Asia Audiobooks | History

Whisky Rising: The Definitive Guide to the Finest Japanese Whiskies and Distillers

"Whisky Rising: The Second Edition is the most up-to-date, comprehensive resource on Japanese whisky. This fully updated guide by whisky authority and Japanese whisky expert Stefan Van Eycken takes you on a tour of some of the most coveted whiskies in the world. Japanese whiskies have become some of the most highly valued whiskies, and have bested traditional producers in major international competitions. Blending proven Scotch and American methods with new ideas, these whiskies are imbued with exotic flavors from local Japanese woods to make a unique and signature product that rings true to Japanese terroir. This revised edition features new craft distilleries, putting a spotlight on their stories, their distillery set ups, and philosophies. Inside you'll find: - Fascinating interviews and profiles with the most celebrated distillers and blenders, updated to include new competitors in the Japanese whisky world - An insider's guide to the best whisky bars - How to drink whisky properly - Delicious cocktail recipes - Tasting notes and reviews of the best Japanese whiskies Shedding light on Japan's most famous blends, its unique whisky culture, and history, Eycken takes you to the heart of Japanese whisky making. Find out why, when it comes to whisky, all eyes are on Japan with Whisky Rising: The Second Edition. Tables, figures, and extensive reference material can be found in the audiobook companion PDF download."

Jim Meehan, Stefan Van Eycken (Author), Gary Furlong (Narrator)

Audiobook

Gamble in the Coral Sea: Japan's Offensive, the Carrier Battle, and the Road to Midway

"The opening salvos of the Battle of the Coral Sea were fired one month before Midway. Gamble in the Coral Sea recounts the story of this battle from the Japanese point of view. Based on extensive Japanese-language sources, author Michal A. Piegzik challenges established Western narratives surrounding this critical engagement in the Pacific War. Operation MO, the Japanese plan to seize Port Moresby, kicked off in May 1942. The operation was considered a vital part of Japanese strategy. Victory would isolate Australia and New Zealand and extend access to vital resources crucial to Japan's war effort. Victory would prove elusive after American codebreakers deciphered Japanese radio traffic that revealed their plans in the weeks leading up to the launch. U.S. forces located elements of the Japanese navy as they steamed through the Coral Sea. Soon after, history's first carrier battle began. Piegzik combines expertise in military history with mastery of the Japanese language to provide a rare perspective on the Imperial Japanese Navy's operational choices. Piegzik offers insight into the broader consequences of the battle. He engages with sources previously underexplored and integrates them with Allied perspectives. Gamble in the Coral Sea offers a nuanced exploration of a battle that shaped the trajectory of the war in the Pacific."

Michal A. Piegzik (Author), Rick Adamson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Splendid Liberators: Heroism, Betrayal, Resistance, and the Birth of American Empire

"This immersive epic reveals the origins of the American empire and the lives of those who promoted it and those who resisted it. In 1898, the United States won an empire, and—many allege—lost its soul. In Splendid Liberators, Joe Jackson offers an epic narrative of the Spanish-American War, the world-spanning conflict during which the United States freed Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spanish control only to confront resistance and resentment. The acclaimed author of Black Elk, Jackson brings the times to full, teeming life via portraits of the many leading characters—from the impetuous warrior Teddy Roosevelt, the prophetic Cuban revolutionary José Martí, and the Philippines’ dignified first president, Emilio Aguinaldo, to the Red Cross’s Clara Barton and the foe of empire Mark Twain. He ranges from the heroic theaters of San Juan Hill and Manila Bay to disease-wracked camps in Florida and Cuba where soldiers died en masse and to the White House and halls of Congress, where America’s leaders overcame enduring reluctances to seize an overseas dominion. He also follows the exploits of the legendary African American soldier David Fagen, who joined the rebels of the Philippines and fought his compatriots, and the swashbuckling Colonel Fred Funston, who was dispatched into the jungle to hunt him down. Overturning familiar scripts, Splendid Liberators is the first work of narrative nonfiction to look at this far-flung war through American, Cuban, and Filipino eyes, and to gauge the consequences and costs of America's first major imperial adventure. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux"

Joe Jackson (Author), Jonathan Davis (Narrator)

Audiobook

Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism

"By the canons of orthodox social science, countries like India are not supposed to have an environmental consciousness. They are, as it were, 'too poor to be green.' In this deeply researched book, Ramachandra Guha challenges this narrative by revealing a virtually unknown prehistory of the global movement set far outside Europe or America. Long before the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and well before climate change, ten remarkable individuals wrote with deep insight about the dangers of environmental abuse from within an Indian context. In strikingly contemporary language, Rabindranath Tagore, Radhakamal Mukerjee, J. C. Kumarappa, Patrick Geddes, Albert and Gabrielle Howard, Mira, Verrier Elwin, K. M. Munshi, and M. Krishnan wrote about the forest and the wild, soil and water, urbanization and industrialization. Positing the idea of what Guha calls 'livelihood environmentalism' in contrast to the 'full-stomach environmentalism' of the affluent world, these writers, activists, and scientists played a pioneering role in shaping global conversations about humanity's relationship with nature. Spanning more than a century of Indian history, and decidedly transnational in reference, this book offers rich resources for considering the threat of climate change today."

