This book examines relations between China and the Soviet Union during the 1950s, and provides an insight into Chinese thinking about the Korean War.This volume is based on a translation of Shen Zihua’s best-selling Chinese-language book, which broke the mainland Chinese taboo on publishing non-heroic accounts of the Korean War.The author combined information detailed in Soviet-era diplomatic documents (released after the collapse of the Soviet Union) with Chinese memoirs, official...

Master Sheng-yen, a dharma descendant from the founders of Buddhism in China, considers the concepts of suffering, enlightenment, and compassion; provides a glossary of key terms; and briefly recaps the history of Buddhism in China. But he goes beyond these issues to discuss contemporary matters and questions he has encountered in his years of teaching in the United States. Sometimes personal and always instructive, Sheng-yen's introductory work is perfect for those just coming to Buddhism...

Most of us are baffled.(a) There is practically no al-Qaeda in Afghanistan then why United States is not leaving the opium rich and strategically vital mountainous country in a hurry.(b) Al-Qaeda never attacks Israel though as champion of Islam you would think the Jewish nation ought to be its first target.(c) United States launched "War on Drugs" in 1971. It heralded "War on Terrorism" in 2001. US is no closer to winning these two wars. It is also no closer to quittin...

From 1885–1924, China underwent a period of acute political struggle and cultural change, brought on by a radical change in thought: after over 2,000 years of monarchical rule, the Chinese people stopped believing in the emperor. These forty years saw the collapse of Confucian political orthodoxy and the struggle among competing definitions of modern citizenship and the state. What made it possible to suddenly imagine a world without the emperor?After Empire traces the for...

In the post-Maoist era, China adopted a strategy for investing in the “quality” of its people—through education and training opportunities—that created talented labor. In her significant ethnographic study, Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China, Lisa Hoffman explains why the development of “human capital” is seen as fundamental for economic growth and national progress. She examines these new urban employees, who were deemed vital to the success of the global city in C...

In his five-plus years as president of the United States, Lyndon Johnson witnessed dramatic power struggles within and between the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and the United States of America. New Soviet leaders were determined to build Soviet power and extend Soviet influence. Mao's revolutionary ideology so dominated China that there were few levers to move Sino-American relations ahead. Johnson wanted to ease Cold War tensions by reaching a range of agreements with the...

The Lithuanians is a story of two brothers, Mikael a Roman Catholic priest, and Erik an officer in the Third Reich, and the extraordinary journey to find each other. It is also a love story between Mikael and Sophie a beautiful resistance fighter and Erik and Sara who find love on Half Way Island during the days of World War II and his commitment to find Sara after the war ended.As the war ends Sophie moves to England to begin a life without Mikael. She eventually marries a man muc...

This book is unique in its kind. It is the first scholarly work to attempt a comprehensive and fairly detailed look into the lingering legacies of the communist totalitarian modes of thought and expression in the new discourse forms of the post-totalitarian era. The book gives also new and interesting insights into the ways the new, presumably democratically-minded political elites in post-totalitarian Eastern Europe, Russia, and China manipulate language to serve their own political and e...

When people experience a traumatic event, such as war or the threat of annihilation, they often turn to history for stories that promise a positive outcome to their suffering. During World War II, the French took comfort in the story of Joan of Arc and her heroic efforts to rid France of foreign occupation. To bring the Joan narrative more into line with current circumstances, however, popular retellings modified the original story so that what people believed took place in the past was of...

Fortune Makers analyzes and brings to light the distinctive practices of business leaders who are the future of the Chinese economy. These leaders oversee not the old state-owned enterprises, but private companies that have had to invent their way forward out of the wreckage of an economy in tatters following the Cultural Revolution.Outside of brand names such as Alibaba and Lenovo, little is known, even by the Chinese themselves, about the people present at the creation o...

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians have confronted a major crisis of identity. Soviet ideology rested on a belief in historical progress, but the post-Soviet imagination has obsessed over territory. Indeed, geographical metaphors—whether axes of north vs. south or geopolitical images of center, periphery, and border—have become the signs of a different sense of self and the signposts of a new debate about Russian identity. In Russia on the Edge Edi...

A historical text about a fascinating period in Indian history, written for the keen amateur historian.