Asia Books

I like the book The Last Dragon because it has good illustrations and I like the reality in the drawing. Also I like how the story is written and I love the dragon. Also I like the emotions in the boy. In the illustrations he put in a lot of detail and shadows. I like the food because it makes me hungry. I like the Chinese names. Also I like all the stuff he put in one picture.

The illustrations brought the book to life. My favorite part was when the boy got the dragon. My favorite picture was when the dragon was used in the parade. I give this book five

The Last Dragon was a very good book. It has very good illustrations also, and the story is very good itself. It describes the pictures very well, and the pictures are very realistic. I think that this would be a good book for children 6 and up. It also tells people the history of the Chinese New Year. Also what they do at this time of the year. This was a great book!!

I have always been drawn to the Forbidden cities of the East. I now know that the fascination is shared with many. The Authors Frank and Christine Brignoli have taken me on a Journey to this part of the World thru Visually stimulating pictures and the text of this book enhances the Historical images also. All in all a very exciting book.

I found this book to be ,not only pictorialy enthralling , historically up to date. Great Book for the Traveller or History Buff.

I found myself paging thru this Masterpiece as though I were really there. What a Breathtaking City. I could actually feel the Spirit of the City through the Photographs. I have recommended this Book to all my Friends.

Professors Yamanouchi & Quinn offer a much needed corrective to the five-decade old demonization of the Japanese soldier. This evocative, poetic, and compelling collection of soldiers' letters strikes down the dusty image of Japan's warriors as mindless, unthinking fanatics. In this volume we discover an entirely new and fresh insight into the mind-set and attitudes of young sailors, soldiers, and airmen who died in the service of Japan. The reader cannot help but be impressed by the sensitivity of these young men, by their literary yearnings, by their touching hopes for their families and futures, by the lyrical portraits they paint of even the grim and dangerous settings to which the war brought them. No little debt is owed to the editors for their masterful translation of these letters into useful and understandable American idiom. This is a rare and unforgettable reading experience which illuminates once again the common threads which bind humanity.

Dr. Midori Yamanouchi's translation of this post World War II collection of letters is brilliant. The work is a deeply moving collection of diaries written by young Japanese soldiers who gave their lives in a series of battles going from China, through the Pacific to the skies closer to Japan. Many of them were cultivated young university students, full of life and dreams, reflecting on the beauty of life, the love of their families and the painful duty that was their lot. These are sad voices, the now stilled voices of tragedy. Overall, an insight into war and the human spirit that rivals such western classics as "The Red Badge of Courage" or "All Quiet on the Western Front". Generations often forget the 'sins' of the past. Reading this book - now in English - may just remind us to avoid the trajedy of war at all costs.

One of the best Pacific War stories told by the people who had to be there.
Each story captures your soul and makes you wonder why we even had to fight.
The saddest thing of all is that war still goes on somewhere in this world and that young people are still being killed just like the ones in the book.

This book must be read by as many people as possible, so perhaps we learn something and war will never start again.
I wonder when we, the human beings, will stop fighting and begin talking, negotiating...

There are books like this for the US as well as Germany soldiers. And, they are equally powerful.
It is said: People who never learn from the past will repeat the same mistakes all over again.

Ever since this book was originally published in 1949, four years after the end of the World War II, it has been one of the best sellers in Japan, even to this day.

I am so glad to find these books again. I used to check them out at our local library and they looked pretty old back then (I am almost 37!). I cannot wait to share them with my little girl, I hope she enjoys them as much as I did.

The Little Pear stories are fabulous. My four year old daughter loves them and we read them over and over. They are perfect for this age and older.

These little pear stories are just good clean fun. Not many books are written like this one these days.

Little Pear is a young chineese boy. In this chapter book he has many adventures. In these adventures he learns newthings such as ice fishing and baby sitting.

This book is a good source to balance the word and image of Islam and Muslim in the western world. Muslim is not only in Arabian peninsula or Gulf contries, in fact Indonesia is the largest muslim population in the world. Many pictures on the book can give the different side of Islam in Southeast asia. They don't speak arabic, they don't have big nose,they are short, skiny etc. I recommend this book for the people who wants to know Muslim in Southeast asia without reading a long history book.

