Over the last three decades Afghanistan has been plagued by crisis - from Soviet invasion in 1979 and Taliban rule to US invasion following the events of 9/11. Here the top specialists on Afghanistan, including Olivier Roy, Ahmad Rashid and Jonathan Goodhand, provide a unique overview of the evolution, causes and future of the Afghan crisis. Covering political and military events and examining the role of ethnic groups, religious and ideological factors and the role of the leaders and war chiefs of the period - from the anti-Soviet resistance to the presidency of Hamid Karzai - this book will prove essential reading to all interested in Afghanistan and the wider Middle East region. Examining recent events in the light of the country's economy, Afghan civil society, cultural heritage and state reconstruction attempts, this is a comprehensive and diverse look at a country whose recent history has been marked by internal conflicts and foreign intervention.

Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies analyses the role of religion in past and present understandings of Asia. Religion, and the history of its study in the modern academy, has exercised massive influence over Asian Studies fields in the past century. Asian Studies has in turn affected, and is increasingly shaping, the study of religion. Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies looks into this symbiotic relationship - both in current practice, and in the modern histories of both Orientalism and Area Studies. Each chapter of the book deals with one regional sub-discipline in Asian Studies, covering Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, Korean Studies, South Asian Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, and Central Eurasian Studies. The chapters are integrated by shared themes that run through the past and present practice of Asian Studies, covering the role of state actors in originating Area Studies, the role of local scholarship in defining and developing it, the interaction between humanities and social science approaches, debates over the dominance of Western and/or modern categories and frameworks, the interaction of past and present and the role of religious actors and religious sensibilities in shaping Asian Studies.

Few gave tiny Singapore much chance of survival when it was granted independence in 1965. How is it, then, that today the former British colonial trading post is a thriving Asian metropolis with not only the world's number one airline, best airport, and busiest port of trade, but also the world's fourth-highest per capita real income? The story of that transformation is told here by Singapore's charismatic, controversial founding father, Lee Kuan Yew. Rising from a legacy of divisive colonialism, the devastation of the Second World War, and general poverty and disorder following the withdrawal of foreign forces, Singapore now is hailed as a city of the future. This miraculous history is dramatically recounted by the man who not only lived through it all but who fearlessly forged ahead and brought about most of these changes. Mr. Lee is one of the most respected political figures in the world today ("Time" and "Newsweek" regularly profile his socio-economic strategies and his regime), and recognition of his name among academic, political, historical and sociological circles is guaranteed. This volume also features a foreword from Dr. Henry Kissinger.

This book is an intimate account of an ordinary individual's extraordinary life journey that transcends both cultural and social boundaries. Th e author was born and lived in Korea during his formative years, and has been living in the United States for the following 47 years. Th is individual's unique story of his environment is informative and his approach to his life time challenges highlights every passage of the book. Th e book is thoughtprovoking as well as enlightening...a rare gem in its subject, style, and exposition. This book enlightens and entertains its readers at the same time eff ortlessly.

This volume contains annotated translations of anecdotes, on musicological and socio-cultural topics, from al-Isbahani's The Grand Book of Songs. Includes music theory and treatises; instruments; composition techniques; education and transmission; vocal and instrumental performances; solo and ensemble music; improvisations; emotions; dances; social status.

This book, edited by April Myung of Bergen County Academies in New Jersey, contains autobiographies of ten Korean teenagers, currently studying in American high schools. This historically significant volume contains writings by break-dancing Julius Im, who understands his Korean-American identity through this medium of African-American dance, to Rei Fujino Park of Flushing, New York, who explores her own dual identiy with a Korean father (who served in the elite Korean military special forces) and a Japanese mother. Rei Fujino describes her parents' marriage as a loving union of "enemies" given the history of Japanese colonization of Korea (1910-1945). Julie Oh describes the difficult situation of the children of Korean company workers for Samsung, LG, SK, Woori Bank, and other Korean companies, who come with a short-term working visa to the United States. The children of these "Joo-Jae-Won" have to go to Saturday school (in her case, "Woori School") in order to maintain the skill level of Korean high schools, in the case that their parents get recalled to South Korea - their children would have to apply for Korean universities and meet the requirements of Korean university entrance tests, which are vastly different from America's SAT, ACT, and AP tests. Andrew Hyeon shars his experience as a Korean Catholic, attending Hopkins School, an elite private school in Connecticut, where former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh, a famous Korean, attended. Ruby Hong's autobiography is written as a fairytale account of her own life. The autobiographies in this book are not only creatively written as to capture the readers' interest, but they also provide valuable resources for Korean American Studies. (This book is the second in the Hermit Kingdom Sources in Korean-American Studies, whose series editor is Dr. Onyoo Elizabeth Kim, Esq.)

