I cannot be sure of the historical authenticity of this book, but that is due to my own ignorance, rather than any question of its validity. It is an excellent read and it shows some insight into Temujin's personality (he is strikingly similar to Yoshikawa's Musashi, e.g. the mountain climbing, desire to be the best, etc). This book also goes beyond the history centered around him and into the Golden Horde and post-Temujin Mongols. Overall, it gives some much needed attention to an ethnic group that is oftne ridiculed in today's world. People often forget that the Mongols held more land under their sway than any other civilization at any time in the world.

moon has made a very readable guide that is simply better than the rest. lonely planet also has a good guide, but the information seems to be tied together with rambling of factoids.

This book is a history of the first attempt at modernity by a government in China. This is not to say there was no economic or social progress before the Republican Revolution, he's using the term "modernist" specifically to mean a government imbued with a particular worldview, reflected in discourse and practice, that is derived largely from intellectual trends during and after the 18th century European Enlightenment. The major elements are the cult of progress, belief in man as an active agent in contructing the world, and a belief that a scientific outlook can solve problems and create a rational order.

The key element in achieving modernity, according to this vision, and thus a goal of all the 20th century modernists--whether neo-Monarchists, republicans, the Nationalist or Communist Parties--is the construction of a unified cohesive social body. They thought that only after achieving this could society be reshaped in the necessary rational way. Interestingly, the author points out that neither Chinese nor Japanese language had a word for "society", in the post-European Enlightenment sense, and one had to be assigned this meaning (shehui), and it quickly took root in intellectual circles.

So how did the early parliamentary republicans, Sun Yat-Sen, and Chiang Kai-Shek (who brought the largely failed republican experiment to an end in 1927) attempt to go about achieving this cohesive unity and order in society? This forms the bulk of this book.

Why Canton? The author explains "The choice of Canton as a case study...is in part dictated by the fact that it was the site of [the first modernist] government. It is also my belief that only through the detailed and textured history of a locality can one have a sense of the life of the people, and the effects of the larger forces which shaped their milieu. This book is hence an exploration of how the lives of the inhabitants of a city intersected with the efforts of a group of modernist elites to reorder the realm."

So this book not only develops a thesis about modernity, but is also an important and detailed social history of Canton in the early 20th century (including the late Qing period).

Two areas that get special attention are the lives of workers and the attempts by the Guomindang (Nationalist Party) and the Communist Party (then working under the umbrella of the Guomindang), to mobilize labor, seen as an important step in reshaping society. But as the author shows, workers were a heterogeneous group, and didn't always follow the path desired by state and intellectual elites. This is perhaps not terribly different from how workers reacted to a different form of elite mobilization during the Cultural Revolution; see Elizabeth Perry "Proletarian Power: Shanghai During the Cultural Revolution". This leads the author to a larger point, that modernity usually cannot be imposed according to elite visions alone, but is "negotiated, contested, or even subverted by the newly mobilized constituents, as the history of Canton clearly demonstrates".

This book could be placed with other books to form a rich history of Canton:

'Heaven is High and the Emperor Far Away: Merchants and Mandarins in Old Canton' by Valery M. Garrett

'Canton under communism; programs and politics in a provincial capital, 1949-1968' by Ezra F. Vogel

'Socialist Welfare in a Market Economy: Social Security Reforms in Guangzhou, China' by Yongxin Zhou, Nelson Chow, Yeubin Xu

As the author notes, given the often conflicting interests between Guangdong province and Beijing today, "a closer look at the social history of a key southern urban center sheds some light on the tensions inherent in the process of national reconstruction."

Collon's book provides an excellent overview of Near Eastern Seals. A useful chronology for both stamp and cylinder seals is provided, as well as information on materials, designs, and stone-cutting techniques. The majority of the photographs and text focus on cylinder seals, but a few stamp seals are also included.

New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction Nationalism in Korea, 1896-1937 covers an important period in modern Korean history, that is unfortunately both highly pertinent and politicized. Wells investigates the historical, economic, and ideological confluence of protestant Christian theology and nationalistic movements in Korea between the end of the Choson dynasty and the Japanese colonial occupation. Examining various Christian nationalist leaders, such as Cho Man-sik, Yun Chi'ho, and Syngman Rhee, Wells concludes, that the relationship between religion and nationalism is problematic.

More than Wells's ultimate thesis, the book is a lucid, much needed study of the limitation of Korean nationalism in the face of Korean and Japanese resistance. The study includes a discussion of the March First movement and the rise of socialist alternatives to Christianity. Wells attempts to defend Korean nationalism for its apolitical nature, while stressing the difficult task of creating Christian communities by reconstructing moral individuals from the bitter, forlorn Korean masses. Wells also examines the practical sphere of cultural nationalists, like Kim Sonsu, who prospered in business, but were accused of collaboration with the Chosen Government-General. Briefly, he also examines the role of foreign missionaries in the major Korean communities.

