5 books found
The first complete history of Central Eurasia from ancient times to the present day, Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian empires, including those of the Scythians, Attila the Hun, the Turks and Tibetans, and Genghis Khan and the Mongols. In addition, he explains why the heartland of Central Eurasia led the world economically, scientifically, and artistically for many centuries despite invasions by Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Chinese, and others. In retelling the story of the Old World from the perspective of Central Eurasia, Beckwith provides a new understanding of the internal and external dynamics of the Central Eurasian states and shows how their people repeatedly revolutionized Eurasian civilization. Beckwith recounts the Indo-Europeans' migration out of Central Eurasia, their mixture with local peoples, and the resulting development of the Graeco-Roman, Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations; he details the basis for the thriving economy of premodern Central Eurasia, the economy's disintegration following the region's partition by the Chinese and Russians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the damaging of Central Eurasian culture by Modernism; and he discusses the significance for world history of the partial reemergence of Central Eurasian nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Empires of the Silk Road places Central Eurasia within a world historical framework and demonstrates why the region is central to understanding the history of civilization.
Imprison'd Wranglers is the first detailed study of parliamentary speaking in its golden age at the end of the eighteenth century. The book looks closely at the physical and political conditions in which these men spoke, and the techniques they used to discredit the arguments of their opponents and to move and convince their audience in the House.
Shamus Award Winner: A disbarred American lawyer-turned-PI tracks down a killer: “Think Dashiell Hammett in Bangkok” (San Francisco Chronicle). It’s the Year of the Monkey in Bangkok. But expat Vincent Calvino’s Chinese New Year celebration has been interrupted. Thai cops have fished the body of a farang—foreign—cameraman from Lumpini Park Lake, and CNN is running dramatic footage of several Burmese soldiers on the Thailand border executing students. Calvino follows the trail of the dead man to a feature film crew, where he hits the wall of silence. On the other side of that wall, Calvino and Colonel Pratt discover an elite film unit of old Asia hands with connections to influential people in Southeast Asia. They are about to find themselves matched against a set of farangs conditioned for urban survival and willing to go for a knockout punch. “Highly recommended to readers of hard-boiled detective fiction, including series set in Bangkok (especially John Burdett’s Sonchai Jitplecheep novels) as well as the classic American tough-guy authors (Raymond Chandler or, more recently, Robert B. Parker).” —Booklist “When Americans discover Christopher G. Moore, they’re going to strip the bookstores bare of his work.”—T. Jefferson Parker