Tokyo, 1985. The world's first megacity is at the height of its dynamism.

Forty years ago, a frenzy of creativity galvanised the Japanese capital. From fashion to movies to electronics, Tokyo was forging the future. Factories run by robots, the world's first high-speed trains, apartment blocks built from shipping containers, love hotels modelled on Bavarian castles...

In the thick of it, a young British teacher gazed around and asked questions. Why are Tokyoites so phlegmatic about earthquakes? What makes this high-tech city so unmistakably Japanese? And how, despite its size and pace, has Tokyo retained many pockets of perfect calm?

First published in 1985, Tokyo: the City at the End of the World was quickly recognised, in Time magazine, The New Yorker and elsewhere, as a fascinating portrait of the city that pointed where the world was headed. Forty years on numerous Asian cities have taken up Tokyo's baton, but Peter Popham's depiction of its menace and charm remains unrivalled.

Chinese Characteristics (1894) was the most widely read American work on China until Pearl Buck's The Good Earth (1931). It was the first to take up the task of analyzing Chinese society in the light of scientific social and racial theory.

Written as a series of pungent and sometimes comic essays for a Shanghai newspaper in the late 1880s, Chinese Characteristics was among the five most read books on China among foreigners living in China as late as World War I and it was read by Americans at home as a wise and authentic handbook. The book was quickly translated into Japanese and just as quickly into Chinese. It was accepted by the Chinese -- and has maintained its authoritative status for over a century -- as the quintessential portrait of the Chinese race drawn by a Westerner.

Lu Xun, the most prominent Chinese cultural critic of the early twentieth century, urged his students to study and ponder Smith's message, which was very widely debated in Chinese student circles. Within the 1990s two different, new translations of Smith's book were published in China and both editions have enjoyed wide distribution and readership. In the West, particularly since World War II, Chinese Characteristics has been widely quoted (though seldom read) as a purported example of Sino-myopia and Orientalism. Despite such Western pseudo-intellectual bias, Smith's arguments retain the power to provoke critical introspection among Chinese and, for the honest, among Westerners as well.

Are war clouds gathering in Asia? Will China make good on threats to invade Taiwan? What would this conflict mean for America and the world? Exposing internal Chinese military documents and restricted-access studies, The Chinese Invasion Threat explores the secret world of war planning and strategy, espionage and national security. From a historic spy case that saved Taiwan from communist takeover to modern day covert action programs, and from emergency alert procedures to underground coastal defense networks, this is the untold story of the most dangerous flashpoint of our times.

Are war clouds gathering in Asia? Will China make good on threats to invade Taiwan? What would this conflict mean for America and the world? Exposing internal Chinese military documents and restricted-access studies, The Chinese Invasion Threat explores the secret world of war planning and strategy, espionage and national security. From a historic spy case that saved Taiwan from communist takeover to modern day covert action programs, and from emergency alert procedures to underground coastal defense networks, this is the untold story of the most dangerous flashpoint of our times.

Taiwan in 100 Books is the distillation of hundreds of titles and decades of reading into a riveting narrative of Taiwan from the early seventeenth century to the present.

Long-time resident John Ross, the author of You Don't Know China and Formosan Odyssey, delves into the most acclaimed, interesting, and influential books on Taiwan, along with some personal favorites. Most entries are non-fiction works originally published in English (translated Chinese-language books will be covered in a separate upcoming title).

Relive Taiwan's most dramatic historical event in Lord of Formosa and Lost Colony. Learn about the White Terror in A Pail of Oysters, Green Island, and Formosa Betrayed. Discover dated time capsule accounts such as Flight to Formosa and Taipei After Dark, and others like John Slimming's Green Plums and a Bamboo Horse that have stood the test of time. Turn the pages of obscure books such as The Jing Affair and Dragon Hotel, undeserved best-sellers like the The Soong Dynasty, and some of the best academic works. Experience unique facets of life in Taiwan in Shots from the Hip: Sex, Drugs and the Tao and Barbarian at the Gate: From the American Suburbs to the Taiwanese Army. Follow authors on their quests, whether conservationists going undercover to expose the illegal wildlife trade, adoptees returning to find their biological parents, or foodies in search of the perfect beef noodle soup.

