Category: Asian | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction
THE TOP 5 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019 'Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India - A book of beauty' Gerard DeGroot, The Times In August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to ...Show more
Category: Asian
The culmination of a lifetime's field work and research, William Lindesay selects fifty artefacts from around the world to tell the story of the Great Wall from the second century BC to the late-twentieth century. Abraham Ortelius' pioneering world atlas, the unexpected origins of 'wolf smoke', the prol ...Show more
Category: Asian | Series: Penguin Specials
An evocative account of the infamous nightlife district of pre-communist Beijing, from the internationally acclaimed author of the book Midnight in Peking. The Badlands, a warren of narrow hutongs in the eastern district of pre-communist Peking, had its heyday in the 1930s. Home to the city's drifters, ...Show more
Category: Asian
'The room was filled with a blinding light. She was paralysed by fear, fixed still in her chair for a long moment. Everything fell.'2015 is the 70th anniversary of Hiroshima, when, on 6 August at 8.15am, an atomic bomb was dropped, killing one hundred thousand men, women and children in its white fury. ...Show more
Category: Asian
"In the summer of 2009, the leader of the dreaded Tamil Tiger guerrillas was killed, bringing to a bloody end the stubborn and complicated civil war in Sri Lanka. For nearly thirty years, the war's fingers had reached everywhere: into the bustle of Colombo, the Buddhist monasteries scattered across the ...Show more
Category: Asian
Shanghai: a global city in the midst of a renaissance, where dreamers arrive each day to partake in a mad torrent of capital, ideas and opportunity. Rob Schmitz is one of them. He immerses himself in his neighbourhood, forging relationships with ordinary people who see a brighter future in the city's sl ...Show more
Category: Asian
In 1850, China was the "sick man of Asia." Now it is set to become the most powerful nation on earth. The Penguin History of Modern China shows how turbulent that journey has been. For 150 years China has endured as victim of oppression, war, and famine. This makes its current position as arguably the m ...Show more
Category: Asian
'This is the finest single-volume history of Vietnam in English. It challenges myths, and raises questions about the socialist republic's political future' Guardian 'Powerful and compelling. Vietnam will be of growing importance in the twenty-first-century world, particularly as China and the US rethink ...Show more
Category: Asian
From the bestselling author of Wild Swans and Mao- The Unknown Story In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Empress Dowager Cixi - the most important woman in Chinese history - brought a medieval empire into the modern age. Under her, the ancient country attained virtually a ...Show more
Category: Asian
The first Westerner to meet Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist leaders in 1936, Edgar Snow came away with the first authorised account of Mao's life, as well as a history of the famous Long March and the men and women who were responsible for the Chinese revolution. Out of that experience came Red S ...Show more
Category: Asian | Series: Tales
The city of Jakarta, today the capital of Indonesia, has had other incarnations and other names, most notably as the regional headquarters of the Dutch East Indies when it was known around the world as Batavia. As the capital of the Netherlands highly unlikely empire in the far east of Asia, Batavia was ...Show more
Category: Asian | Series: Cambridge Concise Histories
To this day, Japan's modern ascendancy challenges many assumptions about world history, particularly theories regarding the rise of the west and why the modern world looks the way it does. In this engaging new history, Brett L. Walker tackles key themes regarding Japan's relationships with its minoritie ...Show more
