This is the first of two semi-autobiographical novels written originally in English which depict Chang's childhood years in Tianjin and Shanghai. The book introduces a young girl growing up amid many family entanglements with her divorced mother and spinster aunt during the 1930s.
The Pagoda in the Gardenis a novel about how things changed and how they stayed the same over the course of the twentieth century. Set in England during three distinct time periods between 1901 and 1975, the novel explores the lives of three sets of characters, the major ones being expatriate Americans. The reader meets a master novelist, his acolyte (herself later a master), and her lover; a divorced novelist on the verge of middle-age and the Canadian of indeterminate age who flirts with her; a graduate student at King's College and her English lover. Since the various characters occupy roles that parallel and overlap each other, history (a history that ranges from the death of Queen Victoria to the end of the Vietnam War) comes to seem continuous and cyclical as well as catastrophic and disrupted. Paying acknowledged tribute to the work of Henry James (the title alludes to a passage inThe Golden Bowl),The Pagoda in the Gardenis above all a novel about human emotions and the sometimes fraught, sometimes amusing complications they give rise to.
In this, the second book published by Leonaur on the barely reported First Anglo-Burmese War, the author-a staff officer-who was an eyewitness to most of the major events, gives us an incisive overview of the whole war. This provides the reader with a unique insight into the actions of the various troops during the course of the campaign. However it is the author's descriptions of pitched battles against a richly caparisoned foe-including everything from umbrella bearing generals and war elephants to "invincibles" and Amazons-that bring this exotic and spectacular conflict vividly to life. Re-living this war from just one step away, whether witnessing fighting in jungle stockades or experiencing river actions against Burmese war boats, will remain with and intrigue all who are interested in the British in the East.
This text aims to provide insights into the daily lives of people of the traumatized and often forgotten land of Burma, through personal contacts over a wide range of Burmese society, in urban centres, monasteries and hilltribe villages.
Poetry. "In these incisive poems, Susan Tichy explores Vietnam - the war and the country. She has a keen eye, and her perceptual clusters are widened and deepened by sharp moments of recognition. 'Someone had drawn red circles / where his eyes would be,' she writes of a man who begs on the steps of a pagoda. Just as the circles 'make a place to look,' so these poems make a haunting place from which to see" - Arthur Sze. "Language tracks loss, both personal and cultural, making of her poetics the discovery of 'truth in ash'" - Michael Heller. Susan Tichy teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at George Mason University, and when she is not teaching, she lives in a ghost town in the Colorado Rockies.
For the first time, the women who are legends in the world of journalism talk about professional and personal experiences as young reporters who lived, worked, and loved surrounded by war. These stories not only introduce a remarkable group; they give an entirely new perspective on the most controversial war in our history.
Weaving together the uneasy meeting of two cultures, The Pagoda Tree is a captivating story of love, loss and fate. Tanjore, 1765. Maya plays among the towering granite temples of this ancient city in the heart of southern India. Like her mother before her, she is destined to become a devadasi, a dancer for the temple. She is instructed in dance, the mystical arts and lovemaking. It is expected she will be chosen as a courtesan for the prince himself. But as Maya comes of age, India is on the cusp of change and British dominance has risen to new heights. The prince is losing his power and the city is sliding into war. Maya is forced to flee her ancestral home, and heads to the bustling port city of Madras, where East and West collide. Maya captivates all who watch her dance. Thomas Pearce, an ambitious young Englishman who has travelled to India to make his fortune, is entranced from the moment he first sees her. But their love is forbidden, and comes at enormous cost. 'Claire Scobie's seductive prose and immaculate layering of period detail capture India at her most exotic.' Susan Kurosawa 'Women's stories are rarely told in history, nor particularly honoured. The Pagoda Tree offers a powerful, sensual perspective on a time of great transformation in India.' Sarah Macdonald, author of Holy Cow 'A rich and enthralling story handled with great skill by someone with a profound understanding of her material.' David Roach, screenwriter and film director 'A richly textured tale full of the sights, sounds and smells of India, with all its complex beauty and troubled history … ' Sydney Morning Herald 'A novel to be savoured … Its layering, the unravelling of the story, the subtext of the fortunes made and lost on cotton and silk, the evocative descriptions of saris themselves are all part of [its] tapestry.' The Age '[The Pagoda Tree] offers new ways of seeing the past.' Canberra Times 'Scobie's prose is eloquent … a fascinating, unique plot representing an interesting era in [India's] history.' The Mercury 'A story told with great panache.' Country Style 'Claire Scobie travels a vast and exotic terrain in her first novel.' Weekly Review 'This first novel by Claire Scobie would make a spectacular film.' Goodreading Magazine 'A nuanced and sophisticated exploration of the socio-historical realities that are inevitable when cultures collide.' The Hoopla
“The eyewitness accounts of the many phases of the war in this memoir bring events to life as if they had happened yesterday” (Vietnam Veterans of America Book Reviews). On the Frontlines of the Television War is the story of Yasutsune “Tony” Hirashiki’s ten years in Vietnam—beginning when he arrived in 1966 as a young freelancer with a 16mm camera, but without a job or the slightest grasp of English, and ending in the hectic fall of Saigon in 1975, when he was literally thrown on one of the last flights out. His memoir has all the exciting tales of peril, hardship, and close calls of the best battle memoirs, but it is primarily a story of very real and yet remarkable people: the soldiers who fought, bled, and died, and the reporters and photographers who went right to the frontlines to record their stories and memorialize their sacrifice. If this was truly the first “television war,” then it is time to hear the story of the cameramen who shot the pictures and the reporters who wrote the stories that the average American witnessed daily in their living rooms. An award-winning sensation when it was released in Japan in 2008, this book has been completely recreated for an international audience. “Tony Hirashiki is an essential piece of the foundation on which ABC was built . . . Tony reported the news with his camera and in doing so, he brought the truth about the important events of our day to millions of Americans.” —David Westin, former President of ABC News
An anthology of 50 classic war novels with an active table of contents to make it easy to quickly find the book you are looking for.Works include:The Airlords of Han by Philip Francis NowlanAlroy by Benjamin DisraeliAmong the Pines by James R. GilmoreBear Trap by Alan Edward NourseThe Big Time by Fritz Reuter LeiberThe Black Arrow by Robert Louis StevensonBreed Nor Birth by Dallas McCord ReynoldsThe Chainbearer by J. FENIMORE COOPERComing Home by Edith WhartonDangerous Days by Mary Roberts RinehartThe Destroyers by Gordon Randall GarrettFinished by H. Rider HaggardFor the Temple by G. A. HentyThe Gods are Athirst by Anatole FranceThe Green Beret by Thomas Edward PurdomGreenmantle by John BuchanThe Highest Treason by Randall GarrettIn the Track of the Troops by R.M. BallantyneJimmie Higgins by Upton SinclairThe Kangaroo Marines by R. W. CampbellLa Vendée by Anthony TrollopeThe Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come by John Fox, Jr.The Long Roll by Mary JohnstonMemoirs of a Cavalier by Daniel DefoeMistress Wilding by Rafael SabatiniMorale by Murray LeinsterMr. Midshipman Easy by Frederick MarryatMr. Standfast by John BuchanOkewood of the Secret Service by Valentine WilliamsOn the Irrawaddy by G. A. HentyOne Man's Initiation--1917 by John Dos PassosOne of Ours by Willa CatherThe Pathfinder by James Fenimore CooperPaths of Glory by Irvin S. CobbPushbutton War by Joseph P. MartinoThe Red Badge of Courage by Stephen CraneRemember the Alamo by Amelia E. BarrRide Proud, Rebel! by Andre Alice NortonSea Warfare by Rudyard KiplingShock Absorber by E.G. von WaldThe Spy by James Fenimore CooperSt. Elmo by Augusta J. EvansSword and the Atopen by Taylor H. Greenfield
Winner of the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography 2016 Frederick Hamiton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, enjoyed a glittering career which few could equal. As Viceroy of India and Governor-General of Canada, he held the two most exalted positions available under the Crown, but prior to this his achievements as a British ambassador included restoring order to sectarian conflict in Syria, helping to keep Canada British, paving the way for the annexation of Egypt and preventing war from breaking out on India's North-West Frontier. Dufferin was much more than a diplomat and politician, however: he was a leading Irish landlord, an adventurer and a travel writer whose Letters from High Latitudes proved a publishing sensation. He also became a celebrity of the time, and in his attempts to sustain his reputation he became trapped by his own inventions, thereafter living his public life in fear of exposure. Ingenuity, ability and charm usually saved the day, yet in the end catastrophe struck in the form of the greatest City scandal for forty years and the death of his heir in the Boer War. With unique access to the family archive at Clandeboye, Andrew Gailey presents a full biography of the figure once referred to as the 'most popular man in Europe'.