The collection contains materials of archival documents and memoirs concerning the famine of 1931-1933 in Central Kazakhstan. Various documents from the archives reveal to the reader the most difficult period of the Soviet history of Kazakhstan, associated with the dispossession of the kulaks and debaiization of the Kazakh village and aul, Stalinist forced collectivization, forced sedentarization of nomadic Kazakh farms, large-scale cattle, meat and grain procurements, famine and epidemics in the republic. The publication introduces previously unpublished archival materials from the Central and regional archives of Kazakhstan into scientific circulation. In addition, the collection includes the memories of famine witnesses preserved by their descendants. The collection is addressed to researchers, students, as well as a wide range of readers interested in the history of Kazakhstan.

Flows and Frictions in Trans-Himalayan Spaces traces movements and connections in a region known for its formidable obstacles to mobility. Eight original essays and a conceptual introduction engage with questions of networks and interconnection between people across a bordered landscape. Mobility among the extremely varied ecologies of south-western China, Myanmar and north-eastern India, with their rugged terrain, high mountains, monsoon-fed rivers and marshy lowlands, is certainly subject to friction. But today, harsh political realities have created hard borders and fractured this trans-Himalayan terrain. However, the closely researched chapters in this book demonstrate that these borders have not prevented an abundance of movements, connections and flows. Mobility has always coexisted with friction here, but this coexistence has been unsettled, giving this space its historical shape and its contemporary dynamism. Introducing the concept of the 'corridor' as an analytical framework, this collection investigates mobility and flows in this unique socio-political landscape.

Developed as an exploratory study of artworks by artists of Singapore and Malaysia, Retrospective attempts to account for contemporary artworks that engage with history. These are artworks that reference past events or narratives, of the nation and its art. Through the examination of a selection of artworks produced between 1990 and 2012, Retrospective is both an attribution and an analysis of a historiographical aesthetic within contemporary art practice. It considers that, by their method and in their assembly, these artworks perform more than a representation of a historical past. Instead, they confront history and its production, laying bare the nature and designs of the historical project via their aesthetic project. Positing an interdisciplinary approach as necessary for understanding the historiographical as aesthetic, Retrospective considers not only historical and aesthetic perspectives, but also the philosophical, by way of ontology, in order to broaden its exposition beyond the convention of historical and contextual interpretation of art. Yet, in associating these artworks with a historiographical aesthetic, this exposition may be regarded as a historiographical exercise in itself, affirming the significance of these artworks for the history of Singapore and Malaysia. In short, which history rarely is, Retrospective is about the art of historicisation and the historicisation of art.

In 2012, President Obama announced that the United States would spend the next thirteen years - through November 11, 2025 - commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War, and the American soldiers, "more than 58,000 patriots," who died in Vietnam. The fact that at least 2.1 million Vietnamese - soldiers, parents, grandparents, children - also died in that war will be largely unknown and entirely uncommemorated. And U.S. history barely stops to record the millions of Vietnamese who lived on after being displaced, tortured, maimed, raped, or born with birth defects, the result of devastating chemicals wreaked on the land by the U.S. military. The reason for this appalling disconnect of consciousness lies in an unremitting public relations campaign waged by top American politicians, military leaders, business people, and scholars who have spent the last sixty years justifying the U.S. presence in Vietnam. It is a campaign of patriotic conceit superbly chronicled by John Marciano in The American War in Vietnam: Crime or Commemoration?A devastating follow-up to Marciano's 1979 classic Teaching the Vietnam War (written with William L. Griffen), Marciano's book seeks not to commemorate the Vietnam War, but to stop the ongoing U.S. war on actual history. Marciano reveals the grandiose flag-waving that stems from the "Noble Cause principle," the notion that America is "chosen by God" to bring democracy to the world. Marciano writes of the Noble Cause being invoked unsparingly by presidents - from Jimmy Carter, in his observation that, regarding Vietnam, "the destruction was mutual," to Barack Obama, who continues the flow of romantic media propaganda: "The United States of America ...will remain the greatest force for freedom the world has ever known."The result is critical writing and teaching at its best. This book will find a home in classrooms where teachers seek to do more than repeat the trite glorifications of U.S. empire. It will provide students everywhere with insights that can prepare them to change the world.

