When Vincent van Gogh died at the age of thirty-seven, he left a legacy of over two thousand artworks, for which he is now justly famous. But van Gogh was also a prodigious writer of letters—more than eight hundred of them, addressed to his parents, to friends such as Paul Gauguin, and, above all, to his brother Theo. His letters have long been admired for their exceptional literary quality, and art historians have sometimes drawn on the letters in their analysis of the paintings.

Though completely unappreciated during his lifetime, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is one of the most recognizable names in the art world today. Though it would make sense that Van Gogh's life would be greatly undocumented, this is not the case. "The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh" is a collection of the correspondences between Van Gogh and his brother, Theo, that gives an incredibly enthralling look into the life of this genius. Tormented by loss of religious faith, poverty, and lack of succe...

'The Last Heavenly King' is the first part of Triptych of Times, a trilogy spanning a period of more than 260 years, in which members of the Persoon-Hong family migrate from China to the Guianas, from the Guianas to the Netherlands and from the North Atlantic region to Namibia. The second part is Waiting Can Wait, a (near-)contemporary novella which is both playfully tragicomic and philosophically serious, and the third part Legends of the Future, a novella of ideas 'written by Sondaha Per...

Have your circumstances made you think of your life as a maze of unending challenges? Have you all of a sudden become a lot more worried than you usually are or should be? Knowing how you feel, this can greatly undermine the quality of your life, making you live a life that is a shadow of where you ought to be.We all worry because, as humans, we have a clear-cut idea of how we want things to be. When things do not go the way we expect, we turn to worry even after trying to fix thin...

Susanna Gregory, author of the Matthew Bartholomew series of medieval mysteries, has created another compelling fictional detective set in Restoration London.--------------------------------------------The first adventure in the Thomas Chaloner series.The dour days of Cromwell are over.Charles II is well established at White Hall Palace, his mistress at hand in rooms over the Holbein bridge, the heads of some of the regicide...

In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"—Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country.No cloistered don, this tall, married...

An "absorbing and fast-moving" saga of Korea as experienced by one unforgettable family, from the Nobel Prize–winning author ( The New York Times )."The year was 4214 after Tangun of Korea, and 1881 after Jesus of Judea." So begins Pulitzer Prize–winning author Pearl S. Buck's The Living Reed, an epic historical novel seen through the eyes of four generations of Korean aristocracy.As the chronicle begins,...

‘A gripping read as well as an important one’ – Rana Mitter, The GuardianIn The Opium War, professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature Julia Lovell offers a compelling account of the causes and fallout of the Opium Wars.In October 1839, Britain entered the first Opium War with China. Its brutality notwithstanding, the conflict was also threaded with tragicomedy: with Victorian hypocrisy, bureaucratic fumbli...

This book tells the fascinating story of the war between England and China that delivered Hong Kong to the English, forced the imperial Chinese government to add four ports to Canton as places in which foreigners could live and trade, and rendered irreversible the process that for almost a century thereafter distinguished western relations with this quarter of the globe—the process that is loosely termed the "opening of China." Originally published by UNC Press in 1975, Pe...

In its last days under British rule, the Crown Colony of Hong Kong is the world's most exciting city, at once fascinating and exasperating, a tangle of contradictions. It is a dazzling amalgam of conspicuous consumption and primitive poverty, the most architecturally incongruous yet undeniably beautiful urban panorama of all. World-renowned travel writer Jan Morris offers the most insightful and comprehensive study of the enigma of Hong Kong thus far.

China's Great Wall north of Beijing is one of the world's most famous sights. Millions every year climb the line of stone snaking over mountains. We all feel we know the Wall. But we are wrong. It is too big, too varied, too complex to be captured by a few images or a day-trip.Myths surround it. Many believe that the stone barrier marches across all China, that it has been in existence for over 2,000 years, and that it is the only man-made structure visible from the Moon. In fact, ...

Imagine that you found 'dragon bones' once used to predict the future, or wrote a poem in the Book of Songs, or uncovered the terracotta army guarding the tomb of the First Emperor. Read more about life in this fascinating culture in this pocket-sized introduction.