Asia Audiobooks | History

Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

"Rahul Pandita was fourteen years old when he was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family. They were Kashmiri Pandits- the Hindu minority within a Muslim-majority Kashmir that was by 1990 becoming increasingly agitated with the cries of ?Azaadi? from India. Our Moon Has Blood Clots is the story of Kashmir, in which hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits were tortured, killed and forced to leave their homes by Islamist militants and to spend the rest of their lives in exile in their own country. Rahul Pandita has written a deeply personal, powerful and unforgettable story of history, home and loss."

Rahul Pandita (Author), Shirshendu Banerjee (Narrator)

Audiobook

Planning Democracy: How a Professor, an Institute, and an Idea Shaped India: How a Professor, an Ins

"India's Five-Year Plans were one of the developing world's most ambitious experiments. After nearly two centuries of colonial rule, planning the economy was meant to be independent India's route from poverty to prosperity. Planning Democracy explores how India married liberal democracy to a socialist economy. Planning not only built India's data systems, it even shaped the nature of its democracy. The Five-Year Plans loomed so large that they linked surprisingly far-flung contexts-from computers to Bollywood to Hindutva. In this compelling history, Nikhil Menon brings the world of planning to life through the intriguing story of a gifted scientist known as the Professor, a trail-blazing research institute in Calcutta, and the alluring idea of 'democratic planning'. Set amidst global conflicts and international debates, Menon reveals how India walked a tightrope between capitalism and communism. Planning Democracy recasts our understanding of the Indian republic, uncovering how planning came to define the nation and revealing the ways in which it continues to shape our world today"

Nikhil Menon (Author), Shahzad Bhiwandiwala (Narrator)

Audiobook

[Marathi] - Bangladeshi Ghuskhori बांगलादेशी घुसखोरी: The biggest threat to India's security भारताच्

"The idea of a separate state for Muslims in India, known as Pakistan, was first proposed by the President of the Muslim League, Muhammad Iqbal, in 1930. Jinnah, Bhutto, Mujibur Rahman further advocated for this concept. Since 1945, there has been an ongoing plan to unite Assam with Muslim-majority areas to form East Bengal. In 1941, Savarkar directed the attention of his leaders to this region, but everyone approached it with caution. Over the years, there have been repeated infiltrations by Bengali nationals. The leaders only viewed this area from a political perspective and paid little attention to the people. Apart from electoral considerations, they did not see anything significant. Brigadier Hemand Mahajan has provided a detailed analysis of all these issues in his book on the infiltrations in Bangladesh. वायव्य भारतात मुस्लिमाबद्दल राज्य असावे ही कल्पना मुस्लीम लीगचे अध्यक्ष महम्मद इक्बाल ह्यांनी 1930 मध्ये मांडली. जिना, भुतो, मुजिबुर रेहमान यांनी ही कल्पना पुढे येण्यास हातभार लावला. 1945 पासूनच आसामला मुस्लिमबद्दल बहुल करून पूर्व बंगालशी जोडण्याची योजना कार्यरत आहे. 1941 मध्ये सावरकरांनी या कारस्थानाकडे आपल्या नेत्यांचे लक्ष वेधले. पण सर्वांनी याकडे जाणीवपूर्वक दुर्लक्ष केले. वर्षेच्या वर्षे लोटली पर बांगला देशीयांची घुसखोरी चालूच राहीली. वाढत गेली. याकडे फक्त राजकीय दृष्टीने पाहिले गेले. आपल्या नेत्यांना मतपेटीशिवाय काही दिसतच नाही.या सर्व समस्येचे सखोल विश्‍लेषण ब्रिगेडिअर हेमंत महाजन यांनी आपल्या बांगलादेशी घुसखोरी या पुस्तकात केले आहे."

