In The Meaning of Internationalization, Edwin O. Reischauer—former American Ambassador to Japan and one of the world's most acclaimed scholars of Japanese life and culture—delivers a heartfelt message to the Japanese people on the need to look beyond their borders at the changing nature of the world. Reischauer stresses the need to adapt in order to survive these changes and thrive in the new reality that our ever-shrinking world is bringing about.While directed at the peo...

In this major revision of his classic history of Japan—from the tribally divided state under the leadership of Yamato in the fifth century through centuries of dynastic rule to the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989—the eminent Harvard historian and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer incorporates nearly a decade's worth of new scholarship.His book is divided into three parts: the first part examines traditional Japan from the early Chinese influences to the flowerin...

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsmanMiyamoto Musashi was the child of an era when Japan was emerging from decades of civil strife. Lured to the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 by the hope of becoming a samurai—without really knowing what it meant—he regains consciousness after the battle to find himself lying defeated, dazed, and wounded among thousands of the dead and dying. On his way home, he commits a rash act, becomes a fugitive, an...

The companion volume to the multimillion-copy bestseller No Easy Day by former Navy SEAL Mark Owen reveals the evolution of a SEAL Team Six operator.Mark Owen’s instant #1 New York Times bestseller, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden, focused on the high-profile targets and headline-grabbing chapters of the author’s thirteen years as a Navy SEAL. His follow-up, No Hero, is an ac...

The brilliant conclusion to the Palliser novels, this touching story follows the elderly Duke of Omnium, the former prime minister of England, as he struggles to overcome his grief at the loss of his beloved wife, Lady Glencora. To complicate matters, he must also deal with the willfulness of his three adult children as he tries to guide and support them—his plans for them are quite different from their own.While his two sons, sent down from university in disgrace, rack up gambling...

New in the Short History of Asia series, edited by Milton Osborne, this is a comprehensive, readable history of the land of the Rising Sun, from its ancient origins to its fascinating present.Japan is a country of contradictions and extremes. It is a country of age-old practices and cutting edge technology, strong martial traditions and refined artistic accomplishments. Few countries have been the subject of so much attention yet remain so elusive....

As the rest of the world worries about what a future might look like under Chinese supremacy, Edward Luttwak worries about China’s own future prospects. Applying the logic of strategy for which he is well known, Luttwak argues that the most populous nation on Earth—and its second largest economy—may be headed for a fall.For any country whose rising strength cannot go unnoticed, the universal logic of strategy allows only military or economic growth. But China is pursuing both goals...

John Paul Lederach's work in the field of conciliation and mediation is internationally recognized. As founding Director of the Conflict Transformation Program and Institute of Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, he has provided consultation and direct mediation in a range of situations from the Miskito/Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua to Somalia, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, and the Philippines. His influential 1997 book Building Peace has become a classic in ...

No one wishes for China to collapse, writes New York Times bestselling author and Mao biographer Ross Terrill. But some setbacks should be welcomed by the West.

Emphasising human-scale, local, sustainable alternatives to globalised industry, Sulak Sivaraksa offers a way to restructure our economy on Buddhist principles and on a basis that will promote personal development.Based on decades of thought and writing Sivaraksa outlines how measuring economic success by GDP (Gross Domestic Product) could be replaced by GNH (Gross National Happiness). It examines globalisation from a Buddhist perspective, arguing that healing the planet starts by creating...

Scientific evidence has made it abundantly clear that the world's population can no longer continue its present rate of consuming and despoiling the planet's limited natural resources. Scholars, activists, politicians, and citizens worldwide are promoting the idea of sustainability, or systems and practices of living that allow a community to maintain itself indefinitely. Despite increased interest in sustainability, its popularity alone is insufficient to shift our culture and society tow...

The human race is facing an existential crisis in the form of climate change, yet most of humanity---even if it believes in global warming---seems incapable of making the lifestyle changes necessary to prevent the worst from taking place. _Walking the Talk_ argues that this is because the traditional methods of mobilizing the public to deal with existential threats---faith and duty---have become totally debased in the minds of most people. For the majority, all that has been left is the fl...