china polisci

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st pbk, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 352 pages. A groundbreaking study of cultural life during a turbulent and formative decade in contemporary China, this book seeks to explode several myths about the Cultural Revolution (officially 1966-1976). Through national and local examination of the full range of cultural forms (film, operas, dance, other stage arts, music, fine arts, literature, and even architecture), Clark argues against characterizing this decade as one of chaos and destruction. Rather, he finds that innovation and creativity, promotion of participation in cultural production, and a vigorous promotion of the modern were all typical of the Cultural Revolution. Using a range of previously little-used materials, Clark forces us to fundamentally reassess our understanding of the Cultural Revolution, a period which he sees as the product of innovation in conflict with the effort by political leaders to enforce a top-down modernity. Clean copy.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 231 pages, b&w illustrations. The Chinese peoples' experience of war during the Second World War, as it is known in the West, was one of suffering and stoicism in the face of dreadful conditions. China's War of Resistance began in 1937 with the Japanese invasion and ended in 1945 after eight long years. Diana Lary, one of the foremost historians of the period, tells the tragic history of China's war and its consequences from the perspective of those who went through it. Using archival evidence only recently made available, interviews with survivors, and extracts from literature, she creates a vivid and highly disturbing picture of the havoc created by the war, the destruction of towns and villages, the displacement of peoples, and the accompanying economic and social disintegration. Her focus is on families torn apart, men, women, and children left homeless and struck down by disease and famine. It is also a story of courage and survival. By 1945, the fabric of China's society had been utterly transformed, and entirely new social categories had emerged. As the author suggests in a new interpretation of modern Chinese history, far from stemming the spread of communism from the USSR, which was the Japanese pretext for invasion, the horrors of the war, and the damage it created, nurtured the Chinese Communist Party and helped it to win power in 1949. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 371 pages. Looks into the origins and activities of a foreign-policy interest group which emerged after the Korean War and exerted pressure on the federal government not to recognize the People's Republic of China. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Hill & Wang, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 544 pages. A bold new history of the Deng years by a leading China scholar. Unlike the former Soviet Union and the once "socialist" countries of Eastern Europe, China's current economy is now the world's second largest and most rapidly growing. Remarkably, today's problems in China are spiritual in nature-"a crisis of faith"-stemming from the clash between capitalist realities and lingering socialist values and ideas. "The Deng Xiaoping Era "is the story of that crisis and of Deng Xiaoping's promise of socialist democracy that has degenerated into bureaucratic capitalism. Maurice Meisner shows how the social contract between the Chinese Communist Party and the people was grossly violated by the Deng regime, and why capitalism has emerged as the dynamic force in today's socioeconomic and cultural life. Now, after more than a decade of capitalist reforms, he argues that Chinese spiritual malaise is deepening with the brutal suppression of the 1989 Democracy Movement and its politically repressive aftermath. This is an indispensable study of contemporary Chinese history-from the Chinese Revolution and the founding of the Maoist state to the establishment of the Deng regime and the social consequences of Deng's reforms-as well as a formidable analysis of the failure of the world's greatest socialist experiment. Clean copy.

Softcover. Armonk NY, M.E. Sharpe, 1st pbk, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 272 pages. "The Political Economy of Chinese Socialism" re-conceptualized the political economy of China by highlighting the changing character of urban-rural and state-society conflicts in the era of Mao Zedong's leadership and in the contemporary post-Mao reforms. The economic and social crises that engulfed China - and indeed much of the rest of the socialist world - in the late 1980s, culminating in the 1989 democratic movement and its suppression, stimulated a rethinking of central propositions of the first edition. It particularly led the author to inquire anew into the meaning of socio-political as well as economic development in a populous and poor agrarian nation. This volume, then, assesses the economic performance and social consequences of China's political economy over four decades, with a focus on China's countryside and city-countryside relations.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 3rd pr., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wraps, 375 pages, maps. A decade after the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China established their formidable alliance in 1950, escalating public disagreements between them broke the international communist movement apart. In The Sino-Soviet Split, Lorenz Luthi tells the story of this rupture, which became one of the defining events of the Cold War. Identifying the primary role of disputes over Marxist-Leninist ideology, Luthi traces their devastating impact in sowing conflict between the two nations in the areas of economic development, party relations, and foreign policy. The source of this estrangement was Mao Zedong's ideological radicalization at a time when Soviet leaders, mainly Nikita Khrushchev, became committed to more pragmatic domestic and foreign policies. Using a wide array of archival and documentary sources from three continents, Luthi presents a richly detailed account of Sino-Soviet political relations in the 1950s and 1960s. He explores how Sino-Soviet relations were linked to Chinese domestic politics and to Mao's struggles with internal political rivals. Furthermore, Luthi argues, the Sino-Soviet split had far-reaching consequences for the socialist camp and its connections to the nonaligned movement, the global Cold War, and the Vietnam War. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 391 pages. How Maoism captured the imagination of French intellectuals during the 1960s. Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Phillipe Sollers, and Jean-Luc Godard. During the 1960s, a who's who of French thinkers, writers, and artists, spurred by China's Cultural Revolution, were seized with a fascination for Maoism. Combining a merciless expose of left-wing political folly and cross-cultural misunderstanding with a spirited defense of the 1960s, The Wind from the East tells the colorful story of this legendary period in France. Richard Wolin shows how French students and intellectuals, inspired by their perceptions of the Cultural Revolution, and motivated by utopian hopes, incited grassroots social movements and reinvigorated French civic and cultural life.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1st, 1929, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bright green cloth with gilt and black stamping, 548 pages. Illustrated from photographs, facsimiles, plates. Study of Jefferson's mind based on contributions of "French thinkers" on his political philosophy. Inscription on inside front cover, otherwise a clean, tight copy.