In From Nicopolis to Mohacs, Tamas Palosfalvi offers an account of Ottoman-Hungarian warfare from its start in the late fourteenth century to the battle of Mohacs in 1526. During this period of one century and a half, the Kingdom of Hungary was the most constant and strongest rival of the expanding Ottoman Empire in Europe, and as such waged constant warfare in defence of its borders. Based on the extensive use of hitherto unexplored source material, Palosfalvi not only offers a sound chronology of military events, but also a description of Hungarian military structures and their transformation under constant Ottoman pressure, as well as an analysis of the reasons that lay behind the military breakdown of Hungary in the third decade of the sixteenth century.

In English Explorers in the East (1738-1745). The Travels of Thomas Shaw, Charles Perry and Richard Pococke, Rachel Finnegan offers an account of the influential travel writings of three rival explorers, whose eastern travel books were printed within a decade of each other. Making use of historical records, Finnegan examines the personal and professional motives of the three authors for producing their eastern travels; their methods of researching, drafting, and publicising their works while still abroad; their relationships with each other, both while travelling and on their return to England; and the legacy of their combined works. She also provides a survey of the main features (both textual and visual) of the travel books themselves.

Building on the rich scholarly legacy of Gunnar Jarring, the Swedish Turkologist and diplomat, the fourteen contributions by sixteen authors representing a variety of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences provide an insight into ongoing research trends in Uyghur and Xinjiang Studies. In one way or other all the chapters explore how new research in the fields of history, linguistics, anthropology and folklore can contribute to our understanding of Xinjiang's past and present, simultaneously pointing to those social and knowledge practices that Uyghurs today can claim as part of their traditions in order to reproduce and perpetuate their cultural identity. Contributors include: Ildiko Beller-Hann, Rahile Dawut, Arienne Dwyer, Fredrik Fallman, Chris Hann, Dilmurat Mahmut, Takahiro Onuma, Alexandre Papas, Eric Schluessel, Birgit Schlyter, Joanne Smith Finley, Rune Steenberg Jun Sugawara, AEsad Sulaiman, Abdurishid Yakup, Thierry Zarcone.

In 1968, at the age of 22, Karl Marlantes abandoned his Oxford University scholarship to sign up for active service with the US Marine Corps in Vietnam. Pitched into a war that had no defined military objective other than kill ratios and body counts, what he experienced over the next thirteen months in the jungles of South East Asia shook him to the core. But what happened when he came home covered with medals was almost worse. It took Karl four decades to come to terms with what had really happened, during the course of which he painstakingly constructed a fictionalized version of his war, MATTERHORN, which has subsequently been hailed as the definitive Vietnam novel.

WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR takes us back to Vietnam, but this time there is no fictional veil. Here are the hard-won truths that underpin MATTERHORN: the author's real-life experiences behind the book's indelible scenes. But it is much more than this. It is part exorcism of Karl's own experiences of combat, part confession, part philosophical primer for the young man about to enter combat. It It is also a devastatingly frank answer to the questions '"What is it like to be a soldier?"' "What is it like to face death?"' and "'What is it like to kill someone?"'

Covering the Arab-Israeli conflict from its origins to the present, this valuable resource traces the evolution of this ongoing, seemingly unresolvable dispute through a wide array of primary source documents. Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Documentary and Reference Guide provides a fresh, accessible, and thorough overview of the Arab-Israeli conflict, covering its origins in the late-19th century to the present-day situation and enabling readers to grasp why peace has proved so elusive, despite massive international efforts to reach a permanent and lasting solution to this protracted animosity. Chronological chapters first address the years up to the establishment of Israel in 1948, then move forward to the wars of 1956 and 1967 and their impact; the 1973 Yom Kippur War and early efforts to reach a lasting peace settlement; and the ongoing international and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since the mid-1980s. Readers will come away with not only an understanding of why so many great powers were from the beginning interested in the fate of the territory known as Palestine and of the current issues from an international perspective, but also an appreciation of the personalities and ethnic backgrounds involved that make the conflict so difficult to resolve. Allows a wide audience of readers-from high school and college students to general readers-to understand the complex roots of the conflicting claims to the territory of Palestine Places the Arab-Israeli conflict in the broader international context of World Wars I and II and the Cold War, providing readers with an appreciation of why so many outside powers have taken an interest in the battle over this territory Relates the conflict over the territory of Palestine to both the region's imperial and colonial past and the history of 20th-century global decolonization and nationalism Includes some 90 primary source documents, including major official statements by all parties to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, including Zionists, Israel, the Arab League, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah as well as Great Britain, France, the League of Nations, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Quartet Covers key topics-such as the creation of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973; the impact of Israel's territorial acquisitions in 1967; the international peace negotiations of subsequent years that slowly brought peace settlements between Israel and some Arab states; and the establishment of Palestinian rule in the West Bank and Gaza-in detail

Circa AD 750, both the Islamic world and western Europe underwent political revolutions; these raised to power, respectively, the 'Abbasid and Carolingian dynasties. The eras thus inaugurated were similar not only in their chronology, but also in the foundational role each played in its respective civilization, forming and shaping enduring religious, cultural, and societal institutions. The 'Abbasid and Carolingian Empires: Studies in Civilizational Formation, is the first collected volume ever dedicated specifically to comparative Carolingian-'Abbasid history. In it, editor D.G. Tor brings together essays from some of the leading historians in order to elucidate some of the parallel developments in each of these civilizations, many of which persisted not only throughout the Middle Ages, but to the present day. Contributors are: Michael Cook, Jennifer R. Davis, Robert Gleave, Eric J. Goldberg, Minoru Inaba, Jurgen Paul, Walter Pohl, D.G. Tor and Ian Wood.

