Asia Audiobooks | Travel

As the world evolves in increasingly unpredictable directions, one of the key determinants of the future global order will surely be the impact of China. No country and no society can escape China's reach-indeed many seek its embrace. China brings benefits to many-but it's also a problematic interlocutor for others. In China and the World, one of the world's leading China specialists David Shambaugh has assembled fifteen leading international authorities on China to create the most comprehensive and up-to-date scholarly assessment of China's foreign relations and roles in international affairs. The volume covers China's contemporary position in all regions of the world, with all major powers, and across multiple arenas of China's international interactions. It also explores the sources of China's grand strategy, how the past shapes the present, and the impact of domestic factors that shape China's external behavior. China and the World is a uniquely focused and well-organized volume that provides many insights into China's calculations and behavior, and identifies a number of challenges China will face in the future.

David Shambaugh (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Narrator)

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The First Samurai: The Life and Legend of the Warrior Rebel, Taira Masakado

Was samurai warrior Taira Masakado a quixotic megalomaniac or a hero swept up by events beyond his control? Did he really declare himself to be the New Emperor? Did he suffer divine retribution for his ego and ambition? Filled with insurrections, tribal uprisings, pirate disturbances, and natural disasters, this action-packed account of Masakado's insurrection offers a captivating introduction to the samurai, their role in tenth-century society, and the world outside the capital-a must-listen for those interested in early Japan, samurai warfare, or the mystique of ancient warriors.

Karl Friday (Author), Matt Miller (Narrator)

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This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart: A Memoir in Halves

"Wondrously and elegantly written in language that astonishes and moves the reader…This is an important book: an emotional and intellectual tour de force." -Jane Urquhart An experimental memoir about Partition, immigration, and generational storytelling, This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart weaves together the poetry of memory with the science of embodied trauma, using the imagined voices of the past and the vital authority of the present. We begin with a man off balance: one in one thousand, the only child in town whose polio leads to partial paralysis. We meet his future wife, chanting Hai Rams for Gandhiji and choosing education over marriage. On one side of the line that divides this book, we follow them as their homeland splits in two and they are drawn together, moving to Canada and raising their children in mining towns and in crowded city apartments. And when we turn the book over, we find the daughter's tale-we see how the rupture of Partition, the asymmetry of a father's leg, the virus of a mother's rage, makes its way to the next generation. Told through the lenses of biology, physics, history and poetry, this is a memoir that defies form and convention to immerse the reader in the feeling of what remains when we've heard as much of the truth as our families will allow, and we're left to search for ourselves among the pieces they've carried with them.

Madhur Anand (Author), Asha Vijayasingham, Ellora Patnaik, Raoul Bhaneja (Narrator)

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Golden Horde, The: The History and Legacy of the Mongol Khanate

While the Golden Horde technically refers to part of the Mongol Empire, today the Golden Horde is often used interchangeably with the Mongol forces as a whole. As such, the Golden Horde conjures vivid images of savage, barbarian horsemen riding across the steppes, an unstoppable force mindlessly slaughtering and burning. It is often imagined that they conquered by sheer brutality and terror, and that they epitomized everything that came from the east: uncivilized, brutal and undisciplined. This sensationalized image, impressed upon the West by Hollywood and by the perception of the “Yellow Peril” that has colored Western views toward Asia for a long time, began almost from the beginning. The Mongols treasured art and literature and protected religion, that of their subjects as well as their own, and trade, commerce, and cultural exchanges flourished under the Golden Horde and the other Mongol khanates, but that escaped the notice of their contemporaries. Giovanni de Plano Carpini, a papal envoy journeying through Russia on his way to the Khan of the Golden Horde, noted, “They [the Mongols] attacked Rus', where they made great havoc, destroying cities and fortresses and slaughtering men; and they laid siege to Kiev, the capital of Rus'; after they had besieged the city for a long time, they took it and put the inhabitants to death. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground. Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town, but now it has been reduced almost to nothing, for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery.”

Charles River Editors (Author), Colin Fluxman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Монголы. Краткая история

В период своего расцвета Монгольская империя, сформировавшаяся в XIII веке в результате завоеваний Чингисхана и его преемников, включала в себя самую большую из когда-либо существовавших единую государственную территорию, простираясь от Восточной Европы д

джордж лейн (Author), михаил росляков (Narrator)

Audiobook

Three Tigers, One Mountain

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that states, 'Two tigers cannot share the same mountain.' However, in East Asia, there are three tigers on that mountain: China, Japan, and Korea, and they have a long history of turmoil and tension with each other. In his latest entertaining and thought provoking narrative travelogue, Michael Booth sets out to discover how deep, really, is the enmity between these three 'tiger' nations, and what prevents them from making peace. Currently China's economic power continues to grow, Japan is becoming more militaristic, and Korea struggles to reconcile its westernized south with the dictatorial Communist north. Booth, long fascinated with the region, travels by car, ferry, train, and foot, experiencing the people and culture of these nations up close. No matter where he goes, the burden of history, and the memory of past atrocities, continues to overshadow present relationships. Ultimately, Booth seeks a way forward for these closely intertwined, neighboring nations. An enlightening, entertaining and sometimes sobering journey through China, Japan, and Korea, Three Tigers, One Mountain is an intimate and in-depth look at some of the world's most powerful and important countries.

Michael Booth (Author), Michael Booth (Narrator)

Audiobook

Chinese Communist Espionage: An Intelligence Primer

This is the first book of its kind to employ hundreds of Chinese sources to explain the history and current state of Chinese Communist intelligence operations. It profiles the leaders, top spies, and important operations in the history of China's espionage organs, and links to an extensive online glossary of Chinese language intelligence and security terms. Peter Mattis and Matthew Brazil present an unprecedented look into the murky world of Chinese espionage both past and present, enabling a better understanding of how pervasive and important its influence is, both in China and abroad.

Matthew Brazil, Peter Mattis (Author), David De Vries (Narrator)

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The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our W

The hidden story of the wanton slaughter -- in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world -- backed by the United States. In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful. In this bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that spans the globe. For decades, it's been believed that parts of the developing world passed peacefully into the U.S.-led capitalist system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of Washington's final triumph in the Cold War.

Vincent Bevins (Author), Tim Paige (Narrator)

Audiobook

China Cuckoo: How I Lost a Fortune and Found a Life in China

‘China Cuckoo’ is the charming true story of a witty and eccentric sinophile Englishman and his China tree-change, narrated by the author. Mark Kitto was the first westerner to return and live in Moganshan, a dilapidated, beautiful Chinese mountain village, since the original foreign residents left in 1949. In millennial Shanghai, Kitto was the creator of the ‘That's’ city magazine series, the most popular and profitable English language publications in China since the ‘North China Daily News’, the paper of record of concession-era Shanghai. The UK Financial Times described him as a ‘mini media mogul’. In 2004 he suffered the same fate as the man who built the ‘Daily News’. He lost everything to the Communist Party. Rejecting the corporate world and the glamour of Shanghai, Mark persuaded his urbane Chinese wife to make Moganshan their permanent home. With their two small children they took the bold step of moving their lives to the isolated village, taking over an old brothel to start a western style cafe. In the process the author uncovered the history of the mountain retreat; its ‘discovery’ and development by missionaries, its popularity with celebrities, drug dealers (Chinese and foreign), and its decay under the Communist regime. Funny, touching and inspiring, ‘China Cuckoo’ is a rare and intimate portrait of life in rural China through the eyes of one man who has survived house-fires, typhoons, corruption and cultural clashes. It is an illustration of past and present China’s relations with foreigners and it describes, in the words of one who has suffered and benefited from both, the risks and rewards of going ‘China Cuckoo’. Mark Kitto has also published ‘That’s China, how a British entrepreneur took on the Chinese propaganda machine’, the full story of his China publishing career, now available as an audiobook. Mark Kitto currently lives in the UK where he is an actor, narrator and editor.

Mark Kitto (Author), Mark Kitto (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World – and Globalization Began

Brought to you by Penguin. When did globalization begin? Most observers have settled on 1492, the year Columbus discovered America. But as celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen shows, it was the year 1000, when for the first time new trade routes linked the entire globe, so an object could in theory circumnavigate the world. This was the 'big bang' of globalization, which ushered in a new era of exploration and trade, and which paved the way for Europeans to dominate after Columbus reached America. Drawing on a wide range of new historical sources and cutting-edge archaeology, Hansen shows, for example, that the Maya began to trade with the native peoples of modern New Mexico from traces of theobromine - the chemical signature of chocolate - and that frozen textiles found in Greenland contain hairs from animals that could only have come from North America. Introducing players from Europe, the Islamic world, Asia, the Indian Ocean maritime world, the Pacific and the Mayan world who were connecting the major landmasses for the first time, this compelling revisionist argument shows how these encounters set the stage for the globalization that would dominate the world for centuries to come. ©Valerie Hansen 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Valerie Hansen (Author), Cynthia Farrell (Narrator)

Audiobook

Crucible of Hell: Okinawa: The Last Great Battle of the Second World War

‘Excellent’ Antony Beevor From award-winning historian Saul David, an action-packed and powerful new narrative of the Battle of Okinawa – the last great clash of the Second World War, and one that had profound consequences for the modern world. For eighty-three blood-soaked days, the fighting on the island of Okinawa plumbed depths of savagery as bad as anything seen on the Eastern Front. When it was over, almost a quarter of a million people had lost their lives, making it by far the bloodiest US battle of the Pacific. In Okinawa, the death toll included thousands of civilians lost to mass suicide, convinced by Japanese propaganda that they would otherwise be raped and murdered by the enemy. On the US side, David argues that the horror of the battle ultimately determined President Truman’s choice to use atomic bombs in August 1945. It is a brutal, heart-rending story, and one David tells with masterly attention to detail: the cramped cockpit of a kamikaze plane, the claustrophobic gun turret of a warship under attack, and a half-submerged foxhole amidst the squalor and battle detritus. The narrative follows generals, presidents and emperors, as well as the humbler experiences of ordinary servicemen and families on both sides, and the Okinawan civilians who were caught so tragically between the warring parties. Using graphic eyewitness accounts and declassified documents from archives in three continents, Saul David illuminates a shocking chapter of history that is too often missing from Western-centric narratives of the Second World War.

Saul David (Author), Saul David - Introduction, William Roberts (Narrator)

Audiobook

Three Tigers, One Mountain: A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Kor

Michael Booth (Author), Julian Elfer (Narrator)

Audiobook

Asia Audiobooks in Travel