Biographies, at least in English, about Japanese who played key roles in the Second World War are relatively rare. Chiang Kai-shek, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin—each the subject of dozens of biographies—have all attracted a great deal of attention.. General Tojo Hideki, Japan’s leader for most of the war, has however had only several books dedicated to him. For the leader of an empire that held Manchuria in its grip, overran much of China, occupied French Indochina, and seized throughout Southeast Asia the colonies of the Americans, British, and Dutch before going down in defeat, this relative lack of attention is remarkable.
Dan Wang’s Breakneck opens with an assertion that will immediately ring true with many observers of both China and the United States: despite their ongoing sparring, “no two peoples are more alike than Americans and Chinese”.
The volume presents a set of keywords and concepts embedded in the languages of South Asia and its vast cultural landscape. It reiterates specific attitudes, ways of seeing and methods of doing, which are embedded in the historical and contemporary experiences in the region. The words, concepts, ideas and attitudes in this volume explore the contexts of their production and how their meanings might have changed at different historical moments. The volume also attempts to work out if these words and concepts can infuse a certain intellectual rigor to reinvent social sciences and humanities in the region and beyond.
Delhi is haunted—by its ghosts, its ruins, and its unending capacity for rebirth. In the shadow of medieval mosques and Mughal tombs, the past refuses to stay buried. Saints, Sultans, poets, and lovers—all linger in the city’s imagination, their stories shaping how we remember what once was.
Yumiko Kurahashi (1935-2005) is celebrated as a pivotal female writer in Japan’s growing post-war break with literary tradition. Informed by European writers and philosophers of the 1950s and 1960s, “third wave” writers in post-war Japan—Kobo Abe, Kenzaburo Oe, Minako Oba, Meiko Kanai and dozens of others labeled experimentalists, avant-garde, and absurdists—were interested in the metaphysical, the existential, and the intertextual, rather than depicting the real world. Kurahashi’s work embodies all of these.
Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait in 1983, of an Iraqi-German mother and a Palestinian-Lebanese father, whose own mother, a Christian, was displaced to Beirut at the formation of Israel. He was raised between various countries, including Jordan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Before he published his first novel he worked as an aid worker with Doctors Without Borders in conflict zones from Yemen to Syria and Iraq. He is also queer. Various biographical strands thus combine to make him more qualified than most to explore the maxim: the personal is political.
Arguing for the importance of taking Japanese political thought seriously, this book is the first to bring together authoritative essays by world experts on the thinkers who shaped Japan’s New Left movement. In doing so, it demonstrates the distinctiveness and significance of Japanese left-wing thought, providing an invaluable resource for students of 20th-century radical politics.
A book that attempts to tell the story of one of the world’s largest and most complex islands across vast spans of time—from deep geological history to the urgent pressures of the present—Olivier Hein’s Borneo: The History of an Enigma announces its ambition from the first pages. Such scale is risky: many books with grand reach end up flattened by their own seriousness. Hein avoids that fate. What emerges instead is a work of remarkable clarity and narrative energy, one that wears its scholarship lightly and reads with the confidence of a storyteller who knows exactly where he is taking you.
Artificial Intelligence in Our Language Learning Classrooms brings together leading researchers and practitioners exploring the pedagogical, ethical, and emotional dimensions of generative AI (GenAI) in second language (L2) education. Across two major sections (L2 skill development and broader educational perspectives), contributors offer theory-informed and practice-oriented insights into how GenAI can transform language teaching and learning. Topics include conversational AI and chatbots, writing development, extensive reading, pragmatics instruction, ethics, emotions, and teacher-led inquiry. Through a balance of optimism and critical reflection, this volume situates AI integration within established educational frameworks, supporting teachers as they navigate the rapidly evolving technological landscape.
The name Jodhpur itself conjures for many the full colour of the Raj at its height: polo grounds and palaces, and impeccably-tailored riding trousers—jodhpurs—a word exported into the English language. In Peter Vacher’s richly-illustrated and deeply-researched book, that familiar imagery is joined by something less-widely appreciated but no less consequential: aviation. The result is a book that reveals how a princely desert state became one of the most important air hubs in Asia between the World Wars, and later a critical node in the Allied war effort in South-East Asia.
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