Taiwan in 100 Books is an accessible introduction to works on the country and and an enjoyable shortcut to understanding the country's history and culture. It's also a bibliophile's elixir packed with the backstories of the authors and the books themselves; there are tales of outrageous literary fraud, lost manuscripts, banned books, and publishing skulduggery.

The Exile: Portrait of an American Mother is Pearl S. Buck'sintensely moving memoir of her mother, Caroline (Carrie) Stulting Sydenstricker, whoset off to China as the bride of a zealous Presbyterian missionary in 1880. She would spend the rest of her life there, enduring a harsh, isolated existence in the poor, hostile interior of China. She struggled to keep her family safe and healthy, her first three children dying young and the fourth, Pearl, narrowly escaping the same fate. Carrie's husband was often far away preaching, and, even when at home, he was a distant figure whose singular focus on the Work brought hardship to the family. With courage and determination, Carrie persisted, successfully raising the family and administering to the Chinese in practical, informal ways.

Buck wrote a draft of The Exile immediately after her mother's death in 1921, pouring her raw emotions into this heroic, loving portrait. However, the book was not published until January, 1936. It was such a critical and popular success that Buck immediately set to writing a companion biography of her father, Fighting Angel, which was published later that year to similar acclaim. When, in 1938, Pearl S. Buck became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it was not only for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China but also for her biographical masterpieces.

As well as being a beautifully written account of a dramatic life, The Exile reveals Buck herself more deeply than in her other works, showing the profound influence her mother had on Buck's life and her novels.

Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul is Pearl S. Buck's profoundly touching memoir of her zealous Southern Presbyterian missionary father, Absalom Sydenstricker. Andrew (as he is called in the book) set off for China in 1880 and spent most of the next half century there until his death in 1931. From isolated settlements in the poor, hostile interior, he made long preaching trips through lands convulsed by famine, banditry, and revolution.

Sydenstricker was a tragic Captain Ahab figure whose life's work brought only a trickle of converts. His battles against church authorities - he was ahead of his time in wanting local Christians to be given greater power and in pushing for vernacular Chinese texts - meant ostracism by his colleagues and superiors. Above all, his fanatical devotion brought death and suffering to his family.

Fighting Angel, which was published in late 1936, is a companion biography to Buck's loving portrait of her mother, The Exile: Portrait of an American Mother, published earlier that year. Both books won great popular and critical success. When, in 1938, Pearl S. Buck became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it was not only for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China but also for her biographical masterpieces. Fighting Angel is a more balanced biography and the superior of the pair. In fact, in her acclaimed Burying the Bones, Pearl biographer Hilary Spurling ranks Fighting Angel after The Good Earth as probably the best book Pearl ever wrote, praising the memoir for its combination of cool, sharp, scrutinizing intelligence and passionate emotion.

The Final Struggle shows, using the regime's own words, how Beijing's aspirations aren't regional-they're global, with grave implications not only for democracy, but for the centuries-old principle of national sovereignty.

-Matt Pottinger

The Chinese government has a sinister secret. And it's hiding in plain sight. Drawing from internal military documents and never-before-seen writings and speeches by Xi Jinping, The Final Struggle takes readers inside Beijing's shadowy halls of power to reveal the plans, intentions, and operations of the most powerful - and covert - political organization in the world.

For decades the economic rise of China has been paired with an insistence from the government in Beijing that theirs would be a peaceful rise; that other countries had nothing to fear from China. The democratic world has been largely content to accept those promises, as cheap manufactured goods and huge profits for Western elites flowed out of China. In truth, leaders from Deng Xiaoping onward have been biding their time as China's power grew.

Today a strengthened, emboldened Chinese Communist Party is dropping the act. Chairman Xi Jinping has amassed more power than any leader since Mao Zedong, and his officials openly proclaim their intention to change the world, subvert democratic norms and instill their own brand of autocratic control. In a nutshell: to remake the world in China's image, something Xi refers to as the final struggle.

The arenas the CCP seeks to control include global manufacturing, currency markets, finance, trade, security, food production and distribution, human rights, health, counter-terrorism, human rights, strategic resources, and more. Taken together this amounts to nothing less than a desire for global domination, a desire the Party has already started to make a reality. Deeply researched and engagingly written, The Final Struggle is an urgent call to understand Beijing's true intentions, and to act before it's too late.