Br. Hemant Mahajan (Author), Savita Mhaskar (Narrator)

Audiobook

Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor

"A gripping, behind-the-scenes account of the personalities and contending forces in Tokyo during the volatile decade that led to World War II, as seen through the eyes of the American ambassador who attempted to stop the slide to war. In 1932, Japan was in crisis. Naval officers had assassinated the prime minister and conspiracies flourished. The military had a stranglehold on the government. War with Russia loomed, and propaganda campaigns swept the country, urging schoolchildren to give money to procure planes and tanks. Into this maelstrom stepped Joseph C. Grew, America’s most experienced and talented diplomat. When Grew was appointed ambassador to Japan, not only was the country in turmoil, its relationship with America was rapidly deteriorating. For the next decade, Grew attempted to warn American leaders about the risks of Japan’s raging nationalism and rising militarism, while also trying to stabilize Tokyo’s increasingly erratic and volatile foreign policy. From domestic terrorism by Japanese extremists to the global rise of Hitler and the fateful attack on Pearl Harbor, the events that unfolded during Grew’s tenure proved to be pivotal for Japan, and for the world. His dispatches from the darkening heart of the Japanese empire would prove prescient—for his time, and for our own. Drawing on Grew’s diary of his time in Tokyo as well as U.S. embassy correspondence, diplomatic dispatches, and firsthand Japanese accounts, Our Man in Tokyo brings to life a man who risked everything to avert another world war, the country where he staked it all—and the abyss that swallowed it. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook."

Steve Kemper (Author), Dan Woren (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition

"For readers of Caste and Radical Dharma, an urgent call to action to end caste apartheid, grounded in Dalit feminist abolition and engaged Buddhism. "Dalit" is the name that we chose for ourselves when Brahminism declared us "untouchable." Dalit means broken. Broken by suffering. Broken by caste: the world's oldest, longest-running dominator system...yet although "Dalit" means broken, it also means resilient. Despite its ban more than 70 years ago, caste is thriving. Every 15 minutes, a crime is perpetrated against a Dalit person. The average age of death for Dalit women is just 39. And the wreckages of caste are replicated here in the U.S., too--erupting online with rape and death threats, showing up at work, and forcing countless Dalits to live in fear of being outed. Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan puts forth a call to awaken and act, not just for readers in South Asia, but all around the world. She ties Dalit oppression to fights for liberation among Black, Indigenous, Latinx, femme, and Queer communities, examining caste from a feminist, abolitionist, and Dalit Buddhist perspective--and laying bare the grief, trauma, rage, and stolen futures enacted by Brahminical social structures on the caste-oppressed. Soundararajan's work includes embodiment exercises, reflections, and meditations to help readers explore their own relationship to caste and marginalization--and to step into their power as healing activists and changemakers. She offers skills for cultivating wellness within dynamics of false separation, sharing how both oppressor and oppressed can heal the wounds of caste and transform collective suffering. Incisive and urgent, The Trauma of Caste is an activating beacon of healing and liberation, written by one of the world's most needed voices in the fight to end caste apartheid."

Thenmozhi Soundararajan (Author), Thenmozhi Soundararajan (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Artisans: A Vanishing Chinese Village

"Born in Shen Village in Southeast China, Shen Fuyu grew up in a family of farmers. Years later, Shen, now a writer, returned to his hometown to capture the village's rich history in the face of industrialization. Through his own childhood memories and those of his ancestors, Shen resurrects the working life of Shen Village through interlinked stories of fifteen artisans as their lives intersect over the course of a century. While Shen's view of his hometown and his heritage is tinged with nostalgia, he does not romanticize it. Nor does he sugarcoat the backbreaking difficulty of life in rural China, but he still captures its small satisfactions and joys of loving one's work with a great deal of care. In a work that swings from poignancy to comedy, Shen evokes the spirits of these workers—a bamboo-weaver and his beloved bull, a carpenter's magical saw, the deserter who became the village lantern-maker and a rebellious woman who beats up her own kidnapper. A reflection on the vicissitudes of small-town life during the epic shift from agricultural to industrial civilization, The Artisans vividly details the hardships, friendships, and communal mythmaking of a disappearing community."

