Few institutions are as well suited as the monarchy to provide a window on postwar Japan. The monarchy, which is also a family, has been significant both as a political and as a cultural institution. Ruoff analyzes numerous issues, stressing the monarchy's "postwarness" rather than its traditionality.

"This detailed biography chronicles Mao's life from his obscure beginnings as a peasant's son to his rise as the colossus who was to govern a quarter of mankind for a quarter of a century. Through it emerges a tireless and shrewd politician who was also the wildest of dreamers; a romantic and artist trying to draw beautiful pictures on the 'blank sheets' of the Chinese peasantry. From the reminiscences of his wives, his friends, and those who knew Mao all through his life, Dick Wilson draws out a revealing picture of 'the People's Emperor" to provide the most lively and definitive biography of Mao in our lifetime."--P. [4] of cover.

Captain Jay Marsh had never questioned where his ultimate loyalty lay. He had witnessed the bloody horror left behind by the retreating Japanese army during World War II's final days. And he had abandoned his beautiful Filipina fiancée to see his duty through. But not even Marsh could guess the terrible personal price he would have to pay for his loyalty. He would follow General Douglas MacArthur to Tokyo itself. There he would become the brilliant, egocentric general's confidant, translator, surrogate son--and spy. Marsh would play a dangerous game of deliberate deceit and brutal injustice in the shadow world of postwar Japan's royal palaces and geisha houses, and recognize that the defeated emperor and his wily aides were exploiting MacArthur's ruthless ambition to become the American Caesar. The Emperor's General is a dramatic human story of the loss of innocence and the seduction of power, about the conflict between honor, duty, and love, all set against an extraordinary historical backdrop.

This account of the rise and fall of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie is “an unforgettable, fiercely comic, and finally compassionate book” (Salman Rushdie, Man Booker Prize–winning author). After Haile Selassie was deposed in 1974, Ryszard Kapuściński—Poland’s top foreign correspondent—went to Ethiopia to piece together a firsthand account of how the emperor governed his country, and why he finally fell from power. At great risk to himself, Kapuściński interviewed members of the imperial circle who had gone into hiding. The result is this remarkable book, in which Selassie’s servants and closest associates share accounts—humorous, frightening, sad, grotesque—of a man living amidst nearly unimaginable pomp and luxury while his people teetered between hunger and starvation. It is a classic portrait of authoritarianism, and a fascinating story of a forty-four-year reign that ended with a coup d’état in 1974.

Saionji Kinmochi was an aristocrat, a scholar and a progressive liberal politician who twice occupied the highest political office in the nation and who, during three decades, as adviser to three Emperors, coordinated and directed Japanese politics. His long life encompassed the emergence of the modern Japanese state, the establishment of the constitution, the integration of Japan into the inter-war, international community and the creation, and subsequent erosion of the democratic process. The story of his twilight years chronicles the conflicts between the goals of liberalism and internationalism which dominated Japanese politics in the 1920s and the right-wing militarism which held sway in the years leading to the Pacific War. He was a central figure in the turbulent, formative period of Japan’s political ideology.

Over two thousand years ago in ancient China, a warlord had just unified the country – with the help of two brothers, Hsufu and Hsufei – establishing the Qin Dynasty and calling himself Qinshihuang, the First Emperor. Seeing Qinshihuang’s vanity and brutality, Hsufu used a deceit to make his way to the east, founding Japan and becoming the first emperor there. Hsufei continued to serve the country with loyalty, as an inspirational warrior as well as a minder of Qinshihuang. Ultimately, before his demise which he knew was inevitable, the First Emperor took Hsufei’s advice to preserve himself and his warriors in mausoleums, wishing that some days his empire would be revived. Hsufei, among thousands of his fellow men, stayed buried deep underneath the soil until 1978, when stone statues were discovered by archaeologists. In the form of a stone figurine, Hsufei was somehow removed to the residence of Deng Xiaoping, who had just been reinstated as a Communist Party leader to help lead the country after the death of Mao Zedong, the founder of the socialist new China. Hsufei, aided by a potion of immortality taken before his burial two thousand years ago, resurrected right before Deng’s eyes. It was the start of a mysterious voyage for both of them, at the critical transformation stages of the country, the journey ending in the midst of the turbulent events in the spring of 1989. In the course of Hsufei’s eventful second life, stories pertaining to fictitious and real characters were intertwined and unfolded, with Hsufei being in the central narrative and Deng the de facto protagonist, revealing the duo’s secret collaboration in countering, on the one hand, the Party left-wingers who opposed the opening up of China, and a driving force that strived for the overturn of the Communist regime, on the other. On fictional construction, these historical issues are raised and addressed: why Japan invaded China and brutalized Chinese people during World War II; how Deng came to devise the economic reforms and future paths of China when he took power in 1978; what prompted him to regain the sovereignty of Hong Kong from the British; and what happened that led to the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

John II Komnenos was born into an empire on the brink of destruction, with his father Alexios barely preserving the empire in the face of civil wars and invasions. A hostage to crusaders as a child, married to a Hungarian princess as a teenager to win his father an alliance, and leading his own campaigns when his father died, it was left to John to try and rebuild the empire all but lost in the eleventh century. This book, the first English language study on John and his era, re-evaluates an emperor traditionally overlooked in favour of his father, hero of the Alexiad written by John's sister Anna, and of his son Manuel, acclaimed for reigning at the height of Komnenian power. John's reign is one of contradictions, as his capital of New Rome/Constantinople was to fall to the armies of the Fourth Crusade just over sixty years after he died, and yet his descendants led vibrant successor states based in the lands that John reconquered. His reign lacks a dominant textual source, and so this history is related as much through personal letters, court literature, archaeology, and foreign accounts as through traditional historical narratives. This study includes extensive study of the landscapes, castles, and cities John built and campaigned through, and provides a guide to the world in which John lived. It covers the empire's neighbours and rivals, the turning points of ecclesiastical history, the shaping of the crusader movement, and the workings of Byzantine government and administration.