Ramachandra Guha (Author), Neil Shah (Narrator)

Audiobook

Yoga as Embodied Resistance: A Feminist Lens on Caste, Gender, and Sacred Resilience in Yoga History

"What does yoga have to do with caste, gender, and power? This groundbreaking work explores how yoga can be a vital path to resistance, agency, and collective liberation. Yoga as Embodied Resistance illuminates the essential-but often unseen-relationships between caste and gender in yoga. Bridging scholarship, history, and cultural analysis, yoga educator and practitioner Anjali Rao exposes how caste oppression, patriarchy, and colonization impact contemporary practice, and offers readers radical ways to re-envision a yoga grounded in liberation, inquiry, discernment, and even dissent. Rao calls upon us to realize the work of co-creating a compassionate and courageous world, uplifting the stories of women and gender-expansive people who confront caste and gender dominance. The stories, or kathas, reflect different parts of yoga history from the Upanishads, the Puranas, and the Bhakti renaissance-and highlight the seismic shifts in consciousness about the potential of spiritual teachings for social change. She explores: - Foundational histories of yoga, caste, and Hinduism - The tensions among yoga, nationalism, anticolonialism, and Indigeneity - The impacts and intersections of yoga, gender, caste, and culture - Brahminical appropriation and its relationship to eros, spirituality, and loving devotion - Sanskritization, vernacularization, and the impact of patriarchy on bodily expression - Bhakti as a subversive tool of personal agency and anticolonial resistance With provocative chapters like "Is Yoga Hindu?" and a foreword from Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Rao's work is both an invitation and a force of nature that lights up the path of yoga toward brighter, just, and more liberated futures."

Anjali Rao (Author), Deepti Gupta (Narrator)

Audiobook

Driven by the Monsoons: Through the Indian Ocean and the Seas of China

"The Silk Road may be one origin of globalization, but the Indian Ocean is another. Barry Cunliffe examines the beginning of maritime trade using the evidence of archaeology and the tales of great travelers such as Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, and the Chinese Admiral, Zheng He. This story complements that of the land routes, showing how humans have been driven across thousands of years to create and maintain networks whatever the difficulties. Driven by the Monsoons illuminates maritime connections between the Indian Ocean and its surrounding water routes: the Arabian Gulf and the Red and China Seas. It begins with the movement of humans into South-East Asia and ends about 1600 CE when European companies emerge to takeover. It is tale of exotic goods, material needs, adventure, and desire. While conditions at sea and the abilities of the maritime communities provided a degree of stability, the direction and intensity of trade and the types of commodities on the move was determined by the fortunes and aspirations of distant empires, those of China in the east and South-West Asia and the Mediterranean in the west. This ever-changing pressure provided the dynamic situation in which society and economies in East Africa, India, and South-East Asia flourished. Driven by the Monsoons explores the birth of the modern, connected, world."

Barry Cunliffe (Author), Keval Shah (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Short History of Japan

"Brought to you by Penguin. In this enormously enjoyable introduction to a remarkable country, Christopher Harding traces Japan's rich history over several millennia. Beginning with its earliest coastal communities through to the spread of Buddhism, the rise of the warlords, the promise and menace of the West and Japan's own empire-building, Harding explores how a distinctly Japanese society and culture was forged. Drawing on the latest scholarship, A Short History of Japan moves beyond traditional tourist-board clichés to consider Japan's own view of its past, values and culture, from ceramics and theatre to food and architecture. The result is a sensory, tactile history, where the reader experiences all the pleasures of a visit to Japan: a bolt of silk or a warm bowl of ramen; the feel and scent of tatami underfoot; the warmth of slipping into a hot spring bath. Harding skilfully shows how these everyday details are intimately bound up with the bigger historical picture, as an expression of the values that have been extraordinarily successful in helping the country to cope with centuries of radical change. 'A history that somehow manages to be at once succinct and sweeping: essential reading for anyone interested in this most fascinating of countries' - Tom Holland © Christopher Harding 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025"

Christopher Harding (Author), Christopher Harding (Narrator)

Audiobook

Bomb Season in Jakarta

"In the history of Australian diplomacy, the Jakarta post between 2004 and 2007 looms larger than any other. In the span of just a few years, a terrorist bomb attack partially destroyed the Embassy compound, killing eleven; the Boxing Day tsunami wreaked havoc on an almost incomprehensible scale; a bombing in Bali killed twenty, including four Australians; Schapelle Corby divided public opinion; members of the Bali Nine were executed; and a Garuda flight crashed and exploded in Yogyakarta, killing twenty, including members of the Australian diplomatic corps. Not only did Grant Dooley bear witness to these events, but he was also a first responder in the Embassy bombing and plane crash. And when he wasn't dealing with emergencies and constant terror threats, he had to delicately manage the nation's political leaders, from Alexander Downer to John Howard to Bronwyn Bishop. Somehow, Grant and his wife, Kristan, who worked on the consular staff, kept it all together for themselves and their young family. Or did they? Bomb Season in Jakarta is an incredible up close and personal account of an unparalleled period in Australian diplomacy."

