China Books - Page 5

Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Wartime SarajevoRevised Edition

Zlata Filipovic

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 78 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Great Book 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Sheesh...this is the product of a child, not the work of a Pulitzer prize winning journalist. It is an excellent diary, an excellent primary source and an excellent text for a better understanding of the Yugoslav wars. Yes...it does only tell one point of view - hers - it is her diary! Some readers are offended because of the comparison to Anne Frank; a comparison that Filipovic and others make in the book. The comparison is totally fair. Both are intelligent children caught up in situations they have no control over during wars of ethnic cleansing and extermination. It is a testament to Zlata that she can make the connection to Anne Frank...obviously the rest of the world couldn't. They (We) abandoned the Jews sixty years ago and abandoned hundreds of thousands of Croats/Bosniaks/Serbs to genocide forty years later. Zlata remembered Anne Frank's words...the world didn't.

Editorial Review:

When Zlata’s Diary was first published at the height of the Bosnian conflict, it became an international bestseller and was compared to The Diary of Anne Frank, both for the freshness of its voice and the grimness of the world it describes. It begins as the day-today record of the life of a typical eleven-year-old girl, preoccupied by piano lessons and birthday parties. But as war engulfs Sarajevo, Zlata Filipovi´c becomes a witness to food shortages and the deaths of friends and learns to wait out bombardments in a neighbor’s cellar. Yet throughout she remains courageous and observant. The result is a book that has the power to move and instruct readers a world away.

Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China

John Pomfret

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A first-hand account of the remarkable transformation of China over the past forty years as seen through the life of an award-winning journalist and his four Chinese classmates
As a twenty-year-old exchange student from Stanford University, John Pomfret spent a year at Nanjing University in China. His fellow classmates were among those who survived the twin tragedies of Mao’s rule—the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution—and whose success in government and private industry today are shaping China’s future. Pomfret went on to a career in journalism, spending the bulk of his time in China. After attending the twentieth reunion of his class, he decided to reacquaint himself with some of his classmates. Chinese Lessons is their story and his own.
Beginning with Pomfret’s first days in China, Chinese Lessons takes us back to the often torturous paths that brought together the Nanjing University History Class of 1982. One classmate’s father was killed during the Cultural Revolution for the crime of being an intellectual; another classmate labored in the fields for years rather than agree to a Party-arranged marriage; a third was forced to publicly denounce and humiliate her father. As we watch Pomfret and his classmates begin to make their lives as adults, we see as never before the human cost and triumph of China’s transition from near-feudal communism to first-world capitalism.

The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia

Frances Wood

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Silk Road, a series of ancient trade routes stretching across Central Asia to Europe, evokes exotic images of camel trains laden with bales of fine Chinese silk, spices, and perfume, of desert oases surrounded by snow-capped mountains, of bustling markets thronging with travellers buying and selling grapes, coriander, Baltic amber, and Mediterranean coral. Along this route, silks were sent from China to ancient Rome; princesses were dispatched in marriage alliances across the deserts; bandits and thieves launched attacks throughout history. Covering more than 5,000 years, this book, lavishly illustrated with photographs, manuscripts, and paintings from the collections of the British Library and other museums worldwide, presents an overall picture of the history and cultures of the Silk Road. It also contains many previously unpublished photographs by the great explorers Stein, Hedin, and Mannerheim. More than just a trade route, the Silk Road witnessed the movement of cultural influences. Frances Wood traces the story of the civilizations and ideas that flourished and moved along its vast geographical expanse. Indian Buddhism was carried into China on the Silk Road, initiating a long history of pilgrimages along the lonely desert routes; Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity, and Islam also made their way eastwards along its route. The nineteenth century saw a new interest in Central Asia and the Silk Road, as Russia and Britain vied for power on the frontiers of Afghanistan. A new breed of explorer, part archaeologist, part cartographer, part spy, was seen on the Silk Road, while some of the ancient cities, long buried in sand-blown dunes, began to give up their secrets. This book brings the history of the Silk Road alive--from its beginnings to the present day, revealing a rich history still in the making. Illustrations: 104 color illustrations, 31 b/w photographs, 2 maps

Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present

Peter Hessler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the acclaimed author of River Town comes a rare portrait, both intimate and epic, of twenty-first-century China as it opens its doors to the outside world.