Lucid, learned, and superbly translated, Kondo the Barbarian is an indispensable source for those interested in Taiwan's colonial history. -Leo T.S. Ching

Kondo the Barbarian is a gripping and revealing account of the colonial Japanese era in Taiwan, focusing on the Musha Rebellion and its brutal suppression by the Japanese military. The book presents the translated account of Kondō Katsusaburō, a Japanese adventurer who married into an indigenous Taiwanese family. Kondō's journals offer an intimate and personal perspective on the events, though they can also be unreliable and prone to sensationalism.

To help readers navigate Kondō's account, Barclay has provided a deeply-researched introduction, extensive notes, and context essential to understanding what really happened during the Musha Rebellion. The book sheds light on the cultural clashes and sporadic violence that characterized Taiwan during this period. Through the writing of Kondō, interpreted and contextualized by Barclay, readers gain insight into the complexities of colonialism, imperialism, and indigenous resistance.

The Musha Rebellion was a pivotal moment in the relationship between the indigenous people and the Japanese colonial government. In 1930, after years of oppression, the Seediq people of central Taiwan, led by Mona Rudao, attacked a gathering of Japanese people at a local school, slaughtering over one hundred men, women, and children. The Japanese military responded with overwhelming force, employing tactics including poison gas, artillery, and aerial bombardment to quell the rebellion.

Barclay's book offers a fresh and engaging perspective on a tragic chapter in Taiwan's past, and the notes and context provided help readers understand the complexities of the events. The book is an important addition to the growing body of literature on Taiwan's history, and it underscores the power of personal narratives to illuminate broader historical themes. Kondo the Barbarian is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of Taiwan, the contradictions of colonialism, and the challenges of interpreting personal accounts of historical events.

A tragic - and largely forgotten - event following the liberation of Korea occurred on Jeju Island in 1948. An event now called The Jeju Massacre.

On April 3, 1948, an armed guerrilla uprising was suppressed by the police and military constabulary. The guerrilla attacks had begun on April 1 and by April 3 the rebels had seized 11 police stations and barracks resulting in 50 dead policemen, the jails empty of prisoners, the capture of most of the island's police firearms and ammunition. The constabulary, which was not targeted by the guerrillas, was armed with Japanese Army rifles but lacked ammunition so was powerless to stop the killings. The six-man American Army liaison team was restricted to their headquarters in Jeju City. The so-called massacre delayed Jeju participation in the national elections from May to September but the armed unrest continued until well after the end of the Korean War in 1952.

A significant number of the early guerrilla casualties were political prisoners - largely communist - arrested on the mainland and transferred to prisons on Jeju. After the US and USSR had effectively abandoned the South and North, respectively, each had begun sequestering their political opponents. The inexorable result was, a year and a half later, war.

Official estimates for the more-than-four-year struggle tally some 12,000 guerrillas killed by government forces with about 2,000 teachers, local officials, police, and army constabulary killed by the guerrillas. There has been speculation that non-combatant civilian casualties as a result of the conflict might double those numbers.

Hyun Kil-Un's stories in this book are all set on Jeju Island in and around the time of the massacre. Each story offers its own unique view of the events surrounding the massacre and the connections between the stories provide readers with an understanding of the incident. This fictional exploration of the Jeju Massacre focuses on how people become the victims of their ideologies, how truth can be concealed on such a large scale, and how the later revelation of truth can affect a society.

Four Hundred Million Customers (1937) is a collection of humorous essays and piquant anecdotes underpinned by well-informed insight and highlighted by witty drawings by G. Sapojnikoff. Like a bowl of salted peanuts, these vignettes make you want more. The book was welcomed on its publication as the most entertaining and instructive introduction to the rapidly modernizing people of the new China and their resilient customs. While it has been taught in recent years at the Harvard Business School, the book -- or at least its title -- has been cited much more than read, usually to illustrate American illusions about the China market. Yet the book has lost none of its still perceptive insights into China, which is now more than triple four hundred million.