China, with the world's largest population, numerous ethnic groups and vast geographical space, is also rich in languages. Since 2006, China's State Language Commission has been publishing annual reports on what is called "language life" in China. These reports cover language policy and planning invitatives at the national, provincial and local levels, new trends in language use in a variety of social domains, and major events concerning languages in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Now for the first time, these reports are available in English for anyone interested in Chinese languge and linguistics, China's language, education and social policies, as well as everyday language use among the ordinary people in China. The invaluable data contained in these reports provide an essential reference to researchers, professionals, policy makers, and China watchers.

Qarakhanid Roads to China reconsiders the diplomacy, trade and geography of transcontinental networks between Central Asia and China from the 10th to the 12th centuries and challenges the concept of "the Silk Road crisis" in the period between the fall of the Tang Dynasty and the rise of the Mongols. Utilizing a broad range of Islamic and Chinese primary sources together with archaeological data, Dilnoza Duturaeva demonstrates the complexity of interaction along the Silk Roads and beyond that, revolutionizes our understanding of the Qarakhanid world and Song-era China's relations with neighboring regions.

'There are no two things in the world more different from each other than East-Indian and West Indian-slavery' (Robert Inglis, House of Commons Debate, 1833). In Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772-1843, Andrea Major asks why, at a time when East India Company expansion in India, British abolitionism and the missionary movement were all at their height, was the existence of slavery in India so often ignored, denied or excused? By exploring Britain's ambivalent relationship with both real and imagined slaveries in India, and the official, evangelical and popular discourses which surrounded them, she seeks to uncover the various political, economic and ideological agendas that allowed East Indian slavery to be represented as qualitatively different from its trans-Atlantic counterpart. In doing so, she uncovers tensions in the relationship between colonial policy and the so-called 'civilising mission', elucidating the intricate interactions between humanitarian movements, colonial ideologies and imperial imperatives in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The work draws on a range of sources from Britain and India to provide a trans-national perspective on this little known facet of the story of slavery and abolition in the British Empire, uncovering the complex ways in which Indian slavery was encountered, discussed, utilised, rationalised, and reconciled with the economic, political and moral imperatives of an empire whose focus was shifting to the East.

In 'Ala' al-Dawla al-Simnani between Spiritual Authority and Political Power: A Persian Lord and Intellectual in the Heart of the Ilkhanate, Giovanni Maria Martini investigates the personality of a major figure in the socio-political and cultural landscape of Mongol Iran. In pursuing this objective, the author follows parallel paths: Chapter 1 provides the most updated reconstruction of Simnani's (d. 736/1336) biography, which, thanks to its unique features, emerges as a cross-section of Iranian society and as a microhistory of the complex relationships between a Sufi master, Persian elites and Mongol rulers during the Ilkhanid period; Chapter 2 contains a study on the phenomenon of Arabic-Persian diglossia in Simnani's written work, arguing for its socio-religious function; in Chapters 3 to 6 the critical editions of two important, interrelated treatises by Simnani are presented; finally, Chapter 7 offers the first full-length annotated translation of a long work by Simnani ever to appear in a Western language.

This volume offers a comprehensive overview of the Lifanyuan and Libu, revising and assessing the state of affairs in the under-researched field of these two institutions. The contributors explore the imperial policies towards and the shifting classifications of minority groups in the Qing Empire. This volume offers insight into how China's past has continued to inform its modern policies, as well as the geopolitical make-up of East Asia and beyond.

The Bhagavata Purana is one of the most important, central and popular scriptures of Hinduism. A medieval Sanskrit text, its influence as a religious book has been comparable only to that of the great Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Ithamar Theodor here offers the first analysis for twenty years of the Bhagavata Purana (often called the Fifth Veda ) and its different layers of meaning. He addresses its lyrical meditations on the activities of Krishna (avatar of Lord Vishnu), the central place it affords to the doctrine of bhakti (religious devotion) and its treatment of older Vedic traditions of knowledge. At the same time he places this subtle, poetical book within the context of the wider Hindu scriptures and the other Puranas, including the similar but less grand and significant Vishnu Purana. The author argues that the Bhagavata Purana is a unique work which represents the meeting place of two great orthodox Hindu traditions, the Vedic-Upanishadic and the Aesthetic. As such, it is one of India s greatest theological treatises. This book illuminates its character and continuing significance."

A TIME TO BETRAY
This exhilarating, award-winning memoir of a secret double life reveals the heart-wrenching story of a man who spied for the American government in the ranks of the notorious Revolutionary Guards of Iran, risking everything by betraying his homeland in order to save it.
Reza Kahlili grew up in Tehran surrounded by his close-knit family and friends. But the enlightened Iran of his youth vanished forever, as Reza discovered upon returning home from studying computer science in the United States, when the revolution of 1979 ushered in Ayatollah Khomeini's dark age of religious fundamentalism. Clinging to the hope of a Persian Renaissance, Reza joined the Ayatollah's elite Revolutionary Guards. As Khomeini's tyrannies unfolded, as fellow countrymen turned on each other, and after the deeply personal horrors he witnessed firsthand inside Evin Prison, a shattered and disillusioned Reza returned to America to dangerously become "Wally," a spy for the CIA.
In "A Time to Betray," Reza not only relates his razor's-edge, undercover existence from moment to heart-pounding moment as he supplies vital information from the Iran-Iraq War, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, the Iran-Contra affair, and more; he also documents a chain of incredible events that culminates in a nation's fight for freedom that continues to this very day, making this a timely and vital perspective on the future of Iran and the fate of the world.