China Books

(For this item please quote stock ID 8456) ISBN: 9780921463474

(For this item please quote stock ID 9149) ISBN: 9780208022875

(For this item please quote stock ID 14613) ISBN: 9781740593595

Mongolia, a country that evokes romantic curiosity on the part of Western readers, has emerged from its former Soviet cocoon. It has achieved independence, democracy, and a twenty-first-century market economy. This book provides factual information about Mongolia and new ways of looking at a historical figure, Genghis Khan, whose ideals of nationhood and democratic principles are in practice now. Modern Mongolia is unique in providing multiple perspectives - Mongolian and American, scholarly and less formal - about the country's developments in a readable style, richly illustrated with 120 full-color contemporary and archival photographs, both scenic and artifactual. The first chapter provides an overview of Mongolian geography and history to the twentieth century and the author's personal experience as a teenager during the 1989-90 democratic revolution. Chapter two, by a Mongolian historian, recounts the exciting changes from Manchu Dynasty feudal society and autonomous theocracy to Communist nationhood and, finally, full independence as a democratic nation. The third chapter, by a cultural historian, describes the effects of historical changes on the daily life of Mongolian nomad - their clothing, family dwellings (gers), and furnishings. Chapter four, by an American political anthropologist, shows the connection between modern Mongolians' devotion to democracy and the political ideas of Genghis Khan. Readers of all ages seeking an accessible and picturesque presentation of Mongolian history and society will find Modern Mongolia a fascinating introduction. Paula L.W. Sabloff, a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsyvlania, is a political anthropologist who has conducted research and published on Mexico, the U.S., and Mongolia. (For this item please quote stock ID 17869) ISBN: 9780924171918

~From Genghis Khan to the arid wastes of the Gobi desert, from being the Soviet Union?s most Stalinist satellite to the first Asian communist country to embrace democracy, Mongolia has always been an area of mystery and dread to westerners. Studied in school as part of the core world history curriculum, the Mongol Empire once stretched across Asia from the Pacific Ocean to Kiev and Baghdad. In modern times, interest in Mongolia has been suddenly sparked by the opening up of the country after 70 years of isolation in the Communist bloc.

~Encyclopedia of Mongolia & the Mongol Empire is the first comprehensive A-to-Z encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongols. It provides up-to-date, accurate, and readable entries on all aspects of this people?s turbulent history and rich culture, from prehistory to modern times. While particular emphasis is placed on the Mongol Empire, entries cover the country?s entire history and range from geography to culture and religion to personalities, battles, daily life, and folklore. Major entries are accompanied by a further reading list to guide readers to selected resources for more in-depth research. This volume is a great first stop for research on Mongolia as well as a valuable reference for those wishing to expand their knowledge of a region that is, to most Westerners, exotic and relatively unknown. (For this item please quote stock ID 23161) ISBN: 9780816046713

(For this item please quote stock ID 10809) ISBN: 9780937321065

[Indent] In the thirteenth century, under the leadership of Genghis Khan, nomadic horsemen burst out of Mongolia and began their sweep across Asia, creating the largest empire the world has ever known. Particularly in China and Iran (Persia), the results were far-reaching: the Mongols imposed enormous changes but were also influenced by the highly developed civilisations of their new subjects. During the century they ruled Iran - the period of the Ilkhanid dynasty (1256 to 1353) - the Mongols adopted Islam and sponsored a brilliant cultural flowering that encompassed many branches of the arts and transformed local Persian artistic traditions. This splendid volume, which focuses on the Ilkhans and their culture, features some 200 extraordinary objects in colour, including manuscript paintings and illuminations, ceramic tiles, metalwork, and textiles. Essays by eight eminent scholars provide the historical and political background and address such subjects as the art of the book, religious art, and the transmission of designs across Asia. (For this item please quote stock ID 19179) ISBN: 9780300096910

[Indent] This is an ethnographic study of a community of Mongolian herders who have been undergoing dramatic environmental and social transformations since 1980. It provides a rare window of observation into a fascinating and important, though remote and relatively understudied, region of modern China, and documents some of the unintended harmful consequences of decollectivisation and economic development. Initially, the book presents a case study of land degradation and shows how competing social and cultural forces at the local, national, and international level actively shape that process. More broadly, it focuses on local experiences of modernisation and the ways that marginalised people creatively appropriate alien technologies to serve their own ethnic identity and cultural renewal. The book aims to deepen our understanding of environmental change as a social process by exploring significant tensions between such symbolic dichotomies as Chinese/Mongol, farmer/herder, private/collective, development/conservation, Western/Asian, and scientific/indigenous. It argues that the reconstruction of local landscape cannot be separated from the social context of economic insecurity and political fear, nor from the cultural context of group identity and environmental symbolism. Ideologically informed perceptions of the land prove to be highly relevant in both shaping and contesting international development agendas, national grassland policies, and the daily practices of local production. In presenting the full range of material and symbolic stakes now in play on the Chinese grasslands, the book demonstrates that human-land interactions involve social dimensions on a global scale of widely underestimated complexity. Throughout, the author draws from his extensive fieldwork to enrich his study with poignant (and sometimes humorous) anecdotes and biographical sketches. (For this item please quote stock ID 19229) ISBN: 9780804742788

'By far the best modern narrative account of the most extensive land empire in the history of the world. It is the ideal introduction to the field.' - David Morgan, author of The Mongols The Mongol conquests, culminating with the invasion of Europe in the middle of the thirteenth century, were of a scope and range never equaled. These nomadic peoples from central Asia briefly held sway over an empire that stretched across Asia to the frontiers of Germany and the shores of the Adriatic. Surprisingly little has been written on this vast and immensely influential empire, known chiefly through the charismatic leaders, Chingis Khan and Kublai Khan. J. J. Saunders's landmark book, first published in 1972, is a carefully documented introductory history of the rise and fall of the great Mongol empire. Saunders sets the historical stage with a discussion of nomad groups and cultures at the dawn of the second millennium, and then traces the rise of the Mongol conquests through the earlier Turkish expansion into Asia between the eighth and twelfth centuries. Beginning in the early 1200s, the Mongols led by Chingis Khan began their insatiable assault on all the kingdoms and peoples around them, erasing whole cities, killing entire populations, forcing mass migrations, and permanently changing the distribution of the world's major religions. The Mongols were finally checked along the edges of Europe and forced out of the Middle East by rejuvenated Muslim factions. As Saunders concludes, one of the major legacies of the Mongol conquests was the transfer of intellectual and scientific primacy of the Old World from Islamic societies to Western Europe, paving the way for the Renaissance. J. J. Saunders was Reader in History at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He is author of A History of Medieval Islam. (For this item please quote stock ID 18957) ISBN: 9780812217667

This adaptation of what is recognised today as the oldest Mongolian text (written two decades after Chingis Khan`s death) tells the Mongols` own version of the origin of their nation, the life of Chingis Khan, and the creation of an empire that stretched across Eurasia in the 13th century. Adapted from Francis Woodman Cleaves` erudite translation, it is presented here as a narrative poem in colloquial English. An overview of medieval Asia, maps, lineage charts, a glossary of proper names, and a bibliography are included. This expanded edition includes a 17th-century account of Chingis Khan`s death and a recent essay by the author. (For this item please quote stock ID 8829) ISBN: 9780887272998