A century ago, outsiders saw Chinaas a place where nothing ever changes. Today the coun-try has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. That sense of time—the contrast between past and present, and the rhythms that emerge in a vast, ever-evolving country—is brilliantly illuminated by Peter Hessler in Oracle Bones, a book that explores the human side of China's transformation.

Hessler tells the story of modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world as seen through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In addition to the author, an American writer living in Beijing, the narrative follows Polat, a member of a forgotten ethnic minority, who moves to the United States in searchof freedom; William Jefferson Foster, who grew up in an illiterate family and becomes a teacher; Emily,a migrant factory worker in a city without a past; and Chen Mengjia, a scholar of oracle-bone inscriptions, the earliest known writing in East Asia, and a man whosetragic story has been lost since the Cultural Revolution. All are migrants, emigrants, or wanderers who find themselves far from home, their lives dramatically changed by historical forces they are struggling to understand.

Peter Hessler excavates the past and puts a remarkable human face on the history he uncovers. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.

THIS KIND OF WAR (H)

T. R. Fehrenbach

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Superb History 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This is probably the best book on the Korean war ever written.

Mr. Fehrenbach was a teacher of history when the war broke out. He was also in the Army's reserve component. When his unit was mobilized, he went with it. He served throughout the war in positions that gave him excellent, first hand, experience.

When the war ended and his unit was demobilized, he went back to his civilian profession of teaching history. He also started writing this book.

While I was attending the Infantry Officer Advance Course (IOAC) in '79-80, ever general officer who came to address the assembled classes at, what we affectionately called, Benning School for Boys told us READ THIS BOOK. And they were RIGHT!

It covers the gamet of aspects relating to modern warfare from the perspective of the simple soldier to the generals to the national leaders. From the poigant anecdotes of paratroopers gone AWOL so they could get to the fighting, to the making of disasters, e.g., Task Force SMITH and the retreat of the 2d Infantry Division during the Chinese Intervention.

It is a MUST read for everyone who is a military officer and anyone who has an abiding interest in military history.

Regards,

Chuck Pelto

Editorial Review:

Updated with maps, photographs, and battlefield diagrams, this special fiftieth anniversary edition of the classic history of the Korean War is a dramatic and hard-hitting account of the conflict written from the perspective of those who fought it. Partly drawn from official records, operations journals, and histories, it is based largely on the compelling personal narratives of the small-unit commanders and their troops. Unlike any other work on the Korean War, it provides both a clear panoramic overview and a sharply drawn "you were there" account of American troops in fierce combat against the North Korean and Chinese communist invaders. As Americans and North Koreans continue to face each other across the 38th Parallel, This Kind of War commemorates the past and offers vital lessons for the future.

Tao of Love and Sex: The Ancient Chinese Way to Ecstasy

Jolan Chang

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Ok for introducing someone interested in the Tao 3 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

I found it ok to give the reader an idea of the Tao of love and sex on a physical level, but not much in regards to how the Tao can be used for a higher spiritual purpose. The book seems to entirely focus on how to keep a woman sexually satisfied and how a person practicing the Tao can have much better health and increase lifespan. The book doesn't give much information about from a womans perspective but mainly from a male perspective and how physically beneficial it is for men. The book makes the assumption that woman are not sexually satisfied unless they have lots of orgasms, and the focus for the male is to retain the seed and engage his partner is lustful sex. The book mentions the use of a locking method to help a male from ejaculating but doesn't give specifics on how to actually do it and how to practice it (unlike Mantak Chia - cultivating male sexual energy). I found Mantak Chia books better in showing how the Tao is used as a spiritual path and also lots of practices to buildup and maintain sexual energy and other practical topics such as external lock, internal lock, sacrum and cranial pumps, power lock, etc.