But there is unbalance information in the book I noticed, specially information about Indonesian muslim in the introduction. Steve Raymer seems doesn't have a good source that he can get the information about Indonesian muslim. Might be because they are so many and he tries to put it in the same ammount as Malaysian which is only about 1/6 or 1/8 of Indonesian in comparison. It is best if he can consult or clarify his information with the Indonesian sociologists, historians, or scholars in order to validate the information. One of the examples is on second page, the picture doesn't not macth the note (citation). The picture is showing the people who are suplicating, is not always in arabic, but he says those people are reciting the koran. This is just small example.
I recommend people who have this book to check with the Southeast Asian people to clarify the information.
More than that, good work and well done.

As one who's lived in Southeast Asia off and on for the past seven years, the thing that strikes me about the book by Raymer are the brilliant photos, yes. But the way they are put together gives a human face to Southeast Asia's Muslim peoples. A fair and realistic look at them is refreshing in light of many Western reports that tout them all as gun-toting extremists.

Steve Raymer has done an exceptional job at capturing the humanity of Southeast Asian Muslims through the lenses of the faithful camera. The pictures are breathtakingly beautiful, while the accompanying caption and text serve as an easy-to-read commentary especially for those expecting only an excursion into the subject. His attempt at a sympathetic understanding of a culture that is relatively obscure to the average Westerner is commendable; the journalistic objectivity being a salient feature of the book.

Raymer, in my opinion, succeeded in shattering the perpetuated myth surrounding the perception of Muslims. Not only does he cogently disprove the notion of a monolithic Muslim culture across the Muslim world, but he also demonstrates the existence of diversity with which Islam is practiced in this forgotten region. The cognitive image of either a rich Middle-Easterner or a terrorist brandishing an AK-47 so often associated with Islam must now be relegated to the domain of stereotypes. The book is probably a silent apologist for the peace of Islam.

Caveat emptor for those expecting their stereotypes confirmed and prejudices accomodated; the book is sure to frustrate them.

The maxim that a picture is worth a thousand words had never been truer. The picture is now worth millions of humans.

Books on Japan that are worth reading must fulfill three criteria. They must be based on a direct access to primary sources, which presupposes a high degree of familiarity with the Japanese language and social history. They have to build upon the scholarly literature, including analysis and commentary presented by Japanese scholars. And they have to offer a theoretical perspective that is relevant to the subject under consideration.

The Logic of Japanese Politics meets these three criteria with a wide margin. Professor Curtis seems to know every major political figure firsthand and has developed with many of them a personal relationship since their rookie years as junior Diet members. As a distinguished political scientist, he brings intellectual breadth as well as historical depth to his topic, and has himself published extensively in Japanese. He is careful not to placate preconceived notions on the Japanese political system, and develops useful comparisons with politics in Europe (whereas most observers, including Japanese political actors, tend to overuse the comparison with US politics).

The 1990s was an important turning point for Japanese politics. From 1989 to 1998, Japan had nine prime ministers; there had been only eleven over the previous thirty-four years. From 1955 to 1993, only one party, the LDP, was in power at the national level. Then during one year beginning in August 1993, every party in the Diet except for the Communists participated in one coalition government or another. Among parties opposed to the LDP, affiliations were in such a flux that a number of Diet members stopped indicating their party membership on their name cards. Although the PLD's absence from power lasted for less than a year, before they returned to government in an alliance with their former arch-rival the Japan Socialist Party, the period marked a dramatic rupture in Japanese politics, with the end of the so-called '55 system and the quest for a new political landscape that took some time consolidating.

Each chapter focuses on a particular phase of this transition: the ouster of the LDP from government and its replacement by a seven-party coalition led by the charismatic prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa; the unraveling of this coalition that nonetheless achieved to pass an important electoral reform; the LDP's return to power in a coalition led first by the Socialist Party's chairman Tomiichi Murayama, then by former MITI minister Ryutaro Hashimoto; the disappointing results of the 1998 upper-house election and the appointment of Keizo Obuchi over Junichiro Koizumi as party chairman and head of government.

