Sun Tzu’s Art of War has been read and appreciated by a host of military men and philosophers down through the ages. More recently, it has become popular as a manual for business success and guide to boardroom battles, seen by many as a lodestar in achieving success in the ruthless world of competitive capitalism – a text so currently fashionable that even Paris Hilton has been photographed reading it.Yet what makes the present study so valuable is not just...

The story of the 47 Ronin is perhaps the most popular and best known legend of traditional Japan. Set in the early 18th century, it tells a tale of honour and bloody revenge as the brotherhood of 47 masterless Samurai pursue the ruthless killing of Lord Kira, the official who brought about the downfall and suicide of their master, Lord Asano.This edition of the story is illustrated by the full set of masterful woodblock prints created by celebrated artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi in 1838-...

The antique Silk Road that connected the Chinese and Mediterranean Worlds for more than a millennium, facilitating the exchange of both goods and cultures, is widely known and celebrated. Less familiar is its more southerly equivalent, the ‘Ancient Tea-Horse Road’ that once linked the lush gardens of southwest China with the frigid wastelands of Tibet and – beyond – the torrid plains of northern India. The latter is also sometimes called the ‘Southern Silk Road’, though this is something o...

For much of the second half of the 20th century Cambodia was racked by war and famine. Considered a sideshow in the Vietnam War, the country was nevertheless invaded by both North and South Vietnam, bombed to smithereens by the United States, and—worst of all—ruled, between 1975 and 1979, by Pol Pot’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.Things were so bad that the very name Cambodia became synonymous with pain and suffering. Yet it was not always so. Before its rice fields were stained wi...

The story of the 47 Ronin is perhaps the most popular and best known legend of traditional Japan. Set in the early 18th century, it tells a tale of honour and bloody revenge as the brotherhood of 47 masterless Samurai pursue the ruthless killing of Lord Kira, the official who brought about the downfall and suicide of their master, Lord Asano.This edition of the story is illustrated by the full set of colourful woodblock prints created by master artist Tsukioka Yoshitoshi in 1869, i...

Bardo Thodol or 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead' is a mystical funerary text rooted in the Tibetan Tantric and Vajrayana Buddhist teachings. Composed by the guru and sage Padmasamhava in the 8th century, the Bardo Thodol is recited by a Buddhist lama over a dying or recently deceased person as a spiritual guide to the process of death and that which follows.This illustrated version combines the English language text by Walter Evans-Wentz with a unique collection of 80 pictures relati...

The Book of Kells is a magnificently illuminated manuscript Gospel in Vulgate Latin containing the four Gospels of the New Testament - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - together with various prefatory texts and tables. It was created by Celtic monks on the small Island of Iona off the coast of western Scotland in about 800 CE. The text is mainly in Vulgate Latin dating from the 4th century CE, though there are passages in Vetus Latin or ‘Old Latin’ that predate the Vulgate Bible....

There can be few people in the world that do not know the name, location and recent history of Vietnam. Yet beyond the period of US involvement in what Americans call the 'Vietnam War' how much is really known?Almost no Vietnamese bear a grudge against the USA, but this is less true for China, Vietnam's close neighbor, mentor and rival for more than two thousand years.Vietnamese like to name their streets after what they consider to have been ‘acts of foreign aggression’, a...

Suzuki Harunobu was a celebrated 18th century Japanese ukiyo-e artist who produced thousands of exquisite woodblock prints illustrating aspects of life and society in old Edo - today's Tokyo.His subjects extended from Kabuki actors and courtesans to landscapes, explicit eroticism and street scenes. Yet the subject at which he most excelled was bijin-ga or paintings of beautiful women.This book examines Harunobu's life and times and artistic achievements, as well as...

During the latter half of the twentieth century the little-known and often lawless region where Laos, Burma, Thailand and China meet has become known and widely romanticised as ‘The Golden Triangle’. Originally a Western designation applied to the region because of its wealth in jade, silver, rubies, lumber, rare animal products and, above all, opium, the name has stuck and is today accepted both in Chinese and in Thai.By reputation, by very definition, the area is off the beaten t...

The Tao Te Ching or ‘Canon of the Way of Virtue' is a classical Chinese text generally dated to the 6th century BCE. It has traditionally been attributed to Laozi (or Lao Tzu), the ‘Old Master', said to have been a scribe at the court of the Zhou Dynasty.The Tao Te Ching, is central to both religious and philosophical Taoism, and represents a central tenet of the san jiao or ‘Three Teachi...

Utagawa Hiroshige’s ‘One Hundred Famous Views of Edo’, actually composed of 118 woodblock landscape and genre scenes of mid-19th century Tokyo, is one of the greatest achievements of Japanese art. The series, which includes many of Hiroshige’s most famous prints, represents a celebration of the style and world of Japan’s finest cultural flowering at the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate.Hiroshige was nothing if not prolific, creating more than 8,000 art works in the course of his life,...