Crow, living in Shanghai in the early twentieth century], wrote in a bemused manner about city dwellers. While] Crow's book was of little value to the China watcher of the 1950s and 1960s . . . once Chinese reform and opening took off after 1978, the clever city dwellers that Crow described in the 1930s are a far better guide to the China of today than Edgar] Snow's revolutionaries or Pearl] Buck's peasants.

I have a former student, a successful businessman, who opened a factory in Shanghai a few months ago. On his reading stand he keeps a copy of Four Hundred Million Customers. 'No other book, ' he said, 'including many more contemporary works on the Chinese economy, provides as much insight into the business environment I face. And it helps me keep my sense of humor as I face the frustrations of doing business in China.' No need to repeat the wonderful stories and phrases found in the book. Enjoy.
-- from the Introduction by Ezra F. Vogel

In late 1940, General Vasilii Chuikov was sent by the Soviet government to China to serve as chief military adviser to General Chiang Kaishek, head of the Nationalist government. China was still fighting alone against Japan after more than three years of war. It was Chuikov's task to oversee the provision of Soviet military aid to Chiang's armies, and to press the Chinese leadership toward a more aggressive resistance to the Japanese. Chuikov arrived with experience, as he had studied Chinese as an officer cadet and had been twice sent to China on missions in the 1920s.

Chuikov's evaluation of the Chinese Army was much more positive than that of American and British observers of the time. While he recognized problems in the highly politicized senior command, he commended the fighting spirit of the junior officers and the enlisted men. Chuikov not only saw Nationalist China as unconquerable; he also believed that the Nationalists were capable of sustained offensive operations against the Japanese. From his field inspections, he offers professional assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese army and he subjects a number of major engagements fought in 1941 to close analysis.

Chuikov's memoir ranges widely. He portrays in sharp outline the Nationalist military elite, he memorably describes life in the wartime capital of Chungking, and he writes vividly of his travels through rural China. On his return to the Soviet Union in 1942, Chuikov was assigned command of the 62nd army, and made his name as the victor of Stalingrad.

This perceptive and keenly observed memoir, written by one of the great commanders of the Second World War, is suffused with deep sympathy for the Chinese people in their resistance struggle.

The Exile: Portrait of an American Mother is Pearl S. Buck's intensely moving memoir of her mother, Caroline (Carrie) Stulting Sydenstricker, who set off to China as the bride of a zealous Presbyterian missionary in 1880. She would spend the rest of her life there, enduring a harsh, isolated existence in the poor, hostile interior of China. She struggled to keep her family safe and healthy, her first three children dying young and the fourth, Pearl, narrowly escaping the same fate. Carrie's husband was often far away preaching, and, even when at home, he was a distant figure whose singular focus on the Work brought hardship to the family. With courage and determination, Carrie persisted, successfully raising the family and administering to the Chinese in practical, informal ways.

Buck wrote a draft of The Exile immediately after her mother's death in 1921, pouring her raw emotions into this heroic, loving portrait. However, the book was not published until January, 1936. It was such a critical and popular success that Buck immediately set to writing a companion biography of her father, Fighting Angel, which was published later that year to similar acclaim. When, in 1938, Pearl S. Buck became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it was not only for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China but also for her biographical masterpieces.

As well as being a beautifully written account of a dramatic life, The Exile reveals Buck herself more deeply than in her other works, showing the profound influence her mother had on Buck's life and her novels.

Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul is Pearl S. Buck's profoundly touching memoir of her zealous Southern Presbyterian missionary father, Absalom Sydenstricker. Andrew (as he is called in the book) set off for China in 1880 and spent most of the next half century there until his death in 1931. From isolated settlements in the poor, hostile interior, he made long preaching trips through lands convulsed by famine, banditry, and revolution.

Sydenstricker was a tragic Captain Ahab figure whose life's work brought only a trickle of converts. His battles against church authorities - he was ahead of his time in wanting local Christians to be given greater power and in pushing for vernacular Chinese texts - meant ostracism by his colleagues and superiors. Above all, his fanatical devotion brought death and suffering to his family.

