Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) is the most important woman in Chinese history. She ruled China for decades and brought a medieval empire into the modern age. At the age of sixteen, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor's numerous concubines and sexual partners. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China - behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male. In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Cixi fought against monumental obstacles to change China. Under her the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state: industries, railways, electricity, telegraph, and an army and navy with up-to-date weaponry. It was she who abolished gruesome punishments like 'death by a thousand cuts' and put an end to foot-binding. She inaugurated women's liberation, and embarked on the path to introduce parliamentary elections to China. Jung Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot. Cixi reigned during extraordinary times and had to deal with a host of major national crises: the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions, wars with France and Japan - and the invasion by eight allied powers including Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States. Jung Chang not only records the Empress Dowager's conduct of domestic and foreign affairs, but also takes the reader into the depths of her splendid Summer Palace and the harem of Beijing's Forbidden City, where she lived surrounded by eunuchs - with one of whom she fell in love, with tragic consequences. The world Jung Chang describes here, in fascinating detail, seems almost unbelievable in its extraordinary mixture of the very old and the very new. Based on newly available, mostly Chinese, historical documents such as court records, official and private correspondence, diaries and eye-witness accounts, this biography will revolutionise historical thinking about a crucial period in China's - and the world's - history. Packed with drama, fast-paced and gripping, it is both a panoramic depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a woman: as the concubine to a monarch, as the absolute ruler of a third of the world's population, and as a unique stateswoman.

Japan, during most of its history, has been ruled by its all-powerful Emperors. But in the 16th century - called by the Japanese the Age of Warring Clans - regional potentates were endlessly fighting one another with their small armies of samurai warriors.Hideyoshi, who called himself the Swordless Samurai, is the Japanese Horatio Alger. He was of peasant origin, but by bonding to powerful Lord Nobunaga, and by being useful to him day and night, Hideyoshi secured a powerful patron. Much later, Hideyoshi broke all class barriers and ultimately became the most powerful man in Japan.Hideyoshi has long been immortalised - so much so that every schoolboy in Japan is taught the moral that good judgement, keen intelligence, and sharp wits will win out over your adversaries almost every time.Hideyoshi's leadership and success precepts are embedded in the narrative as Hideyoshi wins many bloodless battles. He also won many victories, and analyzes his rise to supreme leadership. His sense of what it took -drive, shrewdness, anticipation, and determination - is readily understandable to a western businessman or businesswoman today.

In November 1841 Sir William Macnaghten reduced his payments of what were effectively bribes to the leaders of particular factions in Afghanistan--the precipitation of the events described in this book. The first part provides extracts of the official government account of events between October 1841 and January 1842; the second is extracted from the diaries of two of the survivors--Lieutenant Vincent Eyre and Lady Florentia Sale, both of whom were finally released in September 1842 after eight months of being moved around the region in dread fear of their lives. They provide critical and moving accounts of one of the most appalling captivities in history.

This paperback edition of a classic not only tests a number of popular hypotheses about the Mughal Empire during the reign of Aurangzeb by examining the composition and the role of nobility under his rule, but also assesses afresh the material and questions that have been thrown up since 1966.

Using research from contemporary letters, dispatches, and journals, Patrick MacRory provides a compelling and gripping account of what became known as the First Afghan War, the culmination of which was the catastrophic British flight from Kabul in January of 1842, which resulted in the deaths of 16,000 people. Only a single man survived.

The war was Britain's folly: At the height of its power in India, Britain sought to create stability in the Subcontinent -- and prevent Russian and Persian encroachments -- by removing from the Afghan throne a colorful and popular leader and replacing him with the unpopular though legitimate king.

The experiment ended with the British Resident in Kabul butchered by an angry mob, a British envoy shot by an Afghan leader during a discussion -- his dismembered corpse hung in the Kabul bazaar -- and the ill-fated retreat.

Seven days after Britain's Army of the Indus -- consisting of four thousand English and Indian troops, as well as twelve thousand followers, including a number of British wives and children -- left the gates of Kabul, a solitary horseman, bruised and bleeding, made his way slowly to the safety of the British garrison ninety harsh miles away. As officers rushed to bring him inside, orders were given to light a signal fire to guide others to safety. But there was no one else to view to beacon.

"Retreat from Kabul" is the absorbing and gruesome story of how the world's greatest military power learned a bloody and previously unimagined lesson by underestimating the Afghans' iron resistance to foreign invasion and intrigue. It is a tale of heroism in the face of unspeakable brutality, of diplomatic folly, of great sacrifice, andterrible tragedy. It is an entrancing look, well-told and deeply researched, at what happens when cultures collide -- a cautionary tale of the results of trying to control by force a country whose people deeply resent the foreign invader.

In 1638, the ruler of Japan ordered a crusade against his own subjects, a holocaust upon the men, women and children of a doomsday cult. The sect was said to harbour dark designs to overthrow the government. Its teachers used a dead language that was impenetrable to all but the innermost circle of believers. Its priests preached love and kindness, but helped local warlords acquire firearms. They encouraged believers to cast aside their earthly allegiances and swear loyalty to a foreign god-emperor, before seeking paradise in terrible martyrdoms. The cult was in open revolt, led, it was said, by a boy sorcerer. Farmers claiming to have the blessing of an alien god had bested trained samurai in combat and proclaimed that fires in the sky would soon bring about the end of the world. The Shogun called old soldiers out of retirement for one last battle before peace could be declared in Japan. For there to be an end to war, he said, the Christians would have to die. This is a true story.