In the opening days of the World War II, a joint U.S.-Filipino army fought desperately to defend Manila Bay and the Philippines against a Japanese invasion. Much of the five-month campaign was waged on the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island. Despite dwindling supplies and dim prospects for support, the garrison held out as long as possible and significantly delayed the Japanese timetable for conquest in the Pacific. In the end, the Japanese forced the largest capitulation in U.S. military history. The defenders were hailed as heroes and the legacy of their determined resistance marks the Philippines today. Drawing on accounts from American and Filipino participants and archival sources, this book tells the story of these critical months of the Pacific War, from the first air strikes to the fall of Bataan and Corregidor.

Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History revolutionizes the study of modern Israeli art music by tracking the surprising itineraries of Jewish art music in the move from Europe to Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Leaving behind cliches about East and West, Arab and Jew, this book provocatively exposes the legacies of European antisemitism and religious Judaism in the making of Israeli art music.
Shelleg introduces the reader to various aesthetic dilemmas involved in the emergence of modern Jewish art music, ranging from auto-exoticism through the hues of self-hatred to the disarticulation of Jewish musical markers. He then considers part of this musics' translocation to Mandatory Palestine, studying its discourse with Hebrew culture, and composers' grappling with modern and Zionist images of the self. Unlike previous efforts in the field, Shelleg unearths the mechanism of what he calls "Zionist musical onomatopoeias," but more importantly their dilution by the non-western Arab Jewish oral musical traditions (the same traditions Hebrew culture sought to westernize and secularize).
And what had begun with composers' movement towards the musical properties of non-western Jewish musical traditions grew in the 60s and 70s to a dialectical return to exilic Jewish cultures. In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, which reaffirmed Zionism's redemptive and expansionist messages, Israeli composers (re)embraced precisely the exilic Jewish music that emphasized Judaism's syncretic qualities rather than its territorial characteristics. In the 70s, therefore, while religious Zionist circles translated theology into politics and territorial maximalism, Israeli composers deterritorialized the national discourse by a growing return to the spaces shared by Jews and non-Jews, devoid of Zionist appropriations."

Long believed to be the cradle of Vietnamese civilization, the Red River Delta of Vietnam has been referenced by Vietnamese and Chinese writers for centuries, many recording colorful tales and legends about the region's prehistory. One of the most enduring accounts relates the story of the Au Lac Kingdom and its capital, known as Co Loa. According to legend, the city was founded during the third century BC and massive rampart walls protected its seat of power. Over the past two millennia, Co Loa has become emblematic of an important foundational era for Vietnamese civilization. Today, the ramparts of this ancient city still stand in silent testament to the power of past societies. However, there are ongoing debates about the origins of the site, the validity of legendary accounts, and the link between the prehistoric past with later Vietnamese society. Recent decades of archaeology in the region have provided a new dimension to further explore these issues, and to elucidate the underpinnings of civilization in northern Vietnam. Nam C. Kim's The Origins of Ancient Vietnam explores the origins of an ancient state in northern Vietnam, an area long believed to be the cradle of Vietnamese civilization. In doing so, it analyzes the archaeological record and the impact of new information on extant legends about the region and its history. Additionally, Kim presents the archaeological case for this momentous development, placing Co Loa within a wider archaeological consideration of emergent cities, states, and civilizations.

The comparison of early Italy's and Japan's colonialism is without precedence. The majority of studies on Italian and Japanese expansion refer to the 1930-1940s period (fascist/totalitarian era) when Japan annexed Manchuria (1931) and Italy Ethiopia (1936). The first formative and crucial steps that paved the way for this expansion have been neglected. This analysis covers a range of social, political and economic parameters illuminating the diversity but also the common ground of the nature and aspirations of Japan's and Italy's early colonial systems. The two states alongside the Great Powers of the era expanded in the name of humanism and civilization but in reality in a way typically imperialistic, they sought territorial compensations, financial privileges and prestige. A parallel and deeper understanding of the nineteenth century socio-cultural-psychological parameters, such as tradition, mentality, and religion that shaped and explain the later ideological framework of Rome's and Tokyo's expansionist disposition, has never been attempted before. This monograph offers a detailed examination of the phenomenon of colonialism by examining the issue from two different angles. The study contributes to the understanding of Italy's and Japan's early imperial expansion. In addition, it traces the origins of these states' similar and common historical evolution in late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century.