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Shanghai Grand : forbidden love and international intrigue on the eve of the Second World War / by Grescoe, Taras,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."On the eve of WWII, the foreign-controlled port of Shanghai was the rendezvous for the twentieth century's most outlandish adventurers, all under the watchful eye of the fabulously wealthy Sir Victor Sassoon. Emily 'Mickey' Hahn was a legendary New Yorker journalist whose vivid writing played a crucial role in opening Western eyes to the realities of life in China. At the height of the Depression, Hahn arrived in Shanghai after a disappointing affair with an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter, convinced she will never love again. After checking in to Sassoon's glamorous Cathay Hotel, Hahn is absorbed into the social swirl of the expats drawn to pre-war China, among them Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Harold Acton, and a colourful gangster named Morris 'Two-Gun' Cohen. But when she meets Zau Sinmay, a Chinese poet from an illustrious family, she discovers the real Shanghai through his eyes: the city of rich colonials, triple agents, opium-smokers, displaced Chinese peasants, and increasingly desperate White Russian and Jewish refugees--places her innate curiosity will lead her to explore first hand. Danger lurks on the horizon, though, as the brutal Japanese occupation destroys the seductive world of pre-war Shanghai, paving the way for Mao Tse-tung's Communists rise to power"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Biographies.; Hahn, Emily, 1905-1997; Hahn, Emily, 1905-1997; Sassoon, Elias Victor, 1881-1961; Cathay Hotel (Shanghai, China); Adventure and adventurers; Aliens; Americans; Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The world : a family history / by Sebag Montefiore, Simon,1965-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the acclaimed author of The Romanovs--a magisterial history of humanity viewed through the lens of its most powerful dynasties In this sprawling and eye-opening book, best-selling historian Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the world's great dynasties across human history through engrossing tales of palace intrigue, glorious battle, and the real lives of people who held unfathomable power. He trains his eye on founders of humble origin, like Sargon, the Mesopotamian cupbearer sent to help defeat a rival who returned with an army to dethrone his own king, and Liu Bang, a peasant who became a rebel leader and founded the Han dynasty. Montefiore illuminates the achievements of fearsome emperors, including Yax Ehb Xook, whose Mayan city-state Tikal boasts some of the most monumental ancient architecture that exists today; Jayavarman II, who proclaimed himself "universal king" and whose Khmer empire in South Asia heralded a thousand years of Indic ascendancy; and Ewuare, the African emperor who built a capital city that rivaled any in Europe. He writes, too, about remarkable women rulers, like Hatshepsut, the first female pharaoh, and Maria Theresa, the only woman to rule the Habsburg empire. These families represent the breadth of human endeavor, with bloody civil wars, treacherous conspiracies, and shocking megalomania alongside flourishing culture, moving romances, and enlightened benevolence. A dazzling epic history as spellbinding as fiction, The World is testament to Montefiore's acclaimed career as our poet laureate of power"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Kings and rulers; Royal houses; Upper class; World history;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Vietnam : an epic tragedy, 1945-75 / by Hastings, Max,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Vietnam became the Western world's most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the 1968 Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and much less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh's warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people. Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price in privation and oppression for the Northerners' victory. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bar girls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Huey pilots from North Carolina, Marines from Arkansas. No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings' readers know so well. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record."--Jacket flap.