Although the book is concerned with a theological subject, namely, the relationship between nationalism and religion, it is more helpful as a Korean history text. The dearth of good English-language materials with access to Korean-language sources frustrates a balanced and non-politicized discussion of Korean development. Wells's portraits of numerous Korean nationalists are fair and illuminating. Wells also advances the thesis, that both the New Village Movement (sae maul undong) and the Self-Sufficiency (juche) ideology are offshoots of the reconstruction ideology.

This book is for advanced students of Korean studies and theology, not for beginners. It is also well-written, but fortified with some precise argumentation only experts would appreciate. But for those with a good knowledge of Korean history history, theology, and economics, it is a fresh glance at a very important chapter in Korean history. It is also a window on current events on the peninsula, which does not seem to have advanced much beyond 1937.

Who in their right mind would voluntarily undertake an expedition on horseback thru Asia Minor in winter...Frederick Burnaby did in the year 1876, a time of intrigue in the Ottoman Empire and Russia where the forces that shaped WWI and 20th century alliances took root. This is an opportunity to travel back into time and traverse Asia Minor prior to the invention of the automobile. You will meet people from all classes and cultures; Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, Persian and more. Burnaby tells of his trip with dry humor and with a suprisingly enlightened view of women, considering the times. This is a good read and worth the price of the book. For adventure travelers with time and money on their hands, retracing Burnaby's route on horseback would be a challenge even today.

Of the dozens of books that relate to Orde Wingate, the majority deal primarily with either the Chindit operations into Burma or serve as answers to the character assassination that was done posthumously after Wingate's death in a plane crash in 1944. Of the remainder, this book, along with the authorized bio by Christopher Sykes, and the most recent one by John Bierman & Colin Smith, stand out as the most complete. Of these, the Sykes version is the earliest, from 1959 and the author did not have access to certain records that the latter did. The Bierman and Smith version is quite thorough, but ends with some editorializing commentary on the current state of affairs in the Middle East totally contrary to those views that Wingate himself held. For this reason it leaves a sour taste in one's mouth. Royle's book suffers none of these flaws, and is perhaps the easiest read of them all. It is an excellent introduction to the life and thoughts of a man whom it will be revealed in time, was in fact a man of destiny, as Churchill's epitaph for him stated he was likely to become.

The deisgns in thsi book are quite stunning. The book includes full-color photoes of every design. Despite their intricacy, the designs are charted very well in black and white and are easy to follow.

Clarke uses the following Framework for intercultural contact: - Gadamer: hermeneutics of the dialogue: it comes bit by bit, and entails a continuous exchange of meaning between interpreter and interpreted, the goal is 'fusion of conceptual horizons' which requires 'self-awareness of difference' and 'recognition of otherness of the other'. Problem: doesn't take into account underlying discursive power relations (Foucault) - Said: the influence (power) that the west exerted via colonisation, to secure world hegemony, is present in the image that has been created of the East in the West. Everybody involved in orientalism is consciously or not guilty of western imperialism. Clarke says that this image of Said is not complete and shows that interest for the East has often been connected to pragmatic interests, deeply rooted in Europe's own intellectual, cultural and political history. Orientalism often had a countercultural, counterhegemonic rol in the past three centuries and has often been source of energy for radical protest. This way orientalism has often not enforced Europe's established role and identity, but undermined it. Periods of cultural revolution and global expansion in Europe made it possible to create a painful void in the spiritual and intellectual heart of Europe, but also favoured the establishment of certain geopolitical conditions that allowed the transmission of alternative worldviews of the East to the West more easily.

The making of "the Orient"

Both the French Sinophile Enlightenment thinkers and the German Indophile Romantici used orientalism as instrument for the subversion and reconstruction of European civilization, to fight the deeply rooted evils of that time. This way they idealized and romanticized heavily eastern thought and culture. Confucianism gave the French a model for rationalistic, deistic philosophy, but also the Hinduism of the Upanishads gave the Germans an elevated metaphysical system that resonated with their idealist suppositions, as a counterweight to the materialistic and mechanistic philosophy that came to dominate the Enlightenment period.Buddhism: Schopenhauer formulates a radical critique on the Jewish-Christian tradition that searches salvation throught a divine Savior, while buddhism searches it by denial of the will. Wagner and Nietzsche give similar critiques because buddhism, so they claim, offers a psychologically more honest explanation of suffering. Because of the Victorian crisis of faith and belief in progress, and the apparent compatibility of buddhism and science (positivism, Darwinism, evolutionism, materialism, monism), buddhism gains importance. Also the American transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau) used buddhism against Lockean materialism and Calvinism, in their belief in the essential unity and spiritual nature of the cosmos, combined with a belief in the goodness of humans, and the domination of intuition over rational thinking.Besides romanticizing voices, also racist and denigrating voices are found in orientalist discourses.

