This book takes the approach that only if we understand Japan’s weaknesses can we fully grasp its strengths. The author explains Japan’s extraordinary culture, history, and national culture while also bringing to light some of the country’s unattractive features : conformity, rigid hierarchy, submission to the group, pervasive sexism, and an almost messianic sense of national uniqueness. This book explains not only how the Japanese work but why they work. It describes how the Japanese view the West, amuse themselves, court and make love, fashion their society, and define their role in the world. The author searches out the patterns of Japanese thinking and behavior and follows them into every corner of Japanese life.

A moving portrait of Africa from Poland's most celebrated foreign correspondent - a masterpiece from a modern master. Famous for being in the wrong places at just the right times, Ryszard Kapuscinski arrived in Africa in 1957, at the beginning of the end of colonial rule - the "sometimes dramatic and painful, sometimes enjoyable and jubilant" rebirth of a continent. The Shadow of the Sun sums up the author's experiences ("the record of a 40-year marriage") in this place that became the central obsession of his remarkable career. From the hopeful years of independence through the bloody disintegration of places like Nigeria, Rwanda and Angola, Kapuscinski recounts great social and political changes through the prism of the ordinary African. He examines the rough-and-ready physical world and identifies the true geography of Africa: a little-understood spiritual universe, an African way of being. He looks also at Africa in the wake of two epoch-making changes: the arrival of AIDS and the definitive departure of the white man. Kapuscinski's rare humanity invests his subjects with a grandeur and a dignity unmatched by any other writer on the Third World, and his unique ability to discern the universal in the particular has never been more powerfully displayed than in this work.

Japan was a party to the Axis Alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. However, it ignored repeated German demands to harm the 40,000 Jews who found themselves under Japanese occupation during World War Two. This book attempts to answer why they behaved in a relatively humane fashion towards the Jews.

The year is 1954, and in a dark and violent alternate history, the Great War never ended. The forces of the Reich, led by the occult-obsessed Kaiser, have sold their souls to demonic powers as they scour the earth in search of paranormal weaponry. Meanwhile, President Edison has sanctioned the use of potent alien technology.

Magical worlds and incredible creatures fill the pages of this action-packed adventure in the Map to Everywhere series! Fearless adventurers Marrill and Fin have just barely stopped the Iron Tide and the evil wizard Serth from destroying the Pirate Stream. Now they're on a mission to find Fin's missing mother, but before they can blink, Fin's people have found him--and they're not as friendly as he'd hoped. In fact, they're after a powerful wish orb that could resurrect the debilitating Iron Tide and end the world as we know it. Without their captain Coll and wizard friend Ardent to guide them, are Marrill and Fin brave enough to take on the magic (and evil) of the Pirate Stream on their own? Find out in this exhilarating third book that raises the stakes to new heights!

The Wheel of Time is now an original series on Prime Video, starring Rosamund Pike as Moiraine! In The Shadow Rising, the fourth novel in Robert Jordan’s #1 New York Times bestselling epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time®, Rand al’Thor now wields the sword Callandor. He is both the Champion of Light and the Dragon Reborn. Now, he seeks answers to another prophecy that lies with the warrior people known as the Aiel to put him on the path of learning how to wield the One Power. Accompanied by Moiraine Damodred, Rand arrives at the Aiel Waste and is granted permission by the Wise Ones to enter the sacred city of Rhuidean. After passing through a doorframe ter'angreal, Moiraine gains foresight while the Aiel await Rand's return, either with both arms marked by dragon symbols, validating his identity as He Who Comes With the Dawn, the Chief of Chiefs of all the Aiel—or to never emerge at all. Since its debut in 1990, The Wheel of Time® has captivated millions of readers around the globe with its scope, originality, and compelling characters. The last six books in series were all instant #1 New York Times bestsellers, and The Eye of the World was named one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read. The Wheel of Time® New Spring: The Novel #1 The Eye of the World #2 The Great Hunt #3 The Dragon Reborn #4 The Shadow Rising #5 The Fires of Heaven #6 Lord of Chaos #7 A Crown of Swords #8 The Path of Daggers #9 Winter's Heart #10 Crossroads of Twilight #11 Knife of Dreams By Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson #12 The Gathering Storm #13 Towers of Midnight #14 A Memory of Light By Robert Jordan and Teresa Patterson The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time By Robert Jordan, Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons The Wheel of Time Companion By Robert Jordan and Amy Romanczuk Patterns of the Wheel: Coloring Art Based on Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

HIGH ADVENTURE ON THE SWORD EDGE OF DESTINY A Cavern of Black Ice is the first book in J.V. Jones's Sword of Shadow series As a newborn Ash March was abandoned--left for dead at the foot of a frozen mountain. Found and raised by the Penthero Iss, the mighty Surlord of Spire Vanis, she has always known she is different. Terrible dreams plague her and sometimes in the darkness she hears dread voices from another world. Iss watches her as she grows to womanhood, eager to discover what powers his ward might possess. As his interest quickens, he sends his living blade, Marafice Eye, to guard her night and day. Raif Sevrance, a young man of Clan Blackhail, also knows he is different, with uncanny abilities that distance him from the clan. But when he and his brother survive an ambush that plunges the entire Northern Territories into war, he yet seeks justice for his own . . . even if means he must forsake clan and kin. Ash and Raif must learn to master their powers and accept their joint fate if they are to defeat an ancient prophecy and prevent the release of the pure evil known as the End Lords. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Why is the United States unable to compete effectively with Japan? What explains the inability of American political leaders to devise an industrial policy capable of focusing the energies of American business on the task of meeting the Japanese challenge? How can America emerge from the shadow of the Rising Sun? This book addresses these questions and proposes a controversial decision. To get at the political roots of American economic decline, businessman-scholar William Dietrich puts the disciplined thinking of political philosophy, comparative politics, and international political economy to effective use in analyzing the source and nature of American institutional weakness. Unlike many who have written on U.S.-Japanese relations, Dietrich does not seek a solution a particular new policy or institutional innovation, such as an American counterpart to Japan's MITI. Rather, he emphasizes the systemic nature of America's problems. The failures of management, finance, and politics are interlocking and reinforcing, he shows, and thus a change in the others that spell doom for any partial approach. Most fundamental, however, are the political weaknesses of the system. It is in the basic political inheritance of America, reflected in the very design of the Constitution and the long dominance of Jeffersonian individualism over Hamiltonian statism, that we must locate the roots of American impotence in the face of Japan's challenge. As the problem is systemic, so must the solution be equally wide-ranging. Nothing short of &"fundamental institutional reform,&" Dietrich argues, will succeed in reversing America's downward course. Boasts about the victory of free-market capitalism in the wake of the collapse of the Communist state-directed system are premature and distract attention form the necessary recognition that it is the Japanese combination of the free market with a strong central state and a highly skilled professional bureaucracy that has really proved triumphant in our modern age of advanced technology. Only if we fully understand the reasons for Japanese success and American decline can we begin the arduous but crucial task of reconstructing the American polity to give it the power required to formulate and implement a national industrial policy that can regain for the United States its preeminent place among the world's industrial powers. The alternative, Dietrich describes in a chilling scenario, is a &"Pax Nipponica&" that will find America playing second fiddle to Japan with economic, cultural, and political consequences that will make Britain's eclipse by the United States earlier in this century seem mild by comparison.