Through biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities, John Wills displays the five-thousand-year sweep of Chinese history from the legendary sage emperors to the tragedy of Tiananmen Square. This unique introduction to Chinese history and culture uses more than twenty exemplary lives--biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities--including those of statesmen, philosophers, poets, and rulers, to provide the focus for accounts of key historical trends and pe...

"A totally absorbing book…imaginative and erudite, full of startling juxtapositions and flashes of real perception." —Jonathan D. SpenceJohn E. Wills's masterful history ushers us into the worlds of 1688, from the suicidal exaltation of Russian Old Believers to the ravishing voice of the haiku poet Basho. Witness the splendor of the Chinese imperial court as the Kangxi emperor publicly mourns the death of his grandmother and shrewdly consolidates his power. Join th...

In The World from 1450 to 1700, historian John Wills takes a fresh look at one of the most fascinating and tumultuous periods in world history. Assuming a global perspective, rather than the traditional Eurocentric view, Wills traces the interwoven changes that led from the world of Columbus, Luther, and the Mughal emperor Babur to the world of Locke, Louis XIV, and the Kangxi emperor. The book's multi-centered approach explores historical events not in isolation but rather in a dynamic ...

Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai traces the roots of modern global East Asia by focusing on the fascinating history of its seaways. The East Asian maritime realm, from the Straits of Malacca to the Sea of Japan, has been a core region of international trade for millennia, but during the long seventeenth century (1550 to 1700), the velocity and scale of commerce increased dramatically. Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese smugglers and pirates forged autonomous networks and maritime po...

In The World from 1450 to 1700, historian John Wills takes a fresh look at one of the most fascinating and tumultuous periods in world history. Assuming a global perspective, rather than the traditional Eurocentric view, Wills traces the interwoven changes that led from the world of Columbus, Luther, and the Mughal emperor Babur to the world of Locke, Louis XIV, and the Kangxi emperor. The book's multi-centered approach explores historical events not in isolation but rather in a d...

China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800 looks at early modern China in some of its most complicated and intriguing relations with a world of increasing global interconnection. New World silver, Chinese tea, Jesuit astronomers at the Chinese court, and merchants and marauders of all kinds play important roles here. Although pieces of these stories have been told before, these chapters provide the fullest and clearest available summaries, based on sources in Chinese and in European languages, m...

In recent times, the Asia-Pacific region has far surpassed Europe in terms of reciprocal trade with the United States, and since the 1980s immigrants from Asia entering the United States have exceeded their counterparts from Europe, reversing a longstanding historical trend and making Asian Americans the country’s fastest growing racial group. What does transpacific history look like if the arc of the story is extended to the present?The essays in this volume offer answers to this ...

Three NHL hockey players. One second chance. And a PR nightmare.Word to the wise, never go on a road trip with the men who you've fallen hard for. Especially when they'll lose everything if they don't win the season. Doubly, when you're the coach's daughter.Why did I? Because I'm their live-in PR.I'm also madly in love with these men who have bodies like gods. And they're obsessed with me.The tall, dark, and grumpy captain. The star forward ...

Rooming with three members of the same hockey team as their live-in PR Director could be a nightmare. But when they offer to fulfill my fantasies? Sign me up.The captain, D'Angelo, is my perfect man. Best friend, protector, and so hot it should be illegal, he's been obsessively in love with me since college. Shay has a rock star swagger and winter-gray eyes that are enough to make me melt. Sweet, intense, and tattooed, Shay's twin, Eden, is the heart of my new foun...

I'm the coach's daughter and I'm in love with a gorgeous NHL player… well, three players.Now, I'm PR Director to a whole team of ice hockey rebels. My hardest job? To manage three beautiful misfits.The captain, D'Angelo, is intimidatingly hot, grumpy, and my first love from college.The star player, Shay, has a smile like sunshine, mesmerizing gray eyes, and a body that makes my breath catch. Plus, he has a twin, the sweetly protective, tattooed Eden...

My ex-husband broke my heart, but what happens when three of his rival teammates want to put it back together?As the coach's daughter, a forbidden romance with a gorgeous hockey stud wasn't on my to-do list when I ran back to my small hometown. But now, I have three. And they're not afraid to go after what they want… me.I'm falling just as hard. D'Angelo is the cocky but charming captain with jaw-dropping good looks and piercing blue eyes. He's been my best...

This short but timely work gives the listener a sense of the urgency of African and world history at this moment in time.... Like many of the African-centered scholars who were Dr. Clarke's teachers and his sources of inspiration, he not only gives you accurate analysis and the descriptions of history, he provides prescription of what Africans have to do to bring into being a new day.