A gorgeously illustrated ode to the beauty and significance of orchids—and to those fighting to save these unique plants across the globe.Until recently, a myriad of lifeforms enriched our lives. In some places, listening to a nighttime chorus of frogs in the neighborhood marsh was an archetypal touchstone of childhood. Children would search for tadpoles, just steps away from native Lady's Tresses orchids. Year by year, the chorus became quieter. Today, only a few ...

This inspirational book from Kew's orchid experts reveals the easiest, most attractive and most popular plants to grow today.Orchids come from the second largest plant family (with 28,000 members) and have a reputation for diversity and trickiness - but expert Philip Seaton chooses 60 of the best species to become permanent and happy members of your home.Through a combination of 12 projects and easy to follow practical advice he shows how t...

In the nineteenth century, as the Russian empire expanded eastwards and the Japanese empire expanded onto the Asian continent, the Russo-Japanese border became contested on and around the island of Sakhalin, its Russian name, or Karafuto, as it is known in Japanese. Then in the wake of the Second World War, Russia seized control of the island and the Japanese inhabitants were deported. Sakhalin’s history as a border zone makes it a lynchpin of Russo-Japanese relations, and as such it is a ...

Over the last 70 years, Japanese Studies scholarship has gone through several dominant paradigms, from ‘demystifying the Japanese’, to analysis of Japanese economic strength, to discussion of global interest in Japanese popular culture. This book assesses this literature, considering future directions for research into the 2020s and beyond.Shifting the geographical emphasis of Japanese Studies away from the West to the Asia-Pacific region, this book identifies topic areas in which ...

Contents tourism is tourism induced by the contents (narratives, characters, locations and other creative elements) of films, novels, games, manga, anime, television dramas and other forms of popular culture. Amidst the boom in global interest in Japanese popular culture, the utilization of popular culture to induce tourism domestically and internationally has been central to the "Cool Japan" strategy and, since 2005, government policy for local community revitalization. This book presents...

This is the first book to apply the concept of ‘contents tourism’ in a global context and to establish an international and interdisciplinary framework for contents tourism research. The term ‘contents tourism’ gained official recognition in Japan when it was defined by the Japanese government in 2005, and it has been characterised as ‘travel behaviour motivated fully or partially by narratives, characters, locations, and other creative elements of popular culture forms including film,...

This book examines the phenomenon of war-related contents tourism throughout Japanese history, from conflicts described in ancient Japanese myth through to contemporary depictions of fantasy and futuristic warfare.It tackles two crucial questions: first, how does war transition from being traumatic to entertaining in the public imagination and works of popular culture; and second, how does visitation to war-related sites transition from being an act of mourning or commemorative pil...

In his new book on China, Henry Kissinger turns for the first time at book-length to the country he has known intimately for decades, and whose modern relations with the West he helped shape. Drawing on historical records as well as his conversations with Chinese leaders over the past forty years, Kissinger examines how China has approached diplomacy, strategy, and negotiation throughout its history, and reflects on the consequences for the 21st-century world.As Kissinger underscor...

This major new biography of Mao uses extensive Russian documents previously unavailable to biographers to reveal surprising details about Mao’s rise to power and his leadership in China.Mao Zedong was one of the most important figures of the twentieth century, the most important in the history of modern China. A complex figure, he was champion of the poor and brutal tyrant, poet and despot.Pantsov and Levine show Mao’s relentless drive to succeed, vividly d...

A history of the Chinese experience in WWII, named a Book of the Year by both the Economist and the Financial Times: "Superb" ( The New York Times Book Review).In 1937, two years before Hitler invaded Poland, Chinese troops clashed with Japanese occupiers in the first battle of World War II. Joining with the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, China became the fourth great ally in a devastating struggle for its very surviv...

A groundbreaking chronicle of the violent early years of the People's Republic of China, by the author of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize–winning Mao's Great Famine.“The Chinese Communist party refers to its victory in 1949 as a 'liberation.' In China the story of liberation and the revolution that followed is not one of peace, liberty, and justice. It is first and foremost a story of calculated terror and systematic violence.” So begins Fran...

**The concluding volume--following Mao's Great Famine and The Tragedy of Liberation--in Frank Dikötter's award-winning trilogy chronicling the Communist revolution in China.After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958–1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution w...