Twentieth century

Because of the quick progress and economic and social transformation of traditional to modern, Europe experienced an atmosphere of malcontentment with the promises of Western civilization, which made it search for more meaningful and satisfying alternatives. There are two types of associations of the turbulent twentieth century with orientalism: on the one hand the creative involvement in philosophy, theology, psychology, science and ecology, and on the other hand associations with occultism, and mystical undercurrents of fascism. In a period of growing imperialist expansion (which enhanced communication with the East), there was a possibility to begin to see the East really as other (with a different culture), but there was also a sense of being afraid, mixed with feelings of guilt toward the East. This had a different intellectual response: on the one hand there were big speculations about a universal philosophy or global religion, on the other hand there were more modest propositions for the encouragement of a hermeneutical dialogue. There was a tremendous spread of orientalism in the twentieth century, buddhist monasteries arised in the West, poets, writers, hippies and Beat movement, and also New Agers made use of Eastern thought, though not all of them seriously. Academic institutions were built, and eastern scholars came to Europe. Important European thinkers were influenced by the East. This accelerated the understanding of Eastern thought.

Philosophy

- Universalism (Leibniz, Moore) - Comparative philosophy (Nagarjuna compared with Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida, Madhyamaka with Wittgenstein) - Hermeneutics (Rorty: "the conversation of mankind", Larson: "from talking to one another, to talking with one another") - Diversity, otherness, difference, but a sharp awareness of the danger of cultural imperialism

Religion

- Exclusivism - Inclusivism - Pluralism

Psychology

- Psychotherapy and mental health: holistic contextual approach of the individual, more emphasis on experiential knowledge than on intellectual knowledge - Fromm, Jung, Maslow, Naranjo, Ornstein - Transpersonal, humanistic, cognitive psychology - Meditation

Science and ecology

- Sovjet Marxism and buddhism - Capra, Jung, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Prigogine, Bohm - Schumacher, Naess, Macy - Wholeness (holistic medicine, ecology)

Reflections

Besides the problem of interpretation of different cultures, there 's also a problem of projection: Eastern ideas are appropriated by simply projecting them to categories and presuppositions of the West, and the West has become a sort of all-eating monster, usurping all cultures. Clarke claims the aim is not to avoid use of a vocabulary that is derived from the own culture, but that the crucial point is that one does so with critical self-awareness. He emphasizes the importance of mutuality in the hermeneutical process: interpretation begins with pre-conceptions that are replaced by more appropriate conceptions. Example: the wrong understanding the West had (and still has) throughout buddhist history doesn't have to be considered as a failure, but as a necessary and wholesome "turning of the hermeneutical wheel". Orientalism contributed, so says Clarke, to a growth in mutuality, dialogue, knowledge and sympathy, and this while the East has now on the one hand enhanced grip to its own tradition (partly as a result of the encounter with the West) and on the other hand can formulate a solid critique to fundamental aspects of western culture. Also Said believed in a postcolonial era, where an increasingly sophisticated study and criticical self-awareness would make possible a post-orientalist epoch where westerners could approach the East without disturbing presuppositions.

Reviewed by LUBOMIR REHAK in International Relations,Volume XIII, No 2, August 1996 -