Shen Fuyu (Author), P.J. Ochlan (Narrator)

Audiobook

How China Escaped the Poverty Trap

"How can poor and weak societies escape poverty traps? Political economists have traditionally offered three answers: 'stimulate growth first,' 'build good institutions first,' or 'some fortunate nations inherited good institutions that led to growth.' Yuen Yuen Ang rejects all three schools of thought and their underlying assumptions: linear causation, a mechanistic worldview, and historical determinism. Instead, she launches a new paradigm grounded in complex adaptive systems, which embraces the reality of interdependence and humanity's capacity to innovate. Her analysis reveals two broad lessons on development. First, transformative change requires an adaptive governing system that empowers ground-level actors to create new solutions for evolving problems. Second, the first step out of the poverty trap is to 'use what you have'—harnessing existing resources to kick-start new markets, even if that means defying first-world norms. Bold and meticulously researched, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap opens up a whole new avenue of thinking for scholars, practitioners, and anyone seeking to build adaptive systems."

Yuen Yuen Ang (Author), Catherine Ho (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Mughal Empire: The History of the Modern Dynasty that Ruled Much of India Before the British

"In the late 15th century, Western Europe entered the Renaissance, which is often credited with the origins of modern, scientific thought. The Age of Exploration also began around that time, and 1517 is when the Reformation began. Meanwhile, the Islamic world was also quickly evolving around the same time, with the Ottoman Empire expanding into Eastern Europe and wiping the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire off the face of the map. And while the Ottomans were establishing themselves as the premier Islamic power with the help of early gunpowder weapons, hundreds of miles away in Central Asia, another “gunpowder empire” was forming. The Mughals, a group with Turkish and Mongolian roots, also used gunpowder weapons to sweep into northern India, topple the existing Islamic dynasty in Delhi, and eventually subject most of India to their rule. The term “gunpowder empire” was originally coined by Russian scholar V. V. Bartold and popularized by American historians William McNeil and Marshall Hodgson in the mid-20th century to describe the Islamic Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires, which they claimed came to power through gunpowder. Although that core thesis has been challenged by historians in recent years, who argue that gunpowder weapons were a feature or result of the rise of these empires, not the cause for them, the term is still used (Streusand 2011, 3). To be fair, the Mughals rose through a combination of political acumen and battlefield brutality, and they held onto their empire for hundreds of years in much the same way. In the process, the Mughals developed a state that was unique in many ways, adopting elements of Islamic culture and meshing them with native Indian culture and even Western European culture. When the British conquered India in the mid-19th century, they had the benefit of inheriting the Mughal system, which, despite many problems, proved to be a suitable template for rule over a land as vast and diverse as India."

Charles River Editors (Author), Kc Wayman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912

"When Emperor Meiji began his rule in 1867, Japan was a splintered empire dominated by the shogun and the daimyos, cut off from the outside world, staunchly antiforeign, and committed to the traditions of the past. Before long, the shogun surrendered to the emperor, a new constitution was adopted, and Japan emerged as a modern, industrialized state. Little has been written about the strangely obscured figure of Meiji himself, the first emperor ever to meet a European. But now, Donald Keene sifts the available evidence to present a rich portrait not only of Meiji but also of rapid and sometimes violent change during this pivotal period in Japan's history. In this vivid and engrossing biography, we move with the emperor through his early, traditional education; join in the formal processions that acquainted the young emperor with his country and its people; observe his behavior in court, his marriage, and his relationships with various consorts; and follow his maturation into a 'Confucian' sovereign dedicated to simplicity, frugality, and hard work. We witness Meiji's struggle to reconcile his personal commitment to peace and his nation's increasingly militarized experience of modernization. Emperor of Japan conveys in sparkling prose the complexity of the man and offers an unrivaled portrait of Japan in a period of unique interest."

Donald Keene (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Narrator)

Audiobook

At War With The Wind: The Epic Struggle With Japan's World War II Suicide Bombers

"In the last days of World War II, a new and baffling weapon terrorized the United States Navy in the Pacific. To the sailors who learned to fear them, the body-crashing warriors of Japan were known as 'suiciders'; among the Japanese, they were named for a divine wind that once saved the home islands from invasion: kamikaze. Told from the perspective of the men who endured this horrifying tactic, At War with the Wind is the first book to recount in nail-biting detail what it was like to experience an attack by Japanese kamikazes. Born of desperation in the face of overwhelming material superiority, suicide attacks—by aircraft, submarines, small boats, and even manned rocket-boosted gliders—were capable of inflicting catastrophic damage, testing the resolve of officers and sailors as never before. David Sears's gripping account focuses on the vessels whose crews experienced the full range of the kamikaze nightmare. From carrier USS St. Lo, the first US Navy vessel sunk by an orchestrated kamikaze attack, to USS Henrico, a transport ship that survived the landings at Normandy only to be sent to the Pacific and struck by suicide planes off Okinawa, and USS Mannert L. Abele, the only vessel sunk by a rocket-boosted piloted glider during the war, these unforgettable stories reveal one of the most horrifying and misunderstood chapters of World War II."

David Sears (Author), David Stifel (Narrator)

Audiobook

Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA's Covert War in China

"In the winter of 1952, at the height of the Korean War, the CIA flew a covert mission into China to pick up an agent. Trained on a remote Pacific island, the agent belonged to an obscure anti-communist group known as the Third Force based out of Hong Kong. The exfiltration would fail disastrously, and one of the Americans on the mission, a recent Yale graduate named John T. Downey, ended up a prisoner of Mao Zedong's government for the next twenty years. Unraveling the truth behind decades of Cold War intrigue, John Delury documents the damage that this hidden foreign policy did to American political life. The US government kept the public in the dark about decades of covert activity directed against China, while Downey languished in a Beijing prison and his mother lobbied desperately for his release. Mining little-known Chinese sources, Delury sheds new light on Mao's campaigns to eliminate counterrevolutionaries and how the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party used captive spies in diplomacy with the West. Agents of Subversion is an innovative work of transnational history, and it demonstrates both how the Chinese Communist regime used the fear of special agents to tighten its grip on society and why intellectuals in Cold War America presciently worried that subversion abroad could lead to repression at home."

John Delury (Author), Lee Goettl (Narrator)

Audiobook

[Spanish] - El antiguo Japón: Un apasionante repaso a la historia del Japón antiguo, desde el period

"¿Sabía que la primera novela del mundo fue producida por una mujer de la nobleza japonesa? En la antigüedad, los japoneses dependían de los caracteres chinos (kanji) para escribir todo tipo de documentos y manuscritos, desde cartas oficiales hasta registros de censos y poesía. Solo durante el periodo Heian (794-1185 de la era cristiana) empezaron a crear su propio sistema de escritura, conocido hoy como kana. La historia del antiguo Japón está repleta de interesantes acontecimientos en los que intervinieron muchas figuras influyentes y legendarias. Sin embargo, algunos de los relatos también estaban impregnados de mitos japoneses, lo que podría dificultar a los lectores curiosos la distinción entre hechos y leyendas. Esto es solo una pequeña parte de lo que descubrirá: - Cómo el periodo Jomon se ganó su nombre y los impresionantes diseños de la primera cerámica japonesa. - Cómo llegó el cultivo del arroz a Japón y la transición a una sociedad más civilizada. - El legendario reino de Yamatai y su ascenso al poder. - Las tumbas kofun de aspecto único y las leyendas que hay detrás de las personas que están enterradas en ellas. - Las guerras y los asesinatos de poderosos personajes de la corte imperial. - Mitos interesantes y los orígenes del sintoísmo, una religión autóctona japonesa. - La floreciente cultura y arquitectura del antiguo Japón y la llegada del budismo. - Los sangrientos conflictos entre los dos primeros clanes de samuráis. - ¡Y mucho, mucho más! ¡Adquiera ahora este libro para saber más sobre el antiguo Japón!"

Enthralling History (Author), Carlos Verne (Narrator)

Audiobook

Asia Audiobooks in History