Look What Came from China (Look What Came from)

Miles Harvey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

This is everyone's history 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

As a teacher of history, one of the most important lessons I hope to convey to students is why the study of history is of such importance. One reason is, the study of history helps us to comprehend why we are the way we are. In other words, we must look to the past to understand why we eat what we eat, wear what we wear, and view the world as we do. This book admirably supports, with clear, concise prose and colorful illustrations, why the China's history is everyones' history. It is also great fun to read!

wonderful for children ! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

If your preschooler likes pictures, and you as the parent like educating, then this is a fun, educational book! I love to use it to teach my chinese daughter about her birth country!
Kay

Chinese inventions worth reading about 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This nonfiction book gives many interesting facts about things that come from or were invented in China. The book is well organized because there is a table of contents and the book is divided into sections. Along with a glossary, a resource page is also included, which lists other books and websites about China. The book is very educational, and the information presented is clear and direct. The photographs help capture the essence of China's great inventions. The most exciting thing included in the book is the Mandarin language, the official language of China, for some English words. The calligraphy is given first, and then a pronounciation key is provided. The one and only flaw in the book is the illustrations of ancient Chinese people making paper from pulp. The illustrations are vague, which makes it hard to understand the process it took to make paper. This is a great resource to have in any classroom library. Teachers can use this book to introduce a lesson about China. If students are doing research about China, they can use the book to learn valuable information.

Editorial Review:

Describes many things, both familiar and unfamiliar, that originally came from China, including inventions, food, tools, animals, toys, games, musical instruments, fashion, medicine, holidays, and sports.

Stilwell and the American experience in China, 1911-45

Barbara Wertheim Tuchman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Peanut Vinegar 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This is a remarkable book and well worth reading nearly four decades after its initial publication. Tuchman is a gifted author and her subject, "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, is an outrageous, memorable figure. Even readers with a limited familiarity with China or the Pacific theater during the Second World War will find "Stilwell and the American Experience in China" captivating.

Joe Stilwell was, to say the least, an unusual Army officer for his generation. He had a gift for languages and was drawn to career-limiting foreign assignments from the moment in he left West Point. He spoke fluent Spanish and French before he accepted a chance posting to China in his mid-thirties primarily because it offered the opportunity to get out of the country and learn a new language and culture. By the time the US entered the Second World War, Stilwell was the most highly rated Corps commander in the Army, but also had many years experience in China and spoke fluent Mandarin. Although George Marshall wanted him to command the first US ground campaign of the war - the TORCH landings in North Africa - Stilwell was sent to Asia because no one else was better qualified to serve in China, a region of great importance after the British were booted quickly out of Hong Kong, Singapore and the rest of East Asia by the Japanese.

The irony of this book is that Stilwell was at once the best-qualified officer in the US Army to serve in Asia in support of Chiang Kai Shek's KMT Army and also the worst possible choice because of his abrasive mien. On the one hand, no other senior officer had his command of the language, years in country, or understanding of the Chinese culture. On the other hand, no other senior officer was as tactless or boorish - two qualities that do not serve one well in Asia. For instance, Stilwell had the habit of assigning mocking and often cruel nicknames to his tormentors, real and perceived. Almost from the beginning, Chiang Kai Shek, his nominal superior in the China theater, was "Peanut" - an insulting moniker that Stilwell used rather openly and regularly and was well-known by the Generalissimo and his staff, an incredible affront to the Chinese sense of position and authority. Even more insulting and offensive was Stilwell's occasional reference to his polio-stricken command-in-chief as "Rubber legs."

Yet, Tuchman is clearly a fan of Stilwell's. She sees in him the same talent, passion and energy that led Secretary of War Stimson and Chief of Staff Marshall to put him in the role and steadfastly defend him in the face of repeated requests for his dismissal by scores of highly placed US, British and Chinese officials, whose number included FDR himself. But after reading "Stilwell" one cannot help but think that Stimson and Marshall made a mistake in sticking with Joe for so long.

"Stilwell" also reads like a case study in the perils and heartaches of coalition warfare. From the outset, the major allies in the CBI Theater - the US, British and Chinese - were fundamentally at odds over objectives and therefore completely out of sync on strategy. The British did not see the point in bothering with China at all and wanted only to regain their colonial possessions, Hong Kong and Singapore above all, and Burma only if convenient and if it could be done without mixing Chinese and Indian troops. Chiang Kai Shek, on the other hand, had little interest in ejecting the Japanese from China in a bloody, all-out racial war, but rather preferred to stockpile American supplies and allow the US Navy and nascent Air Forces to slowly erode the Japanese war machine. Meanwhile, the US was guided by FDR's dream of seeing China emerge as one of the world's great post-war powers, fully on the side of the United States and committed to democracy. Tuchman stresses repeatedly that the US public, and to a certain extent the US government, was greatly misled on the truth of the KMT regime. The missionary lobby and other important Chiang supporters, including high-level visitors that were successfully hoodwinked, such as defeated presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie, generated a flood of propaganda that gave the average American a wildly unrealistic and positive impression of the Chinese ally. Tuchman contends that Stilwell himself saw the balderdash written about the KMT as the primary culprit in the inability or unwillingness of Washington to change policy once it became clear that the continued support Chiang was a waste of resources and American prestige and position.

