Frank Carlson Library

Japan's oldest surviving narrative, the eighth-century Kojiki, chronicles the mythical origins of its islands and their ruling dynasty through a diverse array of genealogies, tales, and songs that have helped to shape the modern nation's views of its ancient past. Gustav Heldt's engaging new translation of this revered classic aims to make the Kojiki accessible to contemporary readers while staying true to the distinctively dramatic and evocative...

For more than two hundred years after its establishment in 1392, the Chosŏn dynasty of Korea enjoyed generally peaceful and stable relations with neighboring Ming China, which dwarfed it in size, population, and power. This remarkably long period of sustained peace was not an inevitable consequence of Chinese cultural and political ascendancy. In this book, Sixiang Wang demonstrates how Chosŏn political actors strategically deployed cultural practices,...

"Finalist for the 2014 Award for Excellence in Religion in Analytical-Descriptive Studies, American Academy of Religion" "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2014" Peter van der Veer is director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany, and a Distinguished Professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. His books include Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and...

During the first four decades of the twentieth century, the British Indian Army possessed an illusion of racial and religious inclusivity. The army recruited diverse soldiers, known as the "Martial Races," including British Christians, Hindustani Muslims, Punjabi Sikhs, Hindu Rajputs, Pathans from northwestern India, and "Gurkhas" from Nepal. As anti-colonial activism intensified, military officials incorporated some soldiers' religious traditions...

The rural county of Poyang, lying in northern Jiangxi Province, goes largely unmentioned in the annals of modern Chinese history. Yet records from the Public Security Bureau archive hold a treasure trove of data on the every day interactions between locals and the law. Drawing on these largely overlooked resources, Tiger, Tyrant, Bandit, Businessman follows four criminal cases that together uniquely illuminate the dawning years of the People's Republic. Using...

[Illustrated with over one hundred maps, photos and portraits, of the battles, individuals and places involved in the Indian Mutiny]. Originally published anonymously as by a "Staff Officer", Captain Thomas Wilson's memoirs are as gripping and vivid as any that a British officer wrote of the Famous Siege of Lucknow. During the Indian Mutiny of 1857 many towns and cities were laid waste by riotous elements of the Indian Army. Many Europeans, having...

"In the summer of 1947, when the creation of the new state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people-Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs-were in flight, By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra." It is a place,...

Well travelled divers all acknowledge that the best diving in the world is found in the warm waters of tropical Bali. Bali is located in the famous "coral triangle," the center of the world's tropical marine diversity, and the island is blessed with a stunning variety of dive sites - shipwrecks, quiet black sand bays, crystalline hard coral reefs over bright white sand, lava ridges draped in gorgonians and soft coral, and current swept pinnacles,...

During the interwar period, Japanese intellectuals, writers, activists, and politicians, although conscious of the many points of intersection between their politics and those of Mussolini, were ambivalent about the comparability of Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy. In The Fascist Effect, Reto Hofmann uncovers the ideological links that tied Japan to Italy, drawing on extensive materials from Japanese and Italian archives to shed light on the formation...

This is a concise and user–friendly guide to learning basic Balinese. Everyday Balinese is targeted to anyone who wishes to learn to speak colloquial Balinese. There are 23 lessons in the book, each with a dialogue that centers around the Balinese daily life. The dialogue is presented twice: The first version representing the lumrah or common Balinese; the second the alus or refined Balinese. Both versions are exactly the same grammatically; the...