

The most authoritative life of Mao ever written, by the bestselling author of Wild Swans, Jung Chang and her husband, historian Jon Halliday. Based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked before, and with virtually everyone...

The Huáinánzǐ (淮南子) is one of the great synthetic works of early Daoism. It weaves together cosmology, statecraft, and self-cultivation into a vision of the Dào (道) as the formless, generative source of all order. It is also known under its full title Huáinán Hóngliè...

The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. Dr. Hachiya's compelling diary was originally published by the UNC Press in 1955, with the help of Dr. Warner Wells of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Brought to you by Penguin. A remarkable account of the terrible climax of the Second World War in Asia, published to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died in a final...

Central Asia is often seen as a remote and inaccessible land on the peripheries of modern history. Encompassing Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and the Xinjiang province of China, it in fact stands at the crossroads of world events. Adeeb Khalid provides the first comprehensive history of Central Asia from the mid-18th century to today, shedding light on the historical forces that have shaped the region under imperial and Communist rule.

A sweeping narrative history -- the first in over twenty years -- of America's first major offensive of World War II, the brutal, no-quarter-given campaign to take Japanese-occupied Guadalcanal From early August until mid-November of 1942, US Marines, sailors, and pilots struggled for dominance...

Long overshadowed by Japan and China, South Korea is a small country that happens to be one of the great national success stories of the postwar period. From a failed state with no democratic tradition, ruined and partitioned by war, and sapped by a half-century of colonial rule, South Korea transformed itself in just 50 years into an economic powerhouse and a democracy that serves as a model for other countries. With no natural resources and a tradition of authoritarian rule, Korea managed to accomplish a second Asian miracle.

Folk tales of the Shaolin Temple depict warrior monks with superhuman abilities. Today, dozens of East Asian fighting styles trace their roots back to the Buddhist brawlers of Shaolin, although any quest for the true story soon wanders into a labyrinth of forgeries, secret texts and modern retellings. This new study approaches the martial arts from their origins in military exercises and callisthenics. It examines a rich folklore from old wuxia tales of crime-fighting heroes to modern kung fu movies.

For nearly a century the two most powerful nations on earth, Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, fought a secret war in the lonely passes and deserts of Central Asia. Those engaged in this shadowy struggle called it 'The Great Game', a phrase immortalized by Kipling. When play first began the...

The Second World Wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. The Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory.  

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake large enough to knock the earth from its axis sent a massive tsunami speeding toward the Japanese coast and the aging and vulnerable Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactors. Over the following weeks, the world watched in horror as a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe: fail-safes failed, cooling systems shut down, nuclear rods melted.

In the years since the Vietnam War, the elite unit known as SOG has spawned many myths, legends, and war stories. Special Forces medic Joe Parnar served with SOG during 1968 in FOB2/CCC near the tri-border area that gave them access to the forbidden areas of Laos and Cambodia. Parnar recounts his time with the recon men of this highly classified unit, as his job involved a unique combination of soldiering and lifesaving.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Nominated for the National Book Award for Nonfiction From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap, the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to...