This is probably the most comprehensive volume written about the events which might be considered a landmark in contemporary history. Diego Cordovez, who served as Under Secretary-General for special Political Affairs of the United Nations from 1981 to 1988, recounts the negotiating process that eventually brought about the peace settlement and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. He is doing it as an insider. It was his mission which, in the end, brought about a solution to a crisis defined by Mikhail Gorbachev as a 'bleeding wound'. Mr. Cordovez' narrative, based wholly on his personal notes and on earlier unpublished documentary sources, is therefore mostly reliable and accurate and is extremely useful for researchers and practitioners of international relations.
As well as being a professional diplomat par excellence, Diego Cordovez is also a fine writer. His co-author, Zelig Harrison, is a professional journalist - for many years he was foreign correspondent for the Washington Post specializing in Asian affairs. He introduces a valuable outside viewpoint. Harrison, however, is not a complete outsider since his analysis of events is based on personal interviews with virtually all the key political actors. He also acquaints the readers with some earlier unknown documents (in particular, from the so-called 'secret file' of the Soviet Communist Party's Politburo) which shed light on the motives of policy formulation that lay behind the decisions taken in Kabul, Islamabad, Moscow and Washington. The authors' account stretches beyond the chronological framework of the actual negotiations which started in 1982 and ended with the signing of the Geneva accords on 14 April 1988. This approach would seem to be justified since it is events in Afghanistan and in the USSR leading up to the Soviet military intervention in December 1979 which account for at least some of the subsequent peculiarities of Soviet and Afghan behaviour at the negotiating table. The authors convincingly dispel the notion that the purpose of the Soviet invasion was to seize control of the Persian gulf using Afghanistan as a spring-board. That was the belief of an influential part of the US political establishment at that time (in particular, of President Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinsky). In reality the main reason for the invasion was simpler and more traditional. As a result of authoritative accounts from competent witnesses and judging from recently disclosed documents, the Russians were greatly and justifiably afraid that the then Afghan communist leader Hafizullah Amin would betray them and become an American-supported Afghan Tito on their borders. They therefore acted consistently with their age-old fear of hostile encirclement. This partly explains why the Soviets began sending signals of their desire for a negotiated settlement as early as the first months of their stay in Afghanistan.
The book is full of surprises. The authors clearly demonstrate that there existed a real chance to secure a peaceful settlement in 1983-84, under Yuri Andropov's tenure as the Soviet Communist Party's General Secretary. This chance they believe to have been undermined by hawks in the Reagan administration, firstly by CIA Director William Casey. With his single-minded focus on building up weapons aid to the Afghan resistance, Casey looked on the UN negotiations as a Soviet propaganda ploy. The unease in relations between the Soviet and Afghan leaderships, especially at crucial moments in the negotiations, is another surprise of the book. Stereotypical media accounts led us to think of Babrak Karmal as no more than a Soviet puppet. However the authors refer to a number of instances bearing witness to the fact that Karmal, and his successor Najibullah, not infrequently demonstrated a high degree of independence from Moscow. They effectively managed to impede the negotiating process and, later, to block the formation of a broad coalition government which was in principle endorsed by Moscow. Another widespread assumption - that it was the introduction of Stinger missiles which eventually forced Moscow to agree to the sign peace accords - is convincingly rebuffed by both authors. In fact the Red Army was securely entrenched when the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw. American weaponry certainly raised the ante for Moscow but it was not a crucial factor. Gorbachev's determination to end the Soviet Union's military involvement, and six years of skilful diplomacy were the primary factors which gave the Soviets a face-saving way out.
The chapters which Diego Cordovez devotes to dramatic episodes in the eleven rounds of proximity talks in Geneva between the Afghan and Pakistani Foreign Ministers, the accounts of his innumerable shuttles between Moscow, Kabul, Islamabad, New York and Geneva, as well as commuting to the different areas of Geneva where the Afghans and the Pakistanis lived, and even walking through the different rooms of Palais des Nations, are fascinating. Each step forward, however small, demanded months of hard labour on the part of Mr. Cordovez and his team. It also required the utmost patience, knowledge and understanding of their interlocutors' affairs, of their own and of their superiors' intentions, and even of their psychology, tastes and habits. The brilliance of Mr. Cordovez's diplomatic performance is indisputable and brings to mind one of François de Callières remarks that: 'It is one of the greatest secrets of the art of negotiating, to know how to distill, as it were drop by drop, into the minds of those with whom we negotiate, the things which it is our interest they should believe'. Mr. Cordovez demonstrated an outstanding ability to distill into the minds of both the Afghans and Pakistanis, and the Russians and Americans, the idea of the profitability of peace despite the unfavourable circumstances with which he was confronted at virtually every stage of the negotiations.
The situation was desperate even on the eve of the final ceremony in Geneva when the documents had been finalized and were ready for signing and the consent of all parties involved had been received. At this stage the problem of symmetry concerning the termination of Soviet aid to Afghanistan and US aid to Pakistan and the Afghan resistance, not adequately reflected in the draft text, unexpectedly became the sticking point that could ruin the settlement. Basically, Moscow agreed to withdraw its forces in exchange for a simultaneous cut-off of US aid but did not consider it had any obligation to terminate its aid to Kabul. This caused strong dissatisfaction in Washington. The inventiveness of Diego Cordovez, his good contacts with both Russians and Americans as well as a sufficient degree of mutual confidence in relations between Moscow and Washington at the time luckily allowed the formulation of a joint position acceptable to both superpowers, though this was not formally included in the documents. In his final statement, after the signing of the Geneva accords on 14 April 1988, the US Secretary of State George Schultz spoke publicly about the compromise which had been reached. He pointed out that 'the obligations undertaken by the guarantors are symmetrical'. 'In this regard', he added, 'the United States has advised the Soviet Union that the US retains the right, consistent with its obligations as a Guarantor, to provide military assistance to parties in Afghanistan. Should the Soviet Union exercise restraint in providing military assistance to parties in Afghanistan, the US similarly will exercise restraint.'
This book covers the wide range of factors which contributed to the Geneva accords and the withdrawal of Soviet troops which was one of the crucial events leading to the ending of the Cold War. The authors give due credit to Gorbachev and his colleagues in the Soviet leadership who carefully and skilfully prepared the ground for disengagement and endorsed UN peace efforts in the face of strong and agg