In this provocative and illuminating account, Richard McGregor offers a captivating portrait of China’s Communist Party, its grip on power and control over China, and its future. China’s political and economic growth in the past three decades has been one of astonishing, epochal dimensions. The most remarkable part of this transformation, however, has been left largely untold—the central role of the Chinese Communist Party. In The Party, Richard McGregor delves deeply into China’s inner sanctum for the first time, showing how the Communist Party controls the government, courts, media, and military and keeps all corruption accusations against its members in-house. The Party’s decisions have a global impact, yet the CCP remains a deeply secretive body, hostile to the law and unaccountable to anyone or anything other than its own internal tribunals. It is the world’s only geopolitical rival of the United States, and is primed to think the worst of the West.
A Financial Times Best Book of 2017 “A shrewd and knowing book.” —Robert D. Kaplan, The Wall Street Journal “A compelling and impressive read.” —The Economist “Skillfully crafted and well-argued.” —Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Financial Times “An excellent modern history. . . . provides the context needed to make sense of the region’s present and future.” —Joyce Lau, South China Morning Post A history of the combative military, diplomatic, and economic relations among China, Japan, and the United States since the 1970s—and the potential crisis that awaits them Richard McGregor’s Asia’s Reckoning is a compelling account of the widening geopolitical cracks in a region that has flourished under an American security umbrella for more than half a century. The toxic rivalry between China and Japan, two Asian giants consumed with endless history wars and ruled by entrenched political dynasties, is threatening to upend the peace underwritten by Pax Americana since World War II. Combined with Donald Trump’s disdain for America’s old alliances and China's own regional ambitions, east Asia is entering a new era of instability and conflict. If the United States laid the postwar foundations for modern Asia, now the anchor of the global economy, Asia’s Reckoning reveals how that structure is falling apart. With unrivaled access to archives in the United States and Asia, as well as to many of the major players in all three countries, Richard McGregor has written a tale that blends the tectonic shifts in diplomacy with bitter domestic politics and the personalities driving them. It is a story not only of an overstretched America, but also of the rise and fall and rise of the great powers of Asia. The about-turn of Japan—from a colossus seemingly poised for world domination to a nation in inexorable decline in the space of two decades—has few parallels in modern history, as does the rapid rise of China—a country whose military is now larger than those of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and southeast Asia's combined. The confrontational course on which China and Japan are set is no simple spat between neighbors: the United States would be involved on the side of Japan in any military conflict between the two countries. The fallout would be an economic tsunami, affecting manufacturing centers, trade routes, and political capitals on every continent. Richard McGregor’s book takes us behind the headlines of his years reporting as the Financial Times’s Beijing and Washington bureau chief to show how American power will stand or fall on its ability to hold its ground in Asia.
Xi Jinping has transformed China at home and abroad with a speed and aggression that few foresaw when he came to power in 2012. Finally, he is meeting resistance, both at home among disgruntled officials and disillusioned technocrats, and abroad from an emerging coalition of Western nations that seem determined to resist China's geopolitical and high-tech expansion. With the United States and China at loggerheads, Richard McGregor outlines how the world came to be split in two.
In this book, Richard J. A. McGregor offers a history of Islamic practice through the aesthetic reception of medieval religious objects. Elaborate parades in Cairo and Damascus included decorated objects of great value, destined for Mecca and Medina. Among these were the precious dress sewn yearly for the Ka'ba, and large colorful sedans mounted on camels, which mysteriously completed the Hajj without carrying a single passenger. Along with the brisk trade in Islamic relics, these objects and the variety of contested meanings attached to them, constituted material practices of religion that persisted into the colonial era, but were suppressed in the twentieth century. McGregor here recovers the biographies of religious objects, including relics, banners, public texts, and coverings for the Ka'ba. Reconstructing the premodern visual culture of Islamic Egypt and Syria, he follows the shifting meanings attached to objects of devotion, as well as the contingent nature of religious practice and experience.
If you love the challenge that the game of Sudoku brings then you need to get a copy of the "Easy Sudoku Puzzle" It is the best way that the mind can be kept working. The concept of number puzzles took life in the nineteenth century when puzzle setters in France started to experiment with removing numbers from specially constructed squares. It was not Sudoku but had similar characteristics. It is assumed that the first version of the modern day puzzle was first published around 1979. It has taken the world by storm since then. What the author has done with this text is to give the user the opportunity to create their own set of mind boggling number puzzles. The more proficient you are at doing these puzzles, the better able you will be to create a great puzzle. The book provides a wonderful user experience for the user.
Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016) was one of the leading international composers of the post-war period as well as one of the most productive. This book provides a global view of his music, integrating a number of resonant themes in the composer's work while covering a representative cross-section of his vast output - his work list encompasses nearly 550 compositions in every established genre. Each chapter focuses on specific major works and offers general discussion of other selected works connected to the main themes. These themes include compositional technique and process; genre; form and architecture; tonality and texture; allusion, quotation and musical critique; and place and landscape. Throughout, the book contends that Davies's works are not created in a vacuum but are intimately connected to, and are a reflection of, 'the past'. This deep engagement occurs on a number of levels, fluctuating and interacting with the composer's own predominantly modernist idiom and evoking a chain of historical resonances. Making sustained reference to Davies's own words, articles and programme notes as well as privileged access to primary source material from his estate, the book illuminates the composer's practices and approaches while shaping a discourse around his music. NICHOLAS JONES is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at Cardiff University. RICHARD MCGREGOR is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Cumbria and part-time Lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Using the original writings of two Egyptian Sufis, Muḥammad Wafāʼ and his son 'Alī, this book shows how the Islamic idea of sainthood developed in the medieval period. Although without a church to canonize its "saints," the Islamic tradition nevertheless debated and developed a variety of ideas concerning miracles, sanctity, saintly intermediaries, and pious role models. In the writings of the Wafāʼs, a complete mystical worldview unfolds, one with a distinct doctrine of sainthood and a novel understanding of the apocalypse. Using almost entirely unedited manuscript sources, author Richard J. A. McGregor shows in detail how Muḥammad and 'Alī Wafāʼ drew on earlier philosophical and gnostic currents to construct their own mystical theories and notes their debt to the Sufi order of the Shadhiliyya, the mystic al-Tirmidhī, and the great Sufi thinker Ibn ʿArabī. Notably, although located firmly within the Sunni tradition, the Wafāʼs felt free to draw on Shi'ite ideas for the construction of their own theory of the final great saint.
War and Border Crossings brings together renowned scholars to address some of the most pressing problems in public policy, international affairs, and the intercultural issues of our day. Contributors from widely varying disciplines discuss cross-cultural ethical issues and international topics ranging from American international policy and the invasion and occupation of Iraq to domestic topics such as immigration, the war on drugs, cross-cultural bioethics and ethical issues involving American Indian tribes. The culture clashes discussed in these essays raise serious questions about what principles ought to inform the negotiating of conflicts in order to achieve, or at least approach, outcomes that are fundamentally just, fair, responsible, and ethical.
Over 300 pages of timeless terror from a master storyteller! Horror comics visionary and coloring pioneer Richard Corben has been a voice of creativity and change for over four decades. For the first time ever, Corben's legendary Creepy and Eerie short stories and cover illustrations are being collected into one deluxe hardcover! With an informative foreword by artist and comic book colorist José Villarrubia—who also provides color restoration—this volume features Richard Corben's original stories, Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, and collaborations with cast of comic-book writers.
Richard Gallun is a renaissance man in the time of Google. He excels in a variety of subjects, some of which he knows a lot about--some not so much. His difficulty is that now his facts can be checked in a nanosecond and often they are found wanting. However, not so with most of this book. While many of the participants in his narrative will not agree with his recall of events, they would admit to their role in the underlying story and credit Richard with telling a better story than they would have told. His writing, as somewhat a surprise to his wife, is delightful. Sometimes witty, usually factual and true. But sometimes, as was always his want, invented. I would challenge the reader to cross check his facts and discover what is true and what is a product of his imagination or his fallible memory. Or possibly of his creative mind. As he says about history: "there is no truth except what is remembered or recorded. And in the long run it is the recording that makes it true!" --Judith McGregor Those are the words of my wife; and while they may contain an element of truth, I would contend that, even though a memoir may be tainted by the perceptions of the author, there is little in the recollection of a critic that is pure.
Within these pages you will discover not only the answers to 1,804 questions as to who was the first player, manager, umpire or executive to have accomplished a particular feat in the long history of Major League Baseball, but we will take you back to not just the name, but to the story behind the name, to the moment of its happening, and its result, bringing the historical event clearly into focus. So sit back, enjoy, and let us tell you about that first time in major league history.
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