Fighting Angel, which was published in late 1936, is a companion biography to Buck's loving portrait of her mother, The Exile: Portrait of an American Mother, published earlier that year. Both books won great popular and critical success. When, in 1938, Pearl S. Buck became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it was not only for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China but also for her biographical masterpieces. Fighting Angel is a more balanced biography and the superior of the pair. In fact, in her acclaimed Burying the Bones, Pearl biographer Hilary Spurling ranks Fighting Angel after The Good Earth as probably the best book Pearl ever wrote, praising the memoir for its combination of cool, sharp, scrutinizing intelligence and passionate emotion.

Everlasting Empire (Yongwonhan chekuk) is a Korean historical novel written as a murder mystery. The narrator frames the main story with his discovery of a 150-year-old manuscript. Because of problems verifying the authenticity of the manuscript, the narrator offers the book not as genuine history but as a story. This compelling tale is set at a pivotal moment in Korean history, when the nation's last strong king was attempting to consolidate the authority of the monarchy against the dangerous encumbrance of bureaucratic factional infighting and when Western ideas were beginning to infiltrate Korea. It is an absorbing account of life at a Confucian court. The original Korean edition (1993) was a bestseller in Korea, selling more than one million copies. In was published in French translation (2000) and was made into a feature length film which collected six prestigious Grand Bell Awards.

Yi In-hwa] has achieved a goal that eludes most authors of historical fiction: He has created a tale so plausible that it can almost pass for the work of a historian rather than a novelist. Even though the events that form the core of his novel did not actually take place -- they could have. This novel is] more than just a riveting work of fiction ... it also ... opens a window into the turbulent world of Chosen dynasty politics, in which political disagreements often had deadly consequences.

. . . Yi In-hwa has captured the rivalries, cruelty, and treachery on Chongjo's Seoul with a vividness equaled by few historical records or even historians' reconstructions. If one of the goals of the study of history is, and I believe it is, to open doors into the past so that we step back in time and experience the world of our predecessors on this planet, Everlasting Empire is an effective door opener. I recommend it to anyone who wants to experience political intrigue on the Korean peninsula two centuries ago.
from the Introduction by Don Baker

Canadian John Groot's walk around the entire coastline of Taiwan takes us through bustling cities, fishing ports, rural villages, military sites, and magnificent coastal scenery for a unique, intimate look at the country.

Groot first came to Taiwan in 2001, fell in love with the island and its friendly people, and decided to stay. Years later, looking for a big adventure and a way to forge deeper bonds to his adopted home, he set off on foot from Tamsui, traveling clockwise around the island on weekends and holidays, in what would turn out to be an eight-year trek.

Taiwanese Feet recounts this remarkable journey with honesty, warmth, and a zest for life. And great humor too. This is much needed as Groot braves sinister tunnels, crumbling cliffside trails, packs of stray dogs, long dull slogs under sweltering skies, and massive plates of sashimi.

The book is unpretentious, casual yet informed. The island's geological history is explained as Groot walks through diverse landforms. The travelogue also shows us Taiwan off the beaten path and introduces us to an unexpected and heart-warming cross-section of Taiwanese society.

What's more, it reveals in terms of history, culture, commerce, and temperament, how much Taiwan is a maritime nation. Taiwan's strategic location on China's doorstep has seen numerous foreign powers competing through the centuries for control over the island, and Groot unearths the fascinating stories of these struggles.

Taiwanese Feet is sure to become a travel classic and inspire readers to hit the road and explore Taiwan.

The Final Struggle shows, using the regime's own words, how Beijing's aspirations aren't regional-they're global, with grave implications not only for democracy, but for the centuries-old principle of national sovereignty.

-Matt Pottinger

The Chinese government has a sinister secret. And it's hiding in plain sight. Drawing from internal military documents and never-before-seen writings and speeches by Xi Jinping, The Final Struggle takes readers inside Beijing's shadowy halls of power to reveal the plans, intentions, and operations of the most powerful - and covert - political organization in the world.

For decades the economic rise of China has been paired with an insistence from the government in Beijing that theirs would be a peaceful rise; that other countries had nothing to fear from China. The democratic world has been largely content to accept those promises, as cheap manufactured goods and huge profits for Western elites flowed out of China. In truth, leaders from Deng Xiaoping onward have been biding their time as China's power grew.

