china

Hardcover. NY, John Day Company, reprint, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, oblong pictorial cloth, 64 pages illustrated in two-colors by William Arthur Smith. SIGNED BY BUCK on the title page. Originally published 1n 1942, this is the 17th printing and was most likely signed in 1969 by Buck in Danby, Vermont, where she lived in her later years. Bright, clean copy, no dust jacket.

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. San Diego, Idea & Design Works/IDW, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 352 pages, color and b&w illustrations. April Kane has come to China and Terry Lee's life will never be the same! Milton Caniff's newspaper classic shifts into high gear with stories featuring the villainous Sanjak, the outrageous Singh-Singh and the mysterious Hu Shee. This volume also features the first appearance of the pivotal character Raven Sherman. Containing more than 100 lovingly-restored color Sunday pages and over 700 total comic strips.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 321 pages, b&w illustrations. In The Cruel Radiance, Susie Linfield challenges the idea that photographs of political violence exploit their subjects and pander to the voyeuristic tendencies of their viewers. Instead she argues passionately that looking at such images--and learning to see the people in them--is an ethically and politically necessary act that connects us to our modern history of violence and probes the human capacity for cruelty. Grappling with critics from Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht to Susan Sontag and the postmoderns--and analyzing photographs from such events as the Holocaust, China's Cultural Revolution, and recent terrorist acts--Linfield explores the complex connection between photojournalism and the rise of human rights ideals. In the book's concluding section, she examines the indispensable work of Robert Capa, James Nachtwey, and Gilles Peress and asks how photography should respond to the increasingly nihilistic trajectory of modern warfare. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, John Murray, 2nd Ed., 1889, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped in gilt, a little rubbed and bumped at edges. 456 pages with color frontispiece map, 139 illustrations of which 27 are full-page and 14 maps of which some are folding. School ex-library copy with spine label, minimal stamping to front endpapers and title page. Previous owner's inscription on half-title page. Interior clean with no marking, all fold-out maps in great condition. NOTE: The Marchesa a schooner yacht sailed from England in 1881 to the seas of China and Japan the East Indies and New Guinea before returning to England in 1884. First published in 1886 as a two volume set.

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. Phoenix AZ, Phoenix Art Museum, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 376 pages, illustrated in b&w, some color. Cover has sunning to areas, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Aperture, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 160 pages. An evocative and candid collection of some of the first photographs made in that country. Along with descriptive captions, these images describe the daily life and surroundings of an era now passed. The people are as seen through Western eyes, and the places are as traversed by foreigners. These early photographers were explorers and adventurers. They lugged huge cameras with heavy glass plates over rugged, unfamiliar terrain. Interspersed throughout the book are passages from significant texts and travelers' diaries, observations and opinions that echo and illuminate the images. For many Chinese, these photographers were the first white faces ever seen, and they carried with them previously undreamed-of contraptions. For all this, there is an unguarded air to many of the portraits, and the street scenes have the candid look of today's street photographer.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 294 pages, b&w photos. Sam Kleiner's The Flying Tigers uncovers the hidden story of the group of young American men and women who crossed the Pacific before Pearl Harbor to risk their lives defending China. Led by legendary army pilot Claire Chennault, these men left behind an America still at peace in the summer of 1941 using false identities to travel across the Pacific to a run-down airbase in the jungles of Burma. In the wake of the disaster at Pearl Harbor this motley crew was the first group of Americans to take on the Japanese in combat, shooting down hundreds of Japanese aircraft in the skies over Burma, Thailand, and China. At a time when the Allies were being defeated across the globe, the Flying Tigers' exploits gave hope to Americans and Chinese alike. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Illustrated in b&w and color. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, New York University Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, pages. The GI War Against Japan recounts the harrowing experiences of American soldiers in Asia and the Pacific. Based on countless diaries and letters, it sweeps across the battlefields, from the early desperate stand at Guadalcanal to the tragic sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis at war's very end. From the daunting spaces of the China-India theater to the fortress islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Schrijvers brings to life the GIs' struggle with suffocating wilderness, devastating diseases, and Japanese soldiers who preferred death over life. Amidst the frustration and despair of this war, American soldiers abandoned themselves to an escalating rage that presaged Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 296 pages, b&w illustrations. This is the first full scholarly study of the Great Wall of China to appear in any language, and it challenges many deeply held ideas about Chinese history. Drawing both on primary sources and on the latest archaeology, the book first demonstrates that the standard account of the Great Wall is untrue and misleading and then presents a convincing new account. It begins by tracing the various walls and systems of frontier defences that existed in early Chinese history, and shows how the greatest of these achieved a mythical symbolic stature which long survived the Wall itself. A striking concluding chapter traces how the true history of the Wall was lost in the early twentieth century as it was gradually transformed into a Chinese national symbol explained through historical myth. The book is an important contribution to the history of China's defensive policy, and her ideological attitudes, and will be of interest both to students of Chinese history and of international relations in the pre-modern world. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale /Houston Museum of Fine Arts, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 168 pages. Chen Changfen (b. 1941) began to photograph the Great Wall twenty years before the Chinese government officially adopted it as the national symbol in 1984. This fascinating book presents a small fraction of his decades-long study of the monumental form and conveys the fertile range of themes and ideas that Chen has investigated, each informed by traditional Chinese art, history, and philosophy. Combining a unique blend of traditional and contemporary technical processes, Chen's richly evocative photographs at once celebrate the remarkable series of building campaigns that produced the Wall and memorialize the thousands of conscripted laborers whose lives were sacrificed to its construction.One of the most striking features of Chen's photographs is their unexpected variety of perspectives and moods, capturing the vicissitudes of weather, time, and human history that have acted upon it. By excluding the people, highways, factories, and modern buildings that encroach on and daily destroy sections of the Wall, however, Chen eliminates major aspects of the Wall's present reality from his pictures. In a thoughtful essay and interview with the artist, Anne Wilkes Tucker probes the meanings of such omissions and guides the reader through Chen's extraordinary images. The Great Wall of China is essential reading for photographers, historians, and travelers.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial cloth, 101 pages. Oversized, no dust jacket issued. B&W and color Illustrations by Sawyers and Reusswig.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 364 pages. The Second World War's Pacific conflict was one of the most complex in history. It embrioled peoples from opposite sides of the globe; it was fought in China, across the expanses of the Pacific, and in the jungles of Southeast Asia; and it was devastating in its consequences for civilians and servicemen alike. It saw the first use of atomic weapons, hastened the end of the Western empires in Asia, and marked America's rise to the position of the most powerful nation in the world.Christopher Thorne, whose previous studies of the war in the Pacific have become landmarks in the field, here weaves together both the entire network of international relations surrounding the war and the impact the war had on all the societies involved--Indian as well as American; Australian and New Zealand as well as Japanese; Korean, Chinese, and Southeast Asian as well as British, French, and Dutch. The Issue of War draws on material gathered over many years in the Far East, Western Europe, and the U.S.--material including wartime films, broadcasts, and newspapers,as well as countless private and offical papers. Representing a synthesis of military, diplomatic, economic, intellectual, and social history, it not only places the war in the context of developments before 1941, but illuminates various patterns that cut across the familiar distinctions between Asia and the West or between Japan and the Allies. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 408 pages. A book that casts new light on the history of China and the West at the turn of the nineteenth century. George Macartney's disastrous 1793 mission to China plays a central role in the prevailing narrative of modern Sino-European relations. Summarily dismissed by the Qing court, Macartney failed in nearly all of his objectives, perhaps setting the stage for the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century and the mistrust that still marks the relationship today. But not all European encounters with China were disastrous. The Last Embassy tells the story of the Dutch mission of 1795, bringing to light a dramatic but little-known episode that transforms our understanding of the history of China and the West. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Tonio Andrade paints a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of an age marked by intrigues and war. China was on the brink of rebellion. In Europe, French armies were invading Holland. Enduring a harrowing voyage, the Dutch mission was to be the last European diplomatic delegation ever received in the traditional Chinese court. Andrade shows how, in contrast to the British emissaries, the Dutch were men with deep knowledge of Asia who respected regional diplomatic norms and were committed to understanding China on its own terms.