Subjects: Vietnam War, 1961-1975.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The dying citizen : how progressive elites, tribalism, and globalization are destroying the idea of America / by Hanson, Victor Davis,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Most of human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, or tribes. The concept of the "citizen," an idea we take for granted, is historically quite rare-and was, until recently, amongst America's most profoundly cherished ideals. But without shock treatment, warns historian and conservative political commentator Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it for well over two centuries may soon vanish. In The Dying Citizen, Hanson outlines the forces that have brought us to the twilight of American citizenship, and led to the deeply fractured politics of the present era. Over the last half-century, numerous forces from both above and below have conspired to undermine the value we place in the idea of citizenship-and our vigilance in protecting it. To be self-governing, citizens must be economically autonomous, but the evisceration of the middle class and the rise of inequality have made many Americans dependent on the federal government. Citizenship exists within delineated borders-but open borders and the elite concept of "global citizenship" have rendered meaningless the idea of allegiance to a particular place. Citizenship relies on the renunciation of tribal identity in favor of the state, but identity politics have eradicated the idea of a collective civic sense of self. A vastly expanded unelected bureaucracy has overwhelmed the power of elected officials, thereby destroying the sovereign power of the citizen. Progressive academics and activists lay siege to the institutions and traditions of constitutional citizenship. As in the revolutionary years of 1848, 1917, and 1968, 2020 has ripped away our complacency about the future of our most cherished ideals. Americans are forced to confront the fragility of citizenship-indeed, the fragility of our nation. But this calamitous year may also teach Americans to rebuild and recover what we have lost. The choice is ours"--
Subjects: Citizenship; Citizenship; Elite (Social sciences); World citizenship.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Act of Beauty. by Paquet, Nicolas,film director.; Spira (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Originally produced by Spira in 2021.Nestled at the heart of the Bic mountains, in this territory called Lower St. Lawrence, hides a community of wise people, audacious people taking root. The collective farm Sageterre is the work of Jean Bédard, writer, philosopher but most importantly, a peasant. His writing calls for action. His work on the land cultivates ideas. Jean Bédard fights to see a new, more humane world, rise.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Science.; Social sciences.; Agriculture.; Americans.; Foreign study.; Sociology.; Documentary films.;
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The warlords [videorecording (DVD)] / by Chen, Kexin,1962-; Kaneshiro, Takeshi.; Lau, Andy,1961-; Li, Jet,1963-; Xu, Jinglei,1974-; Alliance Films (Firm); Magnolia Home Entertainment (Firm); Morgan & Chan Films.;
Composer, Peter Kam, Chan Kwong Wing, Chatchai Pongprapaphan ; Edited by Christopher Blunden.Lianjie Li, Dehua Liu, Wu Jincheng, Jinglei Xu.In 1870, the power of the corrupt Qing Dynasty has been threatened by the rise of a revolutionary army, led by religious fanatics, and civil war is tearing the nation apart. Pang Qingyun (Jet Li), a good man who finds himself fighting for the Qing leadership, is one of the only survivors of a bloody battle in between revolutionaries and Qing troops, and is looking for someplace to go when he's offered shelter by a beautiful peasant woman, Lian (Xu Jinglei). Pang and Lian spend the night in each others arms, and he finds himself falling in love with her. Pang sets out to make his way home when he's befriended by Zhao Erhu (Andy Lau) and Jiang Wuyang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a pair of bandits. When Jiang is attacked in an ambush, Pang helps save his life, and the three men become blood brothers in a gory ritual. Pang convinces Jiang and Zhao to join him in the fight against the revolutionaries, and with their help Pang is able to achieve some impressive victories.Canadian Home Video Rating: 14A.DVD, Dolby digital 5.1 ; widescreen presentation.
Subjects: Action and adventure films.; Brothers; Civil war; Epic films.; Feature films.; Foreign films; Historical films.; Insurgency; Man-woman relationships; Motion pictures, Chinese.; Triangles (Interpersonal relations); Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; War films.;
© c2010., Alliance Films,
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 3
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Nu Shu. by Yang, Yue-Qing,film director.; Women Make Movies (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Originally produced by Women Make Movies in 1999.In feudal China, women, usually with bound feet, were denied educational opportunities and condemned to social isolation. But in Jian-yong county in Hunan province, peasant women miraculously developed a separate written language, called Nu Shu, meaning "female writing." Believing women to be inferior, men disregarded this new script, and it remained unknown for centuries. It wasn't until the 1960s that Nu Shu caught the attention of Chinese authorities, who suspected that this peculiar writing was a secret code for international espionage. Today, interest in this secret script continues to grow, as evidenced by the wide critical acclaim of Lisa See's novel, "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan", about Nu Shu.NU SHU: A HIDDEN LANGUAGE OF WOMEