Hyderabad state, before the Independence of India, covered an area of 82,698 sq. miles, with 16 districts was an extensive plateau with an average elevation of about 1,250 feet above sea level. It was divided between two equally great trappean regions, corresponding to the geological and ethnological aspects of the state, which divided the region, viz., the Godavari and Manjira, separating as they do the Maratha race from the Telugu and Kanarese people of the south, the region of trappean rocks of the north and west from the granite and limestone region of the south and east; and the land of wheat and cotton from the land of rice and tanks.

Details how Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda fighters slipped out of Afghanistan during the battles of Tora Bora and Operation Anaconda. The author also charges that Western media outlets, eager to satisfy their audience's thirst for revenge, lost their grasp on journalistic objectivity while covering bin Laden's pursuit. Blinding patriotism and reliance on Pentagon press releases led them to portray events not reflecting reality on the ground. He contends that to satisfy the press and the public's need for vengeance, the Bush administration pushed to achieve early, highly visible successes to the detriment of long-term strategy. Impatience at the top forced a rush into a war aimed primarily at "regime change," which left the U.S. military largely empty-handed.

This is the long-awaited biography of Malaysia's powerful Home Affairs Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, who passed away of a heart attack on 2 August 1973. It is based on his private papers and on numerous interviews with his relatives and with people who knew him well, including Ghafar Baba, Musa Hitam, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, Robert Kuok, Lee Kuan Yew and Ghazalie Shafie. New perspectives are provided about the struggle for independence, Malaysia's relationship with Singapore, the origins of Southeast Asian regionalism, the internal conflicts of the ruling party UMNO, MCA-UMNO ties, the fatal illness of Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, the May 13 riots, and the New Economic Policy. This book contains not only new facts about Malaysian and Singaporean history, but also insights into the processes of decolonization and nation building.

This compelling photographic history examines the war in its entirety, from its causes and protagonists to the strategies, weapons and battles. Goldstein and Maihafer have collected more than 450 vivid photographs, many never before seen by the general public. Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the Korean conflict, "The Korean War" remembers the experience of the American fighting man in "the forgotten war."

In the rich and varied life stories in Under the Black Umbrella, elderly Koreans recall incidents that illustrate the complexities of Korea during the colonial period. Hildi Kang here reinvigorates a period of Korean history long shrouded in the silence of those who endured under the "black umbrella" of Japanese colonial rule.

Existing descriptions of the colonial period tend to focus on extremes: imperial repression and national resistance, Japanese subjugation and Korean suffering, Korean backwardness and Japanese progress. "Most people", Kang says", have read or heard only the horror stories which, although true, tell only a small segment of colonial life". The varied accounts in Under the Black Umbrella reveal a truth that is both more ambiguous and more human -- the small-scale, mundane realities of life in colonial Korea.

Accessible and attractive narratives, linked by brief historical overviews, provide a large and fully textured view of Korea under Japanese rule. Looking past racial hatred and repression, Kang reveals small acts of resistance carried out by Koreans, as well as gestures of fairness by Japanese colonizers. Impressive for the history it recovers and preserves, Under the Black Umbrella is a candid, human account of a complicated time in a contested place.

Drafted into the Soviet Army in April 1984 and sent at the age of 19 to serve in Afghanistan as a minesweeper, Vladislav Tamarov turned in secret to the pen and the camera to chronicle his 621 days of war. Photographs depicting the haunted faces of both soldiers and civilians, the country's rugged yet beautiful mountain terrain, and the banality of daily life between missions are interspersed with Tamarov's unsentimental but passionate prose, in which he reveals his growing disorientation and assails his government's folly for engaging in a campaign that has been widely dubbed "the Soviet Vietnam."

The detailed portrait of social change in the North China plain depicts how the world of the Chinese peasant evolved during an era of war and revolution and how it in turn shaped the revolutionary process. The authors spent a decade interviewing villagers and rural officials, exploring archives, and investigating villagers with diverse resources and cultural, traditions, and they vividly describe both the promise and the human tragedy of China’s rural revolution.   Exploring the decades before and after the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, they trace the growing economic desperation and cultural disintegration that led to the revolution, the reforms undertaken by the Communist leadership that initially brought economic gains and cultural healing, and the tensions that soon developed between party and peasantry. They show that the Communist antimarket and collectivist strategies which culminated in the imposed collectivization of 1955-56 and the disastrous Great Leap Forward of 1958-60, clashed with cherished peasant cultural norms and economic aspirations. Eventually the party’s attack on peasant values and interests, the authors find, produced a rupture that threatened both developmental and socialist goals and destroyed the democratic potential of the revolution at its best.

An extremely solid history of Indochina in the Viet Minh War era. Essentially a diplomatic history, but one that carefully weaves in developments on the battlefield. Makes use of new knowledge and is a useful corrective to some of the earlier works on the subject by the French. Recommended. Douglas Pike, Indochina Chronology"

In exploring the antiwar movement, tax and foreign economic policies, environmental and health care questions, and the space program, these essays demonstrate how domestic issues were critically affected by the Vietnam War and provide a fuller understanding of Johnson's vital but flawed legacy to the nation.

Brian Keenan went to Beirut in 1985 for a change of scene from his native Belfast. He became headline news when he was kidnapped by fundamentalist Shi’ite militiamen and held in the suburbs of Beirut for the next four and a half years. For much of that time he was shut off from all news and contact with anyone other than his jailers and, later, his fellow hostages, amongst them John McCarthy.

The idea of nonviolent resistance is still as essential and almost as radical today as it was when Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) first pioneered in India the protest of political tyranny--in his case against British colonialism--through massive displays of civil disobedience. Gandhi's ideas of peaceful protest went on to inspire the marches and sit-ins of the American Civil Rights movement and continue to be the foundations for political and social demonstrations around the world. This biography by leading scholar Douglas Allen presents a new and challenging approach to understanding Gandhi's life--the time in which he lived, how he shaped history, and how his philosophy and practices can be reformulated in ways that are significant and effective today. Allen analyzes his continuing relevance by addressing key issues of truth and ethics, violence and nonviolence, equality and freedom, as well as ideas of exploitation, oppression, religious conflict, and environmental crises. Allen provides a much needed new perspective on Gandhi that allows us to rethink our basic values and priorities. By helping us understand Gandhi's life and message, he creates a new paradigm for evaluating truth, nonviolence, peace, and morality; and he offers new criteria for assessing our modern approach to standards of living, development, progress, and meaningful human existence.

Now in its third edition, this classic study has been updated for the first time in more than twenty years.
Chaim Herzog, former President of Israel, was involved in every conflict involving Israel and its Arab neighbors from before the 1948 War of Independence. The Arab-Israeli Wars is Herzog's acclaimed history of Israel's fight since 1947 to preserve her existence against repeated attacks. Revised after his death by friend and colleague General Shomo Gazit, this new edition also covers the events of the past twenty years, including the pullout from Lebanon, both "intifadas, the first Gulf War, the Oslo Process, and beyond. Riveting, informative, and comprehensive, this authoritative account tells the story of Israel's struggle to survive but gives a clear picture of the people and politics that continue to shape the destiny of this crucial region.

First time in paperback, with a new Introduction and final chapter

World affairs expert and intrepid travel journalist Robert D. Kaplan braved the dangers of war-ravaged Afghanistan in the 1980s, living among the mujahidin—the “soldiers of god”—whose unwavering devotion to Islam fueled their mission to oust the formidable Soviet invaders. In Soldiers of God we follow Kaplan’s extraordinary journey and learn how the thwarted Soviet invasion gave rise to the ruthless Taliban and the defining international conflagration of the twenty-first century.

Kaplan returns a decade later and brings to life a lawless frontier. What he reveals is astonishing: teeming refugee camps on the deeply contentious Pakistan-Afghanistan border; a war front that combines primitive fighters with the most technologically advanced weapons known to man; rigorous Islamic indoctrination academies; a land of minefields plagued by drought, fierce tribalism, insurmountable ethnic and religious divisions, an abysmal literacy rate, and legions of war orphans who seek stability in military brotherhood. Traveling alongside Islamic guerrilla fighters, sharing their food, observing their piety in the face of deprivation, and witnessing their determination, Kaplan offers a unique opportunity to increase our understanding of a people and a country that are at the center of world events.

"Spence has broadened our perspectives and given greater depth to our visions of Chinese life."—Lucien W. Pye, China Quarterly.

What is "Chinese" about China's modern state? This book proposes that the state we see today has developed over the past two centuries largely as a response to internal challenges emerging from the late empire. Well before the Opium War, Chinese confronted such constitutional questions as: How does the scope of political participation affect state power? How is the state to secure a share of society's wealth? In response to the changing demands of the age, this agenda has been expressed in changing language. Yet, because the underlying pattern remains recognizable, the modernization of the state in response to foreign aggression can be studied in longer perspective.

The author offers three concrete studies to illustrate the constitutional agenda in action: how the early nineteenth-century scholar-activist Wei Yuan confronted the relation between broadened political participation and authoritarian state power; how the reformist proposals of the influential scholar Feng Guifen were received by mainstream bureaucrats during the 1898 reform movement; and how fiscal problems of the late empire formed a backdrop to agricultural collectivization in the 1950s. In each case, the author presents the "modern" constitutional solution as only the most recent answer to old Chinese questions. The book concludes by describing the transformation of the constitutional agenda over the course of the modern period.

From the 1910s to the mid-1930s, the flamboyant and gifted spiritualist Deguchi Onisaburo (1871-1948) transformed his mother-in-law's small, rural religious following into a massive movement, eclectic in content and international in scope. Through a potent blend of traditional folk beliefs and practices like divination, exorcism, and millenarianism, an ambitious political agenda, and skillful use of new forms of visual and mass media, he attracted millions to Oomoto, his Shintoist new religion. Despite its condemnation as a heterodox sect by state authorities and the mainstream media, Oomoto quickly became the fastest-growing religion in Japan of the time. In telling the story of Onisaburo and Oomoto, Nancy Stalker not only gives us the first full account in English of the rise of a heterodox movement in imperial Japan, but also provides new perspectives on the importance of "charismatic entrepreneurship" in the success of new religions around the world. She makes the case that these religions often respond to global developments and tensions (imperialism, urbanization, consumerism, the diffusion of mass media) in similar ways. They require entrepreneurial marketing and management skills alongside their spiritual authority if their groups are to survive encroachments by the state and achieve national/international stature. Their drive to realize and extend their religious view of the world ideally stems from a "prophet" rather than "profit" motive, but their activity nevertheless relies on success in the modern capitalist, commercial world. Unlike many studies of Japanese religion during this period, "Prophet Motive" works to dispel the notion that prewar Shinto was monolithically supportive of state initiatives and ideology.

Few nations have endured a birth as traumatic and painful as the world's youngest country, East Timor. Born amid the flames, pillage and mayhem that surrounded Indonesia's reluctant withdrawal in 1999, it will for years be coping with the effects of destruction. Irena Cristalis, one of a handful of foreign journalists who stayed on during that nightmare to report it to the world, has kept faith with the Timorese friends whose story she decided to tell. Her book is a first-hand account of the lives of individual Timorese during the long decades of Indonesia's repressive occupation, their often heroic struggle for freedom, and their efforts to cope with the dramatic historic shifts engulfing them. Based on years of research and lengthy interviews with East Timor's past, present and future leaders, it explores the complexities of East Timor's internal politics. The book also tells the story of the ordinary students, farmers, nuns, priests, journalists and others, who found themselves playing extraordinary roles in terrible times.

While most people associate Japanese film with modern directors like Akira Kurosawa, Japan's cinema has a rich tradition going back to the silent era. Japan's "pure film movement" of the 1910s is widely held to mark the birth of film theory as we know it and is a touchstone for historians of early cinema. Yet this work has been difficult to access because so few prints have been preserved.

Joanne Bernardi offers the first book-length study of this important era, recovering a body of lost film and establishing its significance in the development of Japanese cinema. Building on a wealth of original-language sources -- much of it translated here for the first time -- she examines how the movement challenged the industry's dependence on pre-existing stage repertories, preference for lecturers over intertitles, and the use of female impersonators.

Bernardi provides in-depth analysis of key scripts -- The Glory of Life, A Father's Tears, Amateur Club, and The Lust of the White Serpent -- and includes translations in an appendix. These films offer case studies for understanding the craft of screenwriting during the silent era and shed light on such issues as genre, authorship and control, and gender representation.

"Writing in Light helps fill important gaps in the history of Japanese silent cinema. By identifying points at which "pure film" discourse merges with changing international trends and attitudes toward film, it offers an important resource for film, literary, and cultural historians.