Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Asian Saga The books in narrative order are:

Shogun

by James Clavell

An explorer in seventeenth-century Japan, ambitious Englishman Blackthorne encounters the powerful and power-hungry Lord Toranaga and Catholic convert Lady Mariko. Reissue.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-?ve years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious... (more)

Memoirs of a Geisha

by Arthur Golden

In this literary tour de force, novelist Arthur Golden enters a remote and shimmeringly exotic world. For the protagonist of this peerlessly observant first novel is Sayuri, one of Japan's most celebrated geisha, a woman who is both performer and courtesan, slave and goddess. We follow Sayuri from her childhood in an impoverished fishing village, where in 1929, she is sold to a representative of a geisha house,... (more)

Underground

The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

by Haruki Murakami

From Haruki Murakami, internationally acclaimed author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood , a work of literary journalism that is as fascinating as it is necessary, as provocative as it is profound. In March of 1995, agents of a Japanese religious cult attacked the Tokyo subway system with sarin, a gas twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide. Attempting to discover why, Murakami conducted... (more)

The River at the Center of the World

A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time

by Simon Winchester

Rising in the mountains of the Tibetan border, the symbolic heart of China pierces 3,900 miles of rugged country before debouching into the oily swells of the East China Sea. Connecting China's heartland cities with the volatile coastal giant, Shanghai, it has also historically connected China to the outside world through its nearly one thousand miles of navigable waters. To travel those waters is to travel back... (more)

Standard Deviations: Growing Up and Coming Down in the New Asia

Standard Deviations: Growing Up and Coming Down in the New Asia

by Karl Taro Greenfeld

“I was twenty-three and I had set off for Asia to become a writer, intrigued by lurid tales of booms, busts, drugs, sex, violence, magic. There was a wicked sorcery in Asia, in the economic profligacy of the early nineties, in the way financiers and businessmen took a rapidly wiring and developing continent and looted billions, like a titanic parlor trick converting all that wealth into abandoned office complexes... (more)

Descent into Chaos

The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia

by Ahmed Rashid

The #1 New York Times bestselling author provides a shocking analysis of the crisis in Pakistan and the renewed radicalism threatening Afghanistan and the West . Ahmed Rashid is “Pakistan’s best and bravest reporter” ( Christopher Hitchens ). His unique knowledge of this vast and complex region allows him a panoramic vision and nuance that no Western writer can emulate. His book Taliban first introduced... (more)

ShogunJames Clavell

Shogun

by James Clavell

The comfort womenGeorge Hicks

The comfort women

by George Hicks

Over 100,000 women were victims of forced prostitution - Japanese military prostitution - during World War II. This is their story. Unlike other war atrocities, the surviving comfort women were too ashamed to tell their stories, playing into the hands of a determined Japanese government cover-up. However, nearly 50 years after the war, the women began to speak up, scholars delved into archives, a key Japanese... (more)

The Missionary and the Libertine (Essential Asia)

The Missionary and the Libertine (Essential Asia)

by Ian Buruma

From Naipaul’s India to the last days of Hong Kong, and from the ghosts of Pearl Harbor to Benazir Bhutto, Buruma delivers an engaging and incisive look at the ways East and West understand–and misunderstand–each other. At home in both worlds, Buruma traverses the realms of journalism, literary criticism, and political analysis, to examine the dialogue of fact and fantasy that affects our perception of far-away... (more)

Year of Impossible Goodbyes

by Sook Nyul Choi

After enduring the cruelties of the Japanese military, occupying Korea in 1945, ten-year-old Sookan and her family must face a life under the rule of communism, and decide, instead, to flee to America. Reprint. K. SLJ. C. NYT. AB.

East Asia: From Chinese Predominance to the Rise of the Pacific Rim

East Asia: From Chinese Predominance to the Rise of the Pacific Rim

by Arthur Cotterell

In recent decades, there has been a dramatic transformation around the Pacific Rim. Japan has become an economic superpower, and Korea and the People's Republic of China are close behind, flooding the world market with computers, automobiles, and electronic components. It is even predicted that by the next century East Asia will be the workshop of the world. No longer "the Far East"--that exotic, mysterious land... (more)

African Perspectives on China in Africa

China's involvement in Africa has provoked much debate and discussion. Is China just the latest in a line of exploiters of Africa's rich natural resources who put their own economic interests above humanitarian, environmental or human rights concerns? Or is China's engagement an extension of 'South-South solidarity'? Does China's involvement enable African countries to free themselves from the tyranny of debt and... (more)

Korea's Future and the Great Powers

The eventual reunification of the Korean Peninsula will send political and economic reverberations throughout Northeast Asia and will catalyze the struggle over a new regional order among the four great powers of the Pacific--Russia, China, Japan, and the United States. Korea's Future and the Great Powers addresses the vital issues of how to achieve a stable political order in a unified Korea, how to finance... (more)

Bamboo Network: How Expatriate Chinese Entrepreneurs Are Creating a New Economic Superpower in Asia

Bamboo Network: How Expatriate Chinese Entrepreneurs Are Creating a New Economic Superpower in Asia

by Murray L. Weidenbaum

The Bamboo Network shows how a remarkable group of ethnic Chinese families has been the driving force behind China's transition from communism to capitalism: the economic miracle" that took the Western business world by surprise. Murray Weidenbaum, a leading international economist, and Samuel Hughes trace the history of these enterprising leaders, who fled the mainland after the Communist takeover in 1948 and... (more)

Pacific DestinyRobert Elegant

Pacific Destiny

by Robert S. Elegant

A portrait of the major countries of Asia, the continent that has economically overtaken Europe. It explains why and how Asia has become the future of the Western World and why the United States, above all, will ignore the challenge of Asia at its peril. For 30 years Robert Elegant covered Asia as a correspondant for the "Los Angeles Times" and "Newsweek". He saw war and revolution from the frontiers of Korea and... (more)

Half the World

by Arnold Joseph Toynbee

As the world shrinks and all nations become involved with one another, Western ignorance of the great and ancient civilizations of China and Japan seems as benighted as the medieval astronomers' ignorance of the solar system. Aware of the relative unfamiliarity of the subject, the thirteen scholars who contributed to this book assumed nothing but the reader's desire to know, while resisting the temptation to... (more)

The British in the Far East (A Social history of the British overseas)George Woodcock

The British in the Far East (A Social history of the British overseas)

by George Woodcock

The Seventy Wonders of China

A complete and essential overview of China's marvels in all areas, from the natural world to inventions to artistic and architectural achievements. As China emerges as a great world economic power, this book shows what makes it such a special country and civilization, with topics ranging from the natural wonders of mountains and rivers to the Silk Road, from the arts and great monuments of the past to the... (more)

The Complete Guide to Chinese Calligraphy

The Complete Guide to Chinese Calligraphy

by Qu Lei Lei

Chinese calligraphy is an art that has developed over thousands of years of careful study. A skilled calligrapher can use his or her brush to express the most evocative emotions and produce elegant decorations. By following Qu Lei Lei's clear techniques and detailed step-by-step instructions you can replicate the scripts that have dominated the history of Chinese calligraphy and bring extra meaning and style to... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: east asia

by James Clavell

by J. McIver Weatherford

by Arthur Golden

The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

by Haruki Murakami

A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time

by Simon Winchester

by Karl Taro Greenfeld

The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia

by Ahmed Rashid

by James Clavell

by George Hicks

by Ian Buruma

by Sook Nyul Choi

by Arthur Cotterell

by Murray L. Weidenbaum

by Robert S. Elegant

by Arnold Joseph Toynbee

by George Woodcock

by Qu Lei Lei