The result of these changes and reorganization was immobilism and confusion precisely at a time when Japan needed policy change and strategic direction in order to deal with an ailing economy. Despite the rhetoric on the need for political reform, administrative restructuring and deregulation, Curtis shows that the Japanese public felt ambivalent toward undoing the system that brought Japan its postwar success, and that the authorities delivered relatively little in terms of real departures from the past. He also castigates the Japanese's infatuation with the idea that the two-party system of Westminster democracy would magically cure Japanese politics from all its ills, arguing instead that the "rice-roots" quality of Japanese democracy is its strength rather than its weakness.

Distinctly Japanese political institutions are introduced throughout the text. The zokugiin is a Diet member who concentrates on a single issue, developing expertise and influence through his contacts with the bureaucracy and special interest representatives. The habatsu is a faction within the LDP bound together by ties of personal allegiance more than doctrinal content. The most powerful faction usually leaves the position of party president (and thus prime minister) to someone from another faction, while exercising power from the shadow through control of the post of party secretary-general and through controlling the composition of the prime minister's cabinet. The all-important secretary-general has final say on candidate nominations and is in charge of the party's funds, two sources of power that enable him both to do favors and to punish party members.

The kokutai or kokkai taisaku iinkai is a party's Diet-strategy committee that doubles the formal House Management Committee (giin unei iinkai, or giun) and that offers the channel for backroom deals between parties or for informal contacts with the bureaucracy. The innai kaiha is a parliamentary caucus that can be distinct from the political party (or parties) it supports. It came to play a critical role after the collapse of LDP one-party dominance in 1993 as politicians seeked to restructure the party system.

Detailed knowledge of the functioning of these institutions and others is important in order to understand how politicians operate within particular institutional constraints. Politics in Japan makes sense in Japanese terms, and clear reasoning can make sense of Japanese politics.

I have lived in Japan for a few years in the 1990s and have always assumed that (at least for now) the politicians there don't really matter. And compared to American politics, Japanese politics seemed dry with one party rule until 1993. But Curtis shows how exciting it all is under the surface. I read this book very slowly, wanting to absorb every detail; however, Curtis writes well and will keep you moving through the events of the 1990s.

So if you are a student of Japan and are trying to piece together some of the highlights you already know, read this book. Curtis has done us a great service.

As the title of the book suggests, there is a logic to Japanese politics, just as there is a logic, a coherence, to other social phenomena and behavior. This will no doubt disturb those students of the Asian "mind" who are prone to boil down Japanese "national character" to some sort of ahistorical essence. As Professor Curtis says, he hopes he "will leave the reader with a sense of the culture of Japanese politics. It is not a book that argues that culture explains Japanese politics." This is revisionism operating in a healthy sense. There are a couple of specific points I would like to make. In dissecting electoral reform, he does not mention recent play given to direct election of the prime minister, an idea first raised by Nakasone in the 1960s. Of course, the conservatives are betting this would benefit the election of a strong right-wing leader in the mold of Shintaro Ishihara, the present governor of Tokyo. Secondly, in speculating on the direction Japanese politics may take, he mentions only briefly what he terms the New Right and the implications for U.S.-Japan relations. The drift to the right in Japanese politics is unmistakable, which in its worst form would lead to remilitarization and indeed pose a problem for Far East security. Already, the national anthem and national flag, replete with their war-time associations, have been officially recognized. This past February both the upper and lower houses of the Diet formed committees to study revising the Constitution. The New Right, or neo-nationalists, if you will, see this as an opening for revising Article 9, the anti-war article. Just one small error to point out in a name: read Taku Yamasaki vice Yamazaki. All in all, this is a tremdously valuable study.

