John Leighton Stuart, who was born and brought up in Hangchow, China, where both his father and mother were leading missionaries, tells us that in his boyhood he always had “an aversion for missionary life.” Even after his graduation from Hampden-Sydney College, he still confessed his “lack of enthusiasm for missionary service.” It is difficult to exaggerate the aversion I had developed against going to China as a missionary, . . . haranguing crowds of idle, curious people in street chapel...

A BRACING ACCOUNT OF A WAR THAT IS EITHER MISUNDERSTOOD, FORGOTTEN, OR WILLFULLY IGNORED.For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953. But for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long struggle that still haunts contemporary events. With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Bruce Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought. He describe...

A New York Times Notable Book of the YearA passionate and insightful account by a leading historian of Haiti that traces the sources of the country's devastating present back to its turbulent and traumatic history.Even before the devastating 2010 earthquake, Haiti was known as a benighted place of poverty and corruption, blamed by many for its own wretchedness. But as acclaimed historian Laurent Dubois demonstrates, Haiti's trouble...

"If the story of the Soong family were told as fiction, people would say it was fascinating but too improbable. . . . A dramatic human chronicle . . . engrossing." — The New York Times Book ReviewIn the early twentieth century, few women in China were to prove so important to the rise of Chinese nationalism and liberation from tradition as the three extraordinary Soong sisters—Eling, Chingling and Mayling—who would each marry historic figures. Told with wi...

Originally published in 1939, this is both a far-reaching history and an eyewitness account of the communist revolution in China. Contains a number of excellent historical photographs. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include : In Search of Red...

"Passionate, cantankerous, and fascinating. Rather like Korea itself."--Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times Book ReviewKorea has endured a "fractured, shattered twentieth century," and this updated edition brings Bruce Cumings's leading history of the modern era into the present. The small country, overshadowed in the imperial era, crammed against great powers during the Cold War, and divided and decimated by the Korean War, has recently seen the first real hints of reunif...

One of greatest achievements book is that Dr. Sun Yat-sen was able to find a living synthesis between the ancient and the modern, between the East and the West, and combining them together to make China a modern country.

As the twenty-first century dawns, China stands at a crossroads. The largest and most populous country on earth and currently the world's second biggest economy, China has recently reclaimed its historic place at the center of global affairs after decades of internal chaos and disastrous foreign relations. But even as China tentatively reengages with the outside world, the contradictions of its development risks pushing it back into an era of insularity and instability -- a regression that...

From one of our leading experts on foreign policy, a full-scale reinterpretation of America’s dealings—from its earliest days—with the rest of the world.It is Walter Russell Mead’s thesis that the United States, by any standard, has had a more successful foreign policy than any of the other great powers that we have faced—and faced down. Beginning as an isolated string of settlements at the edge of the known world, this country—in two centuries—drove the French and the Spanish out ...

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: A Captivating Chronicle of the Complex Relationship Between the United States and ChinaFrom clipper ships swapping American ginseng for Chinese tea to warships facing off in the South China Sea, from Yankee missionaries bringing Christianity and education to Chinese laborers building the American West, the United States and China have long been dramatically intertwined. For over two centuries, statesmen, mercha...

Russia is famous for its vodka, and its culture of extreme intoxication. But just as vodka is central to the lives of many Russians, it is also central to understanding Russian history and politics. In Vodka Politics, Mark Lawrence Schrad argues that debilitating societal alcoholism is not hard-wired into Russians' genetic code, but rather their autocratic political system, which has long wielded vodka as a tool of statecraft. Through a series of historical investigations stretchi...

The first biography of one of the most controversial and fascinating women of the twentieth century.Beautiful, brilliant, and captivating, Madame Chiang Kai-shek seized unprecedented power during China's long and violent civil war. She passionately argued against Chinese Communism in the international arena and influenced decades of Sino-American relations and modern Chinese history. Raised in one of China's most powerful families and educated at Wellesley College,...