Product Description: As China’s global influence continues to rise, its capital, Beijing, has become increasingly important—and a popular tourist destination, greeting close to five million international visitors each year. An Armchair Traveller’s History of Beijing presents the capital from its earliest beginnings as a prehistoric campsite for Peking Man through its fluctuating fortunes under a dozen dynasties...read more

Product Description: 'Without a brush The willow paints the wind.' In a few words, haiku goes beneath surface appearance to grasp the heart of an experience. Each word is chosen to unlock a world of memories and associations. Haiku, like Zen, is an intensely personal experience...read more

Product Description: The Jonathan Clements Money Guide 2015 is the must-have book for Americans concerned about their financial future. Written by the highly regarded columnist for The Wall Street Journal, this annually updated guide was named money-management book of the year by the Institute for Financial Literacy and won a silver medal in the Axiom Business Book Awards...read more

Product Description: The Silk Road is not a place, but a journey, a route from the edges of the Mediterranean to the central plains of China, through high mountains and inhospitable deserts. For thousands of years its history has been a traveller's history, of brief encounters in desert towns, snowbound passes and nameless forts...read more

Baron Gustaf Mannerheim was one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century, and the only man to be decorated by both sides in the Second World War. As a Finnish officer in Russian service, he witnessed the coronation of the last Tsar, and was both reprimanded for foolhardiness and decorated for bravery in the Russo-Japanese War. He spent two years undercover in Asia as an agent in the 'Great Game', posing as a Swedish anthropologist. He crossed China on horseback, stopping en route to teach the 13th Dalai Lama how to shoot with a pistol, and spying on the Japanese navy on his way home. He escaped the Bolsheviks by the skin of his teeth in 1917, arriving in the newly independent Finland just in time to lead the anti-Russian forces in the local revolt and civil war. During Finland's darkest hour, he lead the defence of his country against the impossible odds of the Winter War. This major new life of Gustaf Mannerheim, the first to be published for over a decade, includes new historical material on Mannerheim's time in China.

Product Description: "Great read from a brilliant and insightful writer," says Allan Roth of WallStreetJournal.com. "Woven within this short book's engaging and entertaining story are some epiphany-inducing observations about money and happiness.""Although this is his first novel, Jonathan Clements's long practice writing the personal-finance column for The Wall Street Journal shows in a quickly paced story with a plot that moves right along, with enough detail that every middle-aged cyclist can relate to," writes Richard Masoner of Cyclelicio...read more

Mao Zedong went from being a poor farmer's son to a revolutionary leader, a general in World War II and the ruler of the world's most populous nation. Alternately glorified and demonized, not only in the Western world, but also in the China that he once ruled, his influence persists to this day. This new biography will capitalize on new information that has recently come to light, about his private life (and his several wives), with the publication of memoirs by his doctor and former nurse, among others.

Product Description: Togo Heihachiro (1848-1934) was born into a feudal society that had lived in seclusion for 250 years. As a teenage samurai, he witnessed the destruction wrought upon his native land by British warships. As the legendary "Silent Admiral", he was at the forefront of innovations in warfare, pioneering the Japanese use of modern gunnery and wireless communication...read more

Product Description: From a leading expert in Japanese history, this is one of the first full histories of the art and culture of the samurai warrior. The samurai emerged as a warrior caste in medieval Japan and would have a powerful influence on the history and culture of the country for the next 500 years...read more

Product Description: This sword is at least four hundred years old. Duncan MacLeod knows a lot about swords. Everyone knows that. So, when he's called in to help Seacouver police value an antique sword - as amazing, beautiful and ancient as it is - Duncan realises there might be more to his involvement than he originally thought...read more

Product Description: One of the most fascinating writers and scientists the world has ever seen, Charles Darwin is presented in this journal-like biography through his personal writings and discoveries. Progress with Darwin through his early schooling, his studies in the Galapagos Islands, the writing and publication of The Evolution of Species, and his long-term legacy...read more

Confucius is one of the important figures in Chinese history, the philosopher-founder of an intellectual, ethical tradition that has shaped a quarter of the world's population. This work reveals Confucius to be an outspoken and uncompromising man, and places him within the context of China of 2,500 years ago.