This is a concise but pretty good guide of Delhi, and I used it a lot during a long stay in this city, which in my opinion is much more interesting than many tourists think. The maps at the end are very useful. However, if you have to spend a good deal of time in Delhi, what you should really get is Delhi's "Eicher City Guide", which is just splendid. It's like a higher quality "eyewitness" guide of Delhi. Hundreds of excellent picture, a lot of historical information, and amazingly detailed city maps at the end. Eicher's maps cover the whole city (which is huge) and not just the tousist spots, so they can be immensely useful if you have to stay in Delhi for a long period. Eicher is unfortunately pretty old, and difficult to find in the US, but it's worth looking for it. It should not be difficult to find it in India (where it is published) for a fairly low price. My advice is to have both Eicher and the latest Lonely Planet guides.

My daughter and I referred to this book constantly during our recent travel to India. We found it to be extremely useful, full of information that we needed, without having to sift through information that we didn't need. I highly recommend this book to anyone traveling to India on a trip that includes visits to Delhi and Agra.

nother reliable guide by the folks at Lonely Planet.
The Delhi guide provides a good introduction to Delhi with a good review of history and culture.
It covers all the key highlights in the Delhi area and the places to stay and eat have good recommendations. However the restaurant, shopping and entertainment listings are a bit out of date now. It is impossible to keep listings accurate in a place as chaotic as India, where many of the best places to eat are roadside stalls. The excursions section focuses mostly on Agra and Jaipur. For someone who wants to travel around using Delhi as a base, the LP North India guidebook may be more useful as it has most of the Delhi information but includes more comprehensive material on Rajasthan and the Indian Himalayan areas. The maps are good but lack detail because most maps only show the main roads while often many interesting places are found in alleyways and small lanes. This guide ( like the LP series) is budgert minded which is a good thing but many of Delhi's better restaurants and entertainment are in the upscale hotels.
Very useful to the independent traveler who wants to spend some time in Delhi ( on a budget)

If you know where you want to go then I would agree with the above reviewer- a guidebook will tell you about nearby sites and how to get there and for that you can get by without an atlas. But for those who want to explore a particular region- how else are you going to plot an itinerary? This atlas is fully indexed by place, and also by beaches, capes & headlands, caves, forts, islands, mountians & passes, rivers, lakes, & bays, ruins and temples. And no matter how good a guidebook- only an atlas like this will assure you that you haven't missed anything of interest whereever you happen to be.

Map Scale is 4cm = 50K (1.5" = 31 miles)

For security reasons (I'm told) quality maps are not easy to find in India- and rarely for sale.

While working on an on-going university research project I have spent five years driving the back roads of India. This book has saved my sanity as well as my tires and axles. It is by far and away the most helpful road atlas available.

The maps are better than what most Indians have ever seen in their lives, which is exactly why travellers don't need it. If you are taking public transport around the country, you get plenty of information about how to go where from LP India or from information at train stations, bus stations and other travellers. It simply isn't worth the excess weight (in a rucksack). If on the other hand you are cycling or have your own motorized vehicle, this would be irreplacable (so be careful who you show it to).

Last year when we headed out to Hong Kong, I was surprised to see this food guide. Since I am very familiar with Cantonese food, I was interested to see how Hong Kong might differ from New York City, Los Angeles, or Vancouver. This guide was incredibly helpful in describing not only the different foods available in different areas but the customs of eating and what we would see. Where my husband has often considered hotel food to be surprisingly mediocre, in Hong Kong, we were told to go to hotel restaurants. The rent is so high that the restaurant's in hotels essentially are subsidized for their space and therefore some of the best dining experiences can be found in hotels. But I digress. This is not an expensive guide and definitely worth the money for the amount of familiarization it provides.

... This is an informative and enjoyable book, and lets you delve into Hong Kong culture and eating culture in a way the other books don't. The inside cover has a quick reference of several Cantonese terms in English and Chinese characters, including counting numbers and the very important "ngoh5 hei6 sou3 xig6 ge3" (I am a vegetarian). The book closes with over 50 pages of Cantonese phrases (including "I am ill", "I am pissed", "I want to throw up", and "Thank you, that was delicious"; a glossary of foods and terms; and a Hong Kong culinary dictionary (explains the main ingredients and cooking method). Each transliterated word is coded with the proper intonation, distilled into 6 basic tones. There are 200 beautifully photographed pages of places to eat (from concept to neon to mobile dai pai dong, to street restaurants); a discussion of the banquet; and analyses of staples, such as soups and noodles, rices and meats, and sauces. There are sections on shopping, picnics, utensils, medicinal foods, and "chinese table rules" (no vertical chopsticks please).

Back in 1991 I set off for a twelve-month global journey. With me I had a few essentials, money, clothes, my wife and a collection of Lonely Planet Travel Guide Books. After a few weeks in India we found that the books were as essential to our survival as food and water. We went on to use the Lonely Plant Guide Books (or the LP as we termed them) though out Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, North American, Canada and Mexico. Sometimes our travels would be so fast and furious that we would not read about our next destination until we had arrived the town's bus depot. We grew to love and trust the LP - it never let us down. As you might imagine I was therefore thrilled to receive their latest departure in to travel writing "World Food Hong Kong ". Furiously I dived in to its pages. When I saw that pocket size book was written by Richard Sterling a guy who would - quote " go anywhere and court any danger for the sake of a good meal" I new I would be in for an interesting literary adventure.
Richard Sterling's other titles include; Dining With Headhunters; The Fearless Dinner; and the award wining Travelers' Tale. His much-applauded writing has won him praise from The James Beard Foundation and kudos from the Lowell Thomas awards.
The book 's contents are broken down fourteen chapters -
World Food Hong Kong starts with the essential aspect of understanding the domains cuisine culture. Sterling enlightens us on the island's history, flavors and influences. My learning began. It would seem that Hong Kong's cuisine is a melting pot of the nations tastes with the addition European influences; olive oil, ketchup and asparagus all worked themselves in to the fabric of the island's "local" cooking.
Staples and specialties are next; rice, noodles, tofu, meat, sauces flavorings - the list continues as do the lessons. We all know that in 1295 Marco Polo introduced the noodle to Italy but did you know he made his mark on the Chinese too; he introduced the kiss? The content continues with Drinks, Home Cooking, and Celebrating with Food. Food as Medicine is where I must pause to narrate. Sterling reminds us that the Chinese believe that "food, medicine and health are all part of the same continuum. This is derived from the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang, which applies as much to human health as it does to the cosmos. When all in the universe is in its proper balance, harmony reigns. But in a condition of imbalance, we risk ill health, misfortune violence and destruction. Lesson: Seek balance!" If you are seeking balance try the Yin Yang soup or if you are feeling peaky there is always the Lizard soup chicken and cloud fungus.
Seeking knowledge of unusual foods? Then move to the next chapter "The Bold Palate". These are foods for the brave. How about preserved eggs, snake or baby mouse wine? That is right the wine is made by preserving still-suckling baby mice in rice wine. Apparently this is jolly good for rejuvenating the body's organs. For those who have survived the journey thus far normality is ahead. Shopping and Markets, where to Eat and Drink, Understanding the Menu and a modest Recipe Section are all a great read. The where to eat chapter covers the complete dining gambit from the very upmarket Peninsular to low down street food and must try dim sum.
For the gourmet traveler the book finishes with a handy English to Cantonese culinary dictionary a must have for those who want to appear to know their jellyfish from their junk food.
As I close I am relived to say the Lonely Planet does it again, a captivating unpretentious little book, nit just physically but also financially suited for anyone's pocket. - Written By Jeremy Emmerson GobalChefs

A must read for every global citizen. A story of conscience and a story of despair.

A great piece of work by a young Sri Lankan author.

The Lost Cause by Udara Soysa is a truly amazing story. It begins with a young man's quest for identity, which reveals love, happiness and grief.
As a citizen of a country, which was badly affected by a loss of tourists due to the tsunami, I especially enjoyed reading about how the disaster affected the local people.
I highly recommend this book to anyone in for a good read!