China has a vast written history that records the countless ways people have observed, transformed, and preserved their environments over the centuries. This sourcebook, the first ever to document China’s environmental history, presents translations of hundreds of texts spanning more than three thousand years, displaying the diversity of how humans have related to the world around them.China’s Environmental History features texts translated from Chinese and eight other lan...

1989, London.Julia Dylan is running a successful security consultancy. When an eccentric academic disappears on his quest to find Spanish gold, Julia is hired to find him.Her husband Thomas, is stuck in MI6 writing reports no one will ever read. When he’s suddenly sent to Turkey to find a consignment of hijacked Russian missiles, suspicions grow.Thomas and Julia find their paths leading to Madeira, it can’t be a coincidence. Someone is pulling their strings, but why...

A British spy is assassinated in Argentina. Can Tom Dylan find out why? Despite having failed disastrously in his first mission in Holland, Thomas Dylan is sent to Chicago to retrieve a stolen secret US Navy gadget, the Griffin Interrogator. This mission is a success until he is attacked and the gadget stolen again and Tom is sent to Brazil to retrieve it once more.It turns out that the whole mission is phoney and Thomas has been chasing a fake. Thomas finally realizes he is being used by ...

A multidisciplinary environmental history of early China’s political systems, featuring newly available Chinese archaeological dataThis book is a multidisciplinary study of the ecology of China’s early political systems up to the fall of the first empire in 207 BCE. Brian Lander traces the formation of lowland North China’s agricultural systems and the transformation of its plains from diverse forestland and steppes to farmland. He argues that the growth of states ...

Synthesizes multiple perspectives on Asian forests from early history to the near presentForests have histories that need to be told. This examination of wood and woodlands in East and Southeast Asia brings together case studies from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Sumatra to explore continuities in the history of forest management across these regions as well as the distinctive qualities of human-forest relations within each context. With a general introduction t...

A fresh, commanding, and thought-provoking narrative history of the competing Russian and American empires.The American road to empire started when the first English settlers landed in Virginia. Simultaneously, the first Russians crossed the Urals and the two empires that would dominate the twentieth century were born. Empires Apart covers the history of the Americans and Russians from the Vikings to the present day. It shows the two empires developed in parallel a...

Here is a fascinating compact history of Chinese political, economic, and cultural life, ranging from the origins of civilization in China to the beginning of the 21st century. Historian Paul Ropp combines vivid story-telling with astute analysis to shed light on some of the larger questions of Chinese history. What is distinctive about China in comparison with other civilizations? What have been the major changes and continuities in Chinese life over the past four millennia? Offering a gl...

“A wonderful job! So lucid, beautfully written, with greatrange and insight. This will set a new standard for shortgeneral histories of China.”—Michael Gasster,professor emeritus of history at Rutgers UniversityNewly updated and revised, China: Its History and Culture,Fourth Edition, incorporates the crucial social and economicchanges that have taken place in China over the last decade.Through rich detail and engaging illustrations, the book tracesChina’s ...

The eminent China scholar delivers a landmark study of Chinese culture's relationship to the natural environment across thousands of years of history.Spanning the three millennia for which there are written records, The Retreat of the Elephants is the first comprehensive environmental history of China. It is also a treasure trove of literary, political, aesthetic, scientific, and religious sources, which allow the reader direct access to the views and feeli...

As one of the oldest civilizations in the world, China has a vast, rich history. In order to assist with the study of Chinese history, this book has been broken down into a series of straightforward, easy-to-read vignettes.Inside you will read about...✓ The Great Flood✓ The Great Wall is begun✓ The Terra Cotta Army is created✓ Gunpowder is invented✓ Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution✓ Marco Polo travels to China✓ The Fo...

An internationally recognized authority on Chinese history and a leading innovator in its telling, Cho-yun Hsu constructs an original portrait of Chinese culture. Unlike most historians, Hsu resists centering his narrative on China's political evolution, focusing instead on the country's cultural sphere and its encounters with successive waves of globalization. Beginning long before China's written history and extending through the twentieth century, Hsu follows the content and expansion o...

In this volume, Mu-chou Poo offers a new overview of daily life in ancient China. Synthesizing a range of textual and archaeological materials, he brings a thematic approach to the topic that enables a multi-faceted understanding of the ideological, economical, legal, social, and emotional aspects of life in ancient China. The volume focuses on the Han period and examines key topics such as government organization and elite ideology, urban and country life, practical technology, leisure an...