How does a craft reinvent itself as `traditional' following cultural, social and political upheaval? In the township of Dingshu, Jiangsu province of China, artisans produce zisha or Yixing teapots that have been highly valued for centuries. Yet in twentieth-century socialist imagination, handicrafts were an anomaly in a modern society. The Maoist government had clear ambitions to transform the country by industrialization, replacing craft with mechanized methods of production. Four decades later, some of the same artisans identified as `backward' handicraft producers in the 1950s and made to join workers' cooperatives, were now encouraged to set up private workshops, teach their children and become entrepreneurs. By the 2000s ceramic production in Dingshu is booming and artisans are buying their first cars, often luxury brands. However, many involvements of the Chinese state are apparent, from the control of raw materials, to the inscription of the craft on China's national list of intangible cultural heritage. In this perceptive study, Gowlland argues that this re-evaluation of heritage is no less inherently political than the collectivism of the communist regime. Reflecting that the craft objects, although produced in very different contexts, have remained virtually the same over time and that it is the artisans' subjectivities that have been transformed, he explores the construction of mastery and its relationship to tradition and authenticity, bringing to the fore the social dimension of mastery that goes beyond the skill of simply making things, to changing the way these things are perceived, made and talked about by others.

The Last Siamese: Heroes in War and Peace tells the life stories of 12 exceptional characters from Thailand or Siam between the 1900s and 1960s. Engaging and rich in detail, they are tales full of adventure, courage and adversity, offering lessons in leadership, resolve and unselfishness. Among them are profiles of So Sethabutra, a political prisoner in the 1930s who spent his time in captivity writing Thailand's first Thai-English dictionary; Khamsing Srinawk, a provocative writer from the countryside who sought exile in Sweden; Colonel Vicha Dhitavadhana, whose military career led him to work for the Nazis; and Prince Bira, the debonair Grand Prix racing champion.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement was one of the defining moments in the history of the modern Middle East. Yet its co-creator, Sir Mark Sykes, had far more involvement in British Middle East strategy during World War I than the Agreement for which he is now most remembered. Between 1915 and 1916, Sykes was Lord Kitchener's agent at home and abroad, operating out of the War Office until the war secretary's death at sea in 1916. Following that, from 1916 to 1919 he worked at the Imperial War Cabinet, the War Cabinet Secretariat and, finally, as an advisor to the Foreign Office. The full extent of Sykes's work and influence has previously not been told. Moreover, the general impression given of him is at variance with the facts. Sykes led the negotiations with the Zionist leadership in the formulation of the Balfour Declaration, which he helped to write, and promoted their cause to achieve what he sought for a pro-British post-war Middle East peace settlement, although he was not himself a Zionist. Likewise, despite claims he championed the Arab cause, there is little proof of this other than general rhetoric mainly for public consumption. On the contrary, there is much evidence he routinely exhibited a complete lack of empathy with the Arabs. In this book, Michael Berdine examines the life of this impulsive and headstrong young British aristocrat who helped formulate many of Britain's policies in the Middle East that are responsible for much of the instability that has affected the region ever since.

The "Bidun" ("without nationality") are a stateless community based across the Arab Gulf. There are an estimated 100,000 or so Bidun in Kuwait, a heterogeneous group made up of tribes people who failed to register for citizenship between 1959 and 1963, former residents of Iraq, Saudi and other Arab countries who joined the Kuwait security services in '60s and '70s and the children of Kuwaiti women and Bidun men. They are considered illegal residents by the Kuwaiti government and as such denied access to many services of the oil-rich state, often living in slums on the outskirts of Kuwait's cities. There are few existing works on the Bidun community and what little research there is is grounded in an Area Studies/Social Sciences approach. This book is the first to explore the Bidun from a literary/cultural perspective, offering both the first study of the literature of the Bidun in Kuwait, and in the process a corrective to some of the pitfalls of a descriptive, approach to research on the Bidun and the region. The author explores the historical and political context of the Bidun, their position in Kuwaiti and Arabic literary history, comparisons between the Bidun and other stateless writers and analysis of the key themes in Bidun literature and their relationship to the Bidun struggle for recognition and citizenship.