Hardcover. NY, Whittlesey House, 1st, 1944, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers stamped in black and red, 50 pages illustrated in 2-colors and b&w by Plato Chan. Adapted from an Old Chinese Legend by Plato and Christina Chan. The Text by Christina Chan. The Illustrations by Plato Chan. Clean copy, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. London, Allen & Unwin, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with fading to spine. INSCRIBED BY THE TRANSLATOR INGALLS on the front fly leaf. The desperate struggle between the aging Manchu Empress T z'u-hsi and her young nephew the Emperor, at the close of the nineteenth century. A story told as a parable against both Japanese occupation and the Communist rule. Small ownersjp stamp on first page, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Aperture, reprint, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 107 pages. Henri Cartier-Bresson's writings on photography and photographers have been published sporadically over the past 45 years. His essays--several of which have never before been translated into English--are collected here for the first time. The Mind's Eye features Cartier-Bresson's famous text on "the decisive moment" as well as his observations on Moscow, Cuba and China during turbulent times. These essays ring with the same immediacy and visual intensity that characterize his photography. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Candlewick, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A timeless tale by the incomparable Kate DiCamillo, complete with stunning full-color plates by Bagram Ibatoulline, honors the enduring power of love. Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a china rabbit named Edward Tulane. The rabbit was very pleased with himself, and for good reason: he was owned by a girl named Abilene, who treated him with the utmost care and adored him completely. And then, one day, he was lost. Kate DiCamillo takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the depths of the ocean to the net of a fisherman, from the top of a garbage heap to the fireside of a hoboes' camp, from the bedside of an ailing child to the bustling streets of Memphis. And along the way, we are shown a true miracle -- that even a heart of the most breakable kind can learn to love, to lose, and to love again.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Candlewick, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A timeless tale by the incomparable Kate DiCamillo, complete with stunning full-color plates by Bagram Ibatoulline, honors the enduring power of love. Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a china rabbit named Edward Tulane. The rabbit was very pleased with himself, and for good reason: he was owned by a girl named Abilene, who treated him with the utmost care and adored him completely. And then, one day, he was lost. Kate DiCamillo takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the depths of the ocean to the net of a fisherman, from the top of a garbage heap to the fireside of a hoboes' camp, from the bedside of an ailing child to the bustling streets of Memphis. And along the way, we are shown a true miracle -- that even a heart of the most breakable kind can learn to love, to lose, and to love again.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY BOTH TAN AND SHIELDS on the half-title page. On a rainy afternoon, a woman shares with three restless granddaughters her "earliest memory" from her childhood in China. Adapted from Tan's The Joy Luck Club , the haunting tale that unfolds is worthy of retelling--and of repeated rereading. The narrator, Ying-ying, recalls waking up at the age of seven on the morning of the Moon Festival; it was a steamy day, and "the sun drove rays through the bamboo curtains like knives." Filled with similarly vivid images, Tan's lilting text conveys Ying-ying's contagious excitement about the festivities. These include the appearance of the Moon Lady, who can fulfill one's secret wish. Later, celebrating with her family on a "floating teahouse," Ying-ying loses her balance and falls into the lake, where she is caught in a fisherman's net. He returns her to shore, where her secret wish is granted: she is found by her family, and thus learns a lesson about which kind of wishes come true. Tan has done a superb job of distilling this incident for young readers, who will be as mesmerized by the expressive narrative as by Schields's ornately detailed paintings, ablaze with luminous color.