Grant Dooley (Author), Dan Garlick (Narrator)

Audiobook

Command of Commerce: America's Enduring Economic Power Advantage over China

"The conventional wisdom has held that China's economic power is very close to America's and that Washington cannot undertake a broad economic cutoff of China without hurting itself as much, or more. In Command of Commerce, Ben A. Vagle and Stephen G. Brooks show the conventional wisdom is wrong on both fronts. The authors argue that America's economic power has been underestimated because conventional economic measures have ignored America's unprecedented control over the world's largest multinational corporations. They further argue that China's economic power has been overestimated due to Beijing's manipulation of its economic data and measurement issues presented by China's uniquely structured economy. The authors also show Washington could impose massive, disproportionate harm on Beijing if it imposed a broad economic cutoff on China in cooperation with its allies or via a distant naval blockade. Across six scenarios, China's short-term economic losses from a broad cutoff range from being five to eleven times higher than America's. And in the long run, America and almost all its allies would return to previous economic growth levels; in contrast, China's growth would be permanently degraded."

Ben A. Vagle, Stephen G. Brooks (Author), Jonathan Strait (Narrator)

Audiobook

Hicky's Bengal Gazette: The Untold Story of India's First Newspaper

"Hicky's Bengal Gazette is the story of India's first newspaper and its pivotal role in exposing the corruption of the British imperialist project. The story opens in late-eighteenth century Calcutta. The British are well-ensconced in Bengal but the Raj has yet to emerge. Irishman, James August Hicky, arrives in Calcutta as a surgeon's mate, seeking his fame and fortune. He soon finds himself in debtors' prison, however, and it's while in jail that he first acquires the printing press that sets him on a collision course with the British East India Company. Sensing a business opportunity, Hicky established the first newspaper in South Asia but quickly became committed to the freedom of the press at great personal cost. His Gazette exposed corruption in the East India Company and embezzlement in the Christian Church, making himself two powerful enemies in the process: Johann Zacharias Kiernander, an influential missionary and Warren Hastings, the Governor General. Staunchly anti-war and anti-colonialist, Hicky's Bengal Gazette was known for its provocative content. Trials, prison time, and assassination attempts follow before Hicky dies mysteriously on a boat to China. His legacy in India endures to this day through the vibrant, modern media landscape."

Andrew Otis (Author), Nas Mehdi (Narrator)

Audiobook

Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses

"The second volume in a prize-worthy two-book series based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors about each of the atomic bomb drops, first in Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, that hastened the end of the Pacific War. On August 6, 1945, the United States unleashed a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen. Then, just three days later, when Japan showed no sign of surrender, the United States took aim at Nagasaki. Rendered in harrowing detail, this historical narrative is the second and final volume in M. G. Sheftall's series Embers. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing hibakusha-the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors. These last living witnesses are a vanishing memory resource, the only people who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in their cities before the use of nuclear weaponry. The result is an intimate, firsthand account of life in Nagasaki, and the story of incomprehensible devastation and resilience in the aftermath of the second atomic bomb drop. This blow-by-blow account takes us from the city streets, as word of the attack on Hiroshima reaches civilians, to the cockpit of Bockscar, when Charles Sweeney dropped "Fat Man,' to the interminable six days while the world waited to see if Japan would surrender to the Allies--or if more bombs would fall."

M. G. Sheftall (Author), Brian Nishii (Narrator)

Audiobook

Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future

"Brought to you by Penguin. From an indispensable voice on China, comes a riveting, first-hand account of China's seismic progress For close to a decade, Dan Wang has been observing China’s tumultuous and astounding growth. The state has constructed towering bridges, gleaming railways and sprawling factories to improve economic outcomes in record time. But rapid change has also sent ripples of pain throughout society. China has grown so quickly in part by beating America at its own game: capitalism and harnessing the restless energy of a vast population. Here Wang blends political and economic analysis with reportage into a provocative new framework for understanding China – one that helps us see America more clearly, too. Whereas China is an engineering state, relentlessly building big, the United States has transformed into a lawyerly society, stalling every attempt to make change, both good and bad. As relations between the US and China are tense and uncertain and the potential for dreadful conflict looms, Wang offers an inventive new way of thinking about the two superpowers. Breakneck reveals that each country points towards a better path for the other. How much better the world would be, he argues, if Americans could live in a society not only governed by lawyers, and Chinese citizens could live with a state that values their individual liberties. © Dan Wang 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025"

Dan Wang (Author), Kevin Shen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Asia Audiobooks in History