The downfall of Bo Xilai in China was more than a darkly thrilling mystery. It revealed a cataclysmic internal power struggle between Communist Party factions, one that reached all the way to China's new president Xi Jinping.The scandalous story of the corruption of the Bo Xilai family -- the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood; Bo's secret lovers; the secret maneuverings of Bo's supporters; the hasty trial and sentencing of Gu Kailai, Bo's wife -- was just the first rumble ...

"A masterful depiction of the party today. . . . McGregor illuminates the most important of the contradictions and paradoxes. . . . An entertaining and insightful portrait of China's secretive rulers." —The Economist"Few outsiders have any realistic sense of the innards, motives, rivalries, and fears of the Chinese Communist leadership. But we all know much more than before, thanks to Richard McGregor's illuminating and richly-textured look at the ...

“A meaty, fast-paced portrait of North Korean society, economy, politics and foreign policy.” -Foreign AffairsThe definitive account of North Korea, its veiled past and uncertain future, from the former Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security CouncilIn The Impossible State, seasoned international-policy expert and lauded scholar Victor Cha pulls back the curtain on this controversial and isolated country, providing the ...

From an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post and one of the leading China correspondents of his generation comes an eloquent and vivid chronicle of the world's most successful authoritarian state -- a nation undergoing a remarkable transformation.Philip P. Pan's groundbreaking book takes us inside the dramatic battle for China's soul and into the lives of individuals struggling to come to terms with their nation's past -- the turmoil and trauma of Mao's rule --...

****Named one of the best books of 2015 by The Economist**Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors.**North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every perso...

North Korea continues to make headlines, arousing curiosity and fear in equal measure. The world's most secretive nuclear power, it still has Gulag-style prison camps, allows no access to the Internet and bans its people from talking to foreigners without official approval. In this remarkable and eye-opening book, internationally best-selling author Paul French examines in forensic detail the history and politics of North Korea, Pyongyang's complex relations with South Korea, Japan, China ...

"Chungking Mansions is a microcosm of globalization . . . Anyone who seeks insights into the soft underbelly of global capitalism should read this book." —James L. Watson, coauthor of Village Life in Hong KongThere is nowhere else in the world quite like Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong's tourist district. A remarkably motley group of people call the building ...

The Chinese economic miracle is happening despite, not because of, China's 900 million peasants. They are missing from the portraits of booming Shanghai, or Beijing. Many of China's underclass live under a feudalistic system unchanged since the fifteenth century. They are truly the voiceless in modern China. They are also, perhaps, the reason that China will not be able to make the great social and economic leap forward, because if it is to leap it must carry the 900 million with it. Chine...

Western Balkans, and specifically Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, are lagging significantly on the path to EU integration. Even twenty years after the conflict, these countries are burdened by ethnic and post conflict issues which hinder their progress on the path to EU integration.There is no alternative to this path, and it is one of the primary generators of reforms in the region.The most important parts of the reform which must be implemented are the fight agai...

Just a few decades ago, the South Koreans were an impoverished, agricultural people. In one generation they moved from the fields to Silicon Valley. They accomplished this through three totally unexpected miracles: economic development, democratization, and the arrival of their culture to global attention.Who are the Koreans? What are they like? The New Koreans examines how they have been perceived by outsiders, the features that color their "national character," and how th...

When Deng Xiaoping launched China on the path to economic reform in the late 1970s, he vowed to build “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” More than three decades later, China’s efforts to modernize have yielded something very different from the working people’s paradise Deng envisioned: an incipient kleptocracy, characterized by endemic corruption, soaring income inequality, and growing social tensions. China’s Crony Capitalism traces the origins of China’s present-day troub...

The definitive book on China's uneasy transformation into an economic and political superpower, and an insightful and thought-provoking analysis of daily life in China from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists and bestselling authors of Half a Sky."Nick Kristof's and Sheryl WuDunn's work as correspondents in China was beyond compare, and now they have written a book every bit as astonishing. China Wakes is filled with anecdote, ...