"Stilwell" succeeds on many levels and will likely remain in print and widely read for decades to come. It is a stellar blend of biography, military history, American foreign policy, US-China relations, and a case study in coalition warfare.

Editorial Review:

Barbara W. Tuchman won the Pulitzer Prize for Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 in 1972. She uses the life of Joseph Stilwell, the military attache to China in 1935-39 and commander of United States forces and allied chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek in 1942-44, to explore the history of China from the revolution of 1911 to the turmoil of World War II, when China's Nationalist government faced attack from Japanese invaders and Communist insurgents. Her story is an account of both American relations with China and the experiences of one of our men on the ground. In the cantankerous but level-headed "Vinegar Joe," Tuchman found a subject who allowed her to perform, in the words of The National Review, "one of the historian's most envied magic acts: conjoining a fine biography of a man with a fascinating epic story."

Sources of Chinese Tradition

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Ancient Chinese History: Vol. 1 5 out of 5 stars.
23 of 24 people found this review helpful.

This book is a collection of readings dealing with ancient Chinese history, especially focusing on philosophy and religion. The readings are organized into chapters related to various stages in Chinese history. Early chapters cover antiquity, Confucius, Mo Tzu, and Taoism. Then comes Confucian tradition, the Legalists, the Imperial Order, the Universal Order, and the Economic Order. This is followed by the Great Han Historians, Neo-Taoism, and Buddhism. This volume is rounded out with the Confucian revival and neo-Confucianism. Each chapter begins with a short introduction essay that introduces the context and events of the time and goes to a selection of original texts on the topic at hand. At the beginning of the book is a chronological table of Chinese history from 2852 BC to 1849 AD that highlights various events in Chinese political philosophy.

This book is a great resource for the serious student of Chinese philosophy and culture. The essays and readings provide a unique window into Chinese thought. The authors assume that the reader will have a basic familiarity with the overall picture of Chinese history, and provide many details and insights into why history took the course that it did. I found the reading selections, drawn from such documents as the Analects of Confucius or historical documents like Ma tuan-Lin's Introduction to the Survey on the Land Tax, particularly illuminating. To find so many documents such as these presented in English, together with essays that explain their context and importance, is invaluable for the serious Asian studies scholar.

Editorial Review:

-- Ying-shih Yü, Gordon Wu 1958 Professor of Chinese Studies

and professor of history, Princeton University

China: 3000 Years of Art and Literature

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A window into a world of extraordinary beauty and mystery, China: A Celebration in Art and Literature reveals the glorious 5,000-year-old history of this ancient and fascination culture. In 240 pages and more than 100 full-color images, this volume traces China through its tales and stories, plays and poetry, paintings and objects--from ancient divinations incised on bovine scapula to modern "people's literature" spawned from revolution; from Tang dynasty silk scrolls depicting sublime mountain valleys to government-commissioned propoganda posters. China incorporates text and images that are chornologically ordered in each of its eight thematic chapters:

Birth & Life
Nature & Environment
Love & Family
Mind & Memory
Food & Drink
War & Politics
Religion & Spirituality
Death & Afterlife

Among the literary selections included are the famous Book of Songs, the epic Dream of Red Towers, the complex dramatic masterpiece The Romance of the Western Chamber, and works from Confucious, Laozi, Du Fu, and Su Shi.

More than 100 works of art from the ancient to the contemporary, by artists including Gu Kaizhi, Wang Hui, Lam Qua, and Li Keran. The majority of the images will be from top Asian art collections in the US: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, in Kansas City, The De Young in San Francisco with the rest coming from Europe (the British Museum) and China.

The unique pairings of art and literature in China will enrapture as they reveal--this anthology will inevitably grip all who enter it, be they sophisticated appreciators or eager novices of China.