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 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: 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

Presents the story of Beijing, the capital of China and the site of the 2008 Olympics, from its earliest beginnings as a campsite for primitive hominids, through its fluctuating fortunes under a dozen dynasties. This book examines the city's most famous sites - its temples, altars, gates and precincts.