Today a strengthened, emboldened Chinese Communist Party is dropping the act. Chairman Xi Jinping has amassed more power than any leader since Mao Zedong, and his officials openly proclaim their intention to change the world, subvert democratic norms and instill their own brand of autocratic control. In a nutshell: to remake the world in China's image, something Xi refers to as the final struggle.

The arenas the CCP seeks to control include global manufacturing, currency markets, finance, trade, security, food production and distribution, human rights, health, counter-terrorism, human rights, strategic resources, and more. Taken together this amounts to nothing less than a desire for global domination, a desire the Party has already started to make a reality. Deeply researched and engagingly written, The Final Struggle is an urgent call to understand Beijing's true intentions, and to act before it's too late.

Korea was discovered by the West after World War II when it became a flashpoint in the Cold War. Before the war, however, it was home to many hundreds of Westerners who experienced life there under Japanese colonial rule. These included missionaries who opened Korea as a field for evangelism, education, and medicine; speculators who risked much and reaped riches from mining concessions; and diplomats who tried to keep them neutral, even as the Japanese forced them out of business on the eve of the Pacific War.

In the first part of the book, the author reconstructs the foreign community and highlights the role of Americans in particular as participants in Korean history, bringing vividly to life the lives and suffering and triumphs of the expatriate community in Korea, especially the missionaries. In the second part of the book, the author presents the altered circumstances of American military occupation after 1945 and the consequences of the Americans' assuming a role not unlike the one that had been played earlier by the colonial Japanese.

By telling the lives and experiences of Westerners, the author highlights the major historical events of modern Korean history. Accounts of foreigners in the Independence Movement and during the period of militarization in the 1930s shed new light on what Japanese colonial rule meant to the Korean people. Similarly, Western experiences in Korea in the 1940s amount to a commentary on the way Korea was divided and the events that led inexorably to the ordeal of the Korean War.

The stories recounted in this extraordinary book, highlighted by more than sixty photographs, are a valuable commentary on Korea's early modernization and the consequences of the Korean War as it set the stage for Korea's relations with the world in the late twentieth-early twenty-first centuries.

Korea was discovered by the West after World War II when it became a flashpoint in the Cold War. Before the war, however, it was home to many hundreds of Westerners who experienced life there under Japanese colonial rule. These included missionaries who opened Korea as a field for evangelism, education, and medicine; speculators who risked much and reaped riches from mining concessions; and diplomats who tried to keep them neutral, even as the Japanese forced them out of business on the eve of the Pacific War.

In the first part of the book, the author reconstructs the foreign community and highlights the role of Americans in particular as participants in Korean history, bringing vividly to life the lives and suffering and triumphs of the expatriate community in Korea, especially the missionaries. In the second part of the book, the author presents the altered circumstances of American military occupation after 1945 and the consequences of the Americans' assuming a role not unlike the one that had been played earlier by the colonial Japanese.

By telling the lives and experiences of Westerners, the author highlights the major historical events of modern Korean history. Accounts of foreigners in the Independence Movement and during the period of militarization in the 1930s shed new light on what Japanese colonial rule meant to the Korean people. Similarly, Western experiences in Korea in the 1940s amount to a commentary on the way Korea was divided and the events that led inexorably to the ordeal of the Korean War.

The stories recounted in this extraordinary book, highlighted by more than sixty photographs, are a valuable commentary on Korea's early modernization and the consequences of the Korean War as it set the stage for Korea's relations with the world in the late twentieth-early twenty-first centuries.

As a field of scholarly research, Sino-Japanese studies has grown considerably over the past twenty years, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Joshua Fogel, the editor of this and two previous EastBridge volumes on the subject. Where once this emerging field may have been viewed, usually disparagingly, as a limp appendage of either Chinese or Japanese studies, it has now more or less carved out a space of its own.

The essays in this final volume of the trilogy are selected from the best work that previously appeared in the periodical Sino-Japanese Studies on the intellectual and literary relations between China and Japan between the 17th and 20th centuries, all revised to varying degrees by their authors. It is hoped that the increased exposure of republication in book form will help fuel the movement to take seriously the commitment to Chinese and Japanese studies simultaneously.