This book tells the story of the tragic and often tormented relationship between the United States and Pakistan. Pakistan's internal troubles have already threatened US security and international peace, and Pakistan's rapidly growing population, nuclear arsenal, and relationships with China and India will continue to force it upon America's geostrategic map in new and important ways over the coming decades. This book explores the main trends in Pakistani society that will help determine it...

This Independent Task Force report assesses U.S. objectives, strategy, and policy options in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It supports a long-term partnership with Pakistan, calls for a new approach to Afghan political reform, reconciliation, and regional diplomacy, and says that a more limited U.S. mission in Afghanistan would be warranted if the present strategy does not show signs of progress.

China's Silent Army is a revealing and gripping piece of investigative journalism into the unknown extent of China's global power, from China-based reporters Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto AraújoThis book stems from the remarkable, determined work of these two China-based journalists who, frustrated by the facile, pro-business commentary of so much writing on China and the evasions of Beijing's official pronouncements, took a drastic decision: to see fo...

With Bin Laden dead, Pakistan threatened by internal power struggles, relationships between the United States and Pakistan at an all-time low, and as the US and Britain begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan, what are the possibilities-and hazards-facing the world's most unstable region? Where is the Taliban now, and how do they figure in the future of Pakistan as well as Afghanistan? What does the immediate future hold, and what are the choices that Pakistan, Afghanistan and the West can...

In this scintillating book, Ian Buruma peels away the myths that surround Japanese culture. With piercing analysis of cinema, theatre, television, art and legend, he shows the Japanese both 'as they imagine themselves to be, and as they would like themselves to be.'A Japanese Mirror examines samurai and gangsters, transvestites and goddesses to paint an eloquent picture of life in Japan. This is a country long shrouded in enigma and in his compelling book, Buruma reveals a...

China is huge. China is growing more powerful. Yet China remains a great mystery to most people in the West. This contemporary history, based on the latest scholarly research, offers a balanced perspective of the continuing legacy of Maoism in the lives not only of China's leaders but China's working people. It outlines the ambitious economic reforms taken since the 1980s and shows the complex responses to the consequences of reform in China today.Cheek shows the domestic concerns ...

Blending fine-grained case studies with overarching theory, this book seeks both to integrate Southeast Asia into world history and to rethink much of Eurasia's premodern past. It argues that Southeast Asia, Europe, Japan, China, and South Asia all embodied idiosyncratic versions of a Eurasian-wide pattern whereby local isolates cohered to form ever larger, more stable, more complex political and cultural systems. With accelerating force, climatic, commercial, and military stimuli joined t...

In Everest Untold Conroy relives the tragedies by sharing notes from his personal diary as well as audio transcripts of the radio interviews and radio transmissions between the climbers trapped and lost on the mountain. Some of these critical radio conversations have never been revealed before and Conroy provides a link to the actual recordings.Conroy’s memoir sheds new light on the infamous climbing season that year, including the deaths of eight climbers in a high-altitude snow storm and...

COMFORT WOMEN NOT SEX-SLAVES Presents an alternative view about Comfort Women to the prevailing one in the United States, but is well established among intellectuals in Japan. This is a story of misconception which took place with evil intention of a few persons, but spread widely in the world as a wild fire. One promoter was Asahi Newspaper, hither-to highly respected national newspaper of Japan, but which confessed its mistakes in the summer of 2014. This was a significant momentum in ch...

Unique in any Western language, this is an invaluable resource for the study of one of the world's great theatrical forms. It includes essays by established experts on Kabuki as well as younger scholars now entering the field, and provides a comprehensive survey of the history of Kabuki; how it is written, produced, staged, and performed; and its place in world theater. Compiled by the editor of the influential Asian Theater Journal, the book covers four essential areas - history, performa...

The pilgrimage to Mecca, or Hajj, has been a yearly phenomenon of great importance in Muslim lands for well over one thousand years. Each year, millions of pilgrims from throughout the Dar al-Islam, or Islamic world, stretching from Morocco east to Indonesia, make the trip to Mecca as one of the five pillars of their faith. By the end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth, fully half of all pilgrims making the journey in any given year could come from Southeast Asia...

A revisionist study of the career of General He Yingqin, one of the most prominent military officers in China's Nationalist period (1928–49) and one of the most misunderstood figures in twentieth-century China. Western scholars have dismissed He Yingqin as corrupt and incompetent, yet the Chinese archives reveal that he demonstrated considerable success as a combat commander and military administrator during civil conflicts and the Sino-Japanese War. His work in the Chinese Nationalist mil...