In the year 57 C.E., the court of Later Han dynasty presented a gold seal to an emissary from somewhere in what is now Japan. The seal soon vanished from history, only to be unearthed in 1784 in Japan. In the subsequent two-plus centuries, nearly 400 books and articles (mostly by Japanese) have addressed every conceivable issue surrounding this small object of gold. Joshua Fogel places the conferment of the seal in inter-Asian diplomacy of the first century and then traces four waves of historical analysis that the seal has undergone since its discovery, as the standards of historical judgment have changed over these years and the investment in the seal's meaning have changed accordingly.

This study uses a comparative analysis of the Malayan Emergency, the American experience in Vietnam, and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM to examine the role and effectiveness of artillery units in complex counterinsurgency environments. Through this analysis, four factors emerge which impact the employment of artillery units: the counterinsurgency effort's requirement for indirect fires; constraints and limitations on indirect fires; the counterinsurgency effort's force organization; and the conversion cost of nonstandard roles for artillery units. In conclusion, the study offers five broadly descriptive fundamentals for employing artillery units in a counterinsurgency environment: invest in tactical leadership, exploit lessons learned, support the operational approach and strategic framework, maintain pragmatic fire support capability, and minimize collateral damage. Finally, the study examines the role of education for leaders in a counterinsurgency, and its influence on these imperative fundamentals.

Arabs and the Middle East were among the first to embrace Christianity, leaving their print on its culture. Thus Byzantium, by geography and culture, encountered Islam at its birth. No wonder that many saw and treated Islam as a contemporary Christian "heresy" - whatever the word may connote. Radical events fill the history of Byzantium (330-1453) encountering the world of Islam: conquests, wars, cultural and diplomatic relations, manifestations of mutual admiration - and exclusion! Their story makes for a fascinating branch of either Byzantine or Islamic studies; the literature about each other forming a distinguished section in either field. This collection of studies is a sample of Byzantine perspectives of Islam offering, hopefully, expressions and solutions rather than creating impressions or illusions.

While there is much discussion on Africa-China relations, the focus tends to lean more on the Chinese presence in Africa than on the African presence in China. There are numerous studies on the former but, with the exception of a few articles on the presence of African traders and students in China, little is known of the latter, even though an increasing number of Africans are visiting and settling in China and forming migrant communities there. This is a phenomenon that has never happened before the turn of the century and has thus led to what is often termed Africa's newest Diaspora. This book focuses on analyzing this new Diaspora, addressing the crucial question: What is it like to be an African in China? Africans in China is the first book-length study of the process of Africans travelling to China and forming communities there. Based on innovative intermingling of qualitative and quantitative research methods involving prolonged interaction with approximately 800 Africans across six main Chinese cities--Guangzhou, Yiwu, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Macau--sociolinguistic and sociocultural profiles are constructed to depict the everyday life of Africans in China. The study provides insights into understanding issues such as why Africans go to China, what they do there, how they communicate with their Chinese hosts, what opportunities and problems they encounter in their China sojourn, and how they are received by the Chinese state. Beyond these methodological and empirical contributions, the book also makes a theoretical contribution by proposing a crosscultural bridge theory of migrant-indigene relations, arguing that Africans in China act as sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and sociocultural bridges linking Africa to China. This approach to the analysis of Diaspora communities has consequences for crosscultural and crosslinguistic studies in an era of globalization. Africans in China is an important book for African Studies, Asian Studies, Africa-China relations studies, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, international studies, and migration and Diaspora studies in an era of globalization.

Americans at War in the Ottoman Empire examines the role of mercenary figures in negotiating relations between the United States and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. Mercenaries are often treated as historical footnotes, yet their encounters with the Ottoman world contributed to US culture and the impressions they left behind continue to influence US approaches to Africa and the Middle East. The book's analysis of these mercenary encounters and their legacies begins with the Battle of Derna in 1805-in which the US flag was raised above a battlefield for the first time outside of North America with the help of a mercenary army-and concludes with the British occupation of Egypt in 1882-which was witnessed and criticized by many of the US Civil War veterans who worked for the Egyptian government in the 1870s and 1880s. By focusing these mercenary encounters through the lenses of memory, sovereignty, literature, geography, and diplomacy, Americans at War in the Ottoman Empire reveals the ways in which mercenary force, while marginal in terms of its frequency and scope, produced important knowledge about the Ottoman world and helped to establish the complicated relationship of intimacy and mastery that exists between Americans in the United States and people in Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, South Sudan, and Turkey.