Biographies & Memoirs | Memoirs | Personal Memoirs
Biographies & Memoirs | Humanitarians
Asia; Pakistan; Afghanistan; Girl's Schools; Humanitarian assistance from Americans

This is the astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard.

Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea  combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.

Greg Mortenson was born Dec. 27, 1957 to Lutheran missionary parents in St. Cloud, Minnesota (USA).  Through the leadership of the Lutheran Church, Mortenson's father was a fundraiser for and development director of the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, Tanzania's first teaching hospital. Mortenson's mother was the founding principal of International School Moshi. Greg spent his early childhood and adolescence in Tanzania, East Africa, where he learned to speak Swahili fluently.  In the early 1970s, when Greg was 15 years old, the family left Tanzania and moved back to Minnesota. Greg attended high school in Roseville, Minnesota, and after high school served in the United States Army in Germany from 1975 to 1977 as a Medic and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. Following his discharge, Greg attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota from 1977 to 1979 on an athletic (football) scholarship. Greg graduated from the Univ. of South Dakota in 1993 with a Bachelor’s Degree in liberal studies and an associate's degree in nursing. Greg is co-founder and executive director of the non-profit Central Asia Institute as well as the founder of the educational charity Pennies for Peace. He is co-author of  Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time  which remained on the New York Times non-fiction best seller list for four years.  He also is author of Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Written in China over two thousand years ago, Sun Tzu's The Art of War  provides the first known attempt to formulate a rational basis for the planning and conduct of military operations. These wise, aphoristic essays contain principles acted upon by such twentieth-century Chinese generals as Mao Tse Tung. Samuel Griffith offers a much-needed translation of this classic which makes it even more relevant to the modern world. Including an explanatory introduction and selected commentaries on the work, this edition makes Sun Tzu's timeless classic extremely accessible to students of Chinese history and culture, as well as to anyone interested in the highly volatile military and political issues in present day China. 

In his breakout bestseller, The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger created "a wild ride that brilliantly captures the awesome power of the raging sea and the often futile attempts of humans to withstand it" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, Junger turns his brilliant and empathetic eye to the reality of combat--the fear, the honor, and the trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. Through the experiences of these young men at war, he shows what it means to fight, to serve, and to face down mortal danger on a daily basis.

Business & Investing | International
History | Asia | China
Nonfiction | Transportation | Aeronautics
Aeronautics (Commercial); The aerospace industry as it pertains to China

More than two-thirds of the new airports under construction today are being built in China. Chinese airlines expect to triple their fleet size over the next decade and will account for the fastest-growing market for Boeing and Airbus. But the Chinese are determined to be more than customers. In 2011, China announced its Twelfth Five-Year Plan, which included the commitment to spend a quarter of a trillion dollars to jump-start its aerospace industry. Its goal is to produce the Boeings and Airbuses of the future. Toward that end, it acquired two American companies: Cirrus Aviation, maker of the world’s most popular small propeller plane, and Teledyne Continental, which produces the engines for Cirrus and other small aircraft.
 
In China Airborne, James Fallows documents, for the first time, the extraordinary scale of this project and explains why it is a crucial test case for China’s hopes for modernization and innovation in other industries. He makes clear how it stands to catalyze the nation’s hyper-growth and hyper-urbanization, revolutionizing China in ways analogous to the building of America’s transcontinental railroad in the nineteenth century. Fallows chronicles life in the city of Xi’an, home to more than 250,000 aerospace engineers and assembly workers, and introduces us to some of the hucksters, visionaries, entrepreneurs, and dreamers who seek to benefit from China’s pursuit of aerospace supremacy. He concludes by examining what this latest demonstration of Chinese ambition means for the United States and the rest of the world—and the right ways to understand it.

To what extent did America’s best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail? Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Steve Coll recounts the history of the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks. Based on scrupulous research and firsthand accounts by key government, intelligence, and military personnel both foreign and American, Coll details the secret history of the CIA’s role in Afghanistan, the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of bin Laden, and the failed efforts by U.S. forces to find and assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.

From the author of the #1 bestseller Three Cups of Tea, the continuing story of this determined humanitarian's efforts to promote peace through education

In this dramatic first-person narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan; his extensive work in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan after a massive earthquake hit the region in 2005; and the unique ways he has built relationships with Islamic clerics, militia commanders, and tribal leaders even as he was dodging shootouts with feuding Afghan warlords and surviving an eight-day armed abduction by the Taliban. He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women-all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort.

Since the 2006 publication of Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson has traveled across the U.S. and the world to share his vision with hundreds of thousands of people. He has met with heads of state, top military officials, and leading politicians who all seek his advice and insight. The continued phenomenal success of Three Cups of Tea proves that there is an eager and committed audience for Mortenson's work and message.

A New York Times Notable Book

Winner of the Kiriyama Book Prize

In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the complex processes of understanding that take place when one is immersed in a radically different society.

Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.

In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered--a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written what will surely be the definitive history of this horrifying episode. The Rape of Nanking tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Among these was the Nazi John Rabe, an unlikely hero whom Chang calls the "Oskar Schindler of China" and who worked tirelessly to protect the innocent and publicize the horror. More than just narrating the details of an orgy of violence, The Rape of Nanking analyzes the militaristic culture that fostered in the Japanese soldiers a total disregard for human life. Finally, it tells the appalling story: about how the advent of the Cold War led to a concerted effort on the part of the West and even the Chinese to stifle open discussion of this atrocity. Indeed, Chang characterizes this conspiracy of silence, that persists to this day, as "a second rape."

A Chinese American woman tells of the Chinese myths, family stories and events of her California childhood that have shaped her identity.

• Biographies & Memoirs | Ethic & National
• History | Asia | Vietnam
• History | Military | Vietnam War

Winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize.  New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Winner of the Whiting Writers' Award. Seattle Post-Intelligencer Best Book of the Year.

Catfish and Mandala  is the story of an American odyssey—a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam—made by a young Vietnamese-American man in pursuit of both his adopted homeland and his forsaken fatherland.

Andrew X. Pham was born in Vietnam and raised in California. His father had been a POW of the Vietcong; his family came to America as "boat people." Following the suicide of his sister, Pham quit his job, sold all of his possessions, and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert, around a thousand-mile loop from Narita to Kyoto in Japan; and, after five months and 2,357 miles, to Saigon, where he finds "nothing familiar in the bombed-out darkness." In Vietnam, he's taken for Japanese or Korean by his countrymen, except, of course, by his relatives, who doubt that as a Vietnamese he has the stamina to complete his journey ("Only Westerners can do it"); and in the United States he's considered anything but American. A vibrant, picaresque memoir written with narrative flair and an eye-opening sense of adventure, Catfish and Mandala  is an unforgettable search for cultural identity.

Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval. But wealth and position could not shield Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of a cruel and manipulative Eurasian stepmother. Determined to survive through her enduring faith in family unity, Adeline struggled for independence as she moved from Hong Kong to England and eventually to the United States to become a physician and writer.

A compelling, painful, and ultimately triumphant story of a girl's journey into adulthood, Adeline's story is a testament to the most basic of human needs: acceptance, love, and understanding. With a powerful voice that speaks of the harsh realities of growing up female in a family and society that kept girls in emotional chains, Falling Leaves is a work of heartfelt intimacy and a rare authentic portrait of twentieth-century China.

Provides a comprehensive look at both sides of the Vietnam War through a collection of personal tales and delves into the political and military events in the United States and elsewhere that originally caused the war and the brought it to an end. Reprint. TV tie-in."

From the best-selling author of Red Azalea comes extraordinary novel that tells the stirring, erotically charged story of Madame Mao Zedong--the woman almost universally known as the 'white-boned demon.' Many hold Madame Mao directly responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Anchee Min brings her lush psychological insight to bear on the facts of history, and penetrates the myths surrounding Madame Mao, providing a convincing portrait of a damaged personality.

Jiang Qing (born March 1914, died May 14, 1991) was the pseudonym used by Chinese leader Mao Zedong's last wife and major Communist Party of China power figure. She went by the stage name Lan Ping during her acting career, and was known by various other names during her life. In November 1938, she married Mao in Yan'an, and is sometimes referred to as Madame Mao in Western literature. She served as Communist China's First Lady. Jiang Qing was most well-known for playing a major role in the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and for forming the radical political alliance known as the "Gang of Four". She was named the "Great Flag-carrier of the Proletarian Culture". Jiang Qing served as Mao's personal secretary in the 1940s and was head of the Film Section of the CPC Propaganda Department in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, she made a bid for power during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), which resulted in widespread chaos within the communist party. In 1966 she was appointed deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group and claimed real power over Chinese politics for the first time. She became one of the masterminds of the Cultural Revolution, and along with three others, held absolute control over all of the national institutions. Around the time of Chairman Mao's death, Jiang Qing and her proteges maintained control of many of China's power institutions, including a heavy hand in the media and propaganda. However, Jiang Qing's political success was limited. When Mao died in 1976, Jiang lost the support and justification for her political activities. She was arrested in October 1976 by Hua Guofeng and his allies, and was subsequently accused of being counter-revolutionary. Since then, Jiang Qing and Lin Biao have been branded by official historical documents in China as the "Lin Biao and Jiang Qing Counter-revolutionary Cliques", to which most of the blame for the damage and devastation caused by the Cultural Revolution was assigned. When Jiang Qing, along with the rest of the gang, was finally arrested, many Chinese citizens rejoiced. Though initially sentenced to execution, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1983, however, and in May 1991 she was released for medical treatment. Before returning to prison, she committed suicide. This woman was driven by ambition, betrayal, and a never-to-be-fulfilled need to be loved.

This book by Anchee Min has all the compressed drama and high lyrical poetry of a great opera and is a remarkable accomplishment. Madame Mao has finally been given her own voice.

Red Azalea is Anchee Min’s celebrated memoir of growing up in the last years of Mao’s China. As a child, she was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labor collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman. Miraculously selected for the film version of one of Madame Mao’s political operas, Min’s life changed overnight. Then Chairman Mao suddenly died, taking with him an entire world. A revelatory and disturbing portrait of China, Anchee Min’s memoir is exceptional for its candor, its poignancy, its courage, and for its prose which Newsweek calls "as delicate and evocative as a traditional Chinese brush painting."

Called “one of the best epics ever written”, Tai-Pan by James Clavell (who also wrote the best-seller Shogun) is a fascinating tale of ruthless men and women in China and Hong Kong in the mid 1800s.

Tai-Pan is an engaging story about the European community in China just after the British have taken control of Hong Kong. It centers on Dirk Struan, a pirate and a smuggler; a manipulative, ruthless, shrewd, and charismatic man who happens to be the most powerful trader in Asia. Struan finds glory beyond his wildest dreams as ‘Tai-Pan’ or supreme leader of Hong Kong.

This book has intrigue, violence, romance and tragedy, which all adds flavor to this epic story of how the British controlled their first stronghold in Asia. Clavell does an amazing job of creating realistic characters and incorporating facts about that time period. He has a lot of knowledge of the culture. And despite Tai-Pan being a fictional account of that era, you’ll learn a lot about China, British trade and sailing in the 1800's just by reading this book.

The dialogue is at times witty in this thoroughly enjoyable historical novel. And the ending is totally awesome. One reader said of Tai-Pan, “It would be hard to find a book that even comes close to the grandeur of this novel.”