From the author of Tokyo Junkie, "the definitive book on Japanese baseball and one of the best-written sports books ever" ( San Francisco Chronicle).One might expect the sport of baseball in Japan to be a culture clash—a collision of American individualism with the Japanese focus on wa, or harmony. Instead, it has turned into a winning symbiosis. Imported American sluggers—some past their primes—have found new life in the East and have gi...

"Bob Whiting came to the city as a stranger in a strange land in 1962 and stayed for five decades—he knows the dark alleys, the good whisky bars, the crooked politicians and the crooks, the baseball players, the bookies…better than anyone alive." —Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo ViceCritically acclaimed author and longtime Japan resident Robert Whiting turns his attention to the fascinating stories of foreigners who made waves and achieved notoriety in pos...

Beautiful and conceited Alicia Matcham leads us through an intriguing web of deceit in search of a killer who is, bizarrely, welcomed by her family. This exciting, gripping crime novel is full of suspense and delivers a thrilling final twist.Saturday 10 June 1933, and one of Charles’s Whitten’s bridge players collapses at the table, apparently from natural causes. Charles’s youngest daughter Patty is convinced it’s murder and pleads with her sister Alicia a party girl with connections to h...

60 years of observation: an American journalist’s memoir about Tokyo’s modern urban transformation, its criminal underworld and, oh yes, baseball.Tokyo Junkie is a memoir that plays out over the dramatic 60-year growth of the megacity Tokyo, once a dark, fetid backwater and now the most populous, sophisticated, and safe urban capital in the world.Follow author Robert Whiting (The Chrysanthemum and the Bat, You Gotta Have Wa, T...

In 1945, as part of the Occupation forces sent to postwar Japan Nick Zappetti, a native of Italian East Harlem, entered a world as strange as any he had ever know, In postwar Tokyo, however, he realised there were certain opportunities.He had a failed stint as a professional wrestler, and participated in a fumbled (but famous) diamond heist. He was deported but managed to return with the assistance of the Mafia. Then Nick opened a pizza joint in what would be the centre of Tokyo's ...

A riveting account of the role of Americans in the evolution of the Tokyo underworld in the years since 1945.In the ashes of postwar Japan lay a gold mine for certain opportunistic, expatriate Americans. Addicted to the volatile energy of Tokyo's freewheeling underworld, they formed ever-shifting but ever-profitable alliances with warring Japanese and Korean gangsters. At the center of this world was Nick Zappetti, an ex-marine from New York City who arrived in Tokyo in 1945, and w...

In the sixteenth century, the people of England witnessed the physical transformation of their most valued buildings: their parish churches. This is the first ever full-scale investigation of the dramatic changes experienced by the English parish church during the English Reformation. By drawing on a wealth of documentary evidence, including court records, wills and church wardens' accounts, and by examining the material remains themselves - such as screens, fonts, paintings, monuments, wi...

Tokyo Junkie is a memoir that plays out over the dramatic sixty-year growth of the megacity Tokyo, once a dark, fetid backwater and now the most populous, sophisticated, and safe urban capital in the world.Follow author Robert Whiting (The Chrysanthemum and the Bat, You Gotta Have Wa, Tokyo Underworld) as he watches Tokyo transform during the 1964 Olympics, rubs shoulders with the Yakuza and comes face to face with the city’s dark underbelly, int...

A riveting account of the role of Americans in the evolution of the Tokyo underworld in the years since 1945.In the ashes of postwar Japan lay a gold mine for certain opportunistic, expatriate Americans. Addicted to the volatile energy of Tokyo's freewheeling underworld, they formed ever-shifting but ever-profitable alliances with warring Japanese and Korean gangsters. At the center of this world was Nick Zappetti, an ex-marine from New York City who arrived in Tokyo in 1945, and w...

Thomas Cromwell was a man of humble origins and outstanding intellect who rose up to become Henry VIII's chief minister and right-hand man during the English Reformation. He wielded enormous power while he retained the king's favour, but the failure of Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves, which Cromwell had arranged, led to his swift downfall and execution. In this biography, John Schofield reveals that the popular image of Cromwell as a blood-stained henchman is largely fi...

In 1455 John Howard was an untitled and relatively obscure Suffolk gentleman. Thirty years later, at the time of his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field, he was Earl Marshal, Duke of Norfolk, Lord Admiral and a very rich man (and his direct descendant is Duke of Norfolk today). How had Howard attained these elevations? Through his service to the House of York, and in particular to King Richard III during the setting aside of Edward V.John Ashdown-Hill examines wh...

Thomas Cromwell was a self-made lawyer who served first Cardinal Wolsey and then Henry VIII. His time with Wolsey served him well in his work for the king after the cardinal’s fall from power in 1529. Cromwell’s time in office from 1530 until his execution in 1540 was one of the most crucial periods in English history. This biography explores Cromwell’s relationship with Henry VIII and why it failed. It also shows how he manipulated the politics of the court that eventually destroyed him. ...