On 6 February 1945, just three days after the US army started to fight the Japanese in the city of Manila, General Douglas MacArthur declared that “Manila had fallen.” In truth, the battle would take another month, as US forces fought their way through block after block. By the end of the battle, which featured some of the most intense urban fighting faced by the US army, Manila was in ruins, the old walled city of Intramuros was flattened, and 100,000 Filipino civilians were dead.
The author, a former president of Army Women’s Welfare Association in India, explores the layered nature of grief in military families, especially for children, through The Memory Tree, a three-book series for ages 5–13. Designed to support children who have lost a parent in the uniformed services, the series employs twelve short stories and related activities to offer comfort, hope, and resilience—helping young readers, and the adults around them, navigate healing, remembrance, and an enduring sense of love.
The lives of those impacted by the British Empire were complex, deeply intertwined, and, as Julia Stephens describes, transcend boundaries. The lives of the generations that follow the initial immigrants are varied and pluralistic, so they can no longer fit the identities their forefathers held.
Those who know other volumes in the “History in Objects” series from Thames & Hudson and the British Museum will find much that is familiar in this latest one on Japan: a wide and often eclectic collection of objects well-displayed on pages balanced with bite-sized yet informative blocks of text.
This groundbreaking study examines the poetry of Yang Mu, a pivotal Taiwanese writer who used Chinese literary forms to challenge Sinocentric narratives during Taiwan’s White Terror and democratization. Drawing on postcolonial theory and close reading, it explores his poetic use of ambivalence, mimicry, and minor narrative to resist cultural hegemony and reclaim historical memory.
Few institutions in India have shaped the imagination of the nation as profoundly as the railways. Rahul Bhattacharya’s Railsong places this vast network of tracks, workshops, stations and employees at the centre of a sweeping narrative that follows one woman’s life alongside the evolving story of modern India. Moving from the decades after Independence to the politically charged early 1990s, the novel traces how personal journeys and national history travel along the same lines.
More than technology or trade, even more than defense, all societies need food, and agriculture is thus a vital hinge of power. Such is the focus of Nahoko Uehashi’s three-volume fantasy novel Kokun: The Girl from the West, the first volume of which has recently appeared in an English translation by Cathy Hirano.
The story of Rapa Nui, better known as Easter Island, contains all the irresistibly exotic ingredients of a compelling story: Thor Heyerdahl’s daring voyages, mystical origin myths, Spanish conquistadores, scholarly rivalries, rumours of ritualised sexuality, and the brooding presence of monumental stone statues. For two centuries these ingredients have fed an extraordinary range of theories, speculations, and fantasies about one of the world’s most isolated islands.
On 6 September 2018, India’s Supreme Court ruled that Section 377, a law that criminalized consensual homosexual activity, was unconstitutional, reversing an earlier decision from 2013. Both news headlines and LGBT activists hailed the decision as a major step forward for same-sex rights in India.
Diplomats, soldiers, and spies tend to take centre stage in stories of war, as author and former journalist Evelyn Iritani writes in her history of the United States and Japan in the Second World War. In this book, the author tells a tale of civilians, rather than one of military men, a tale of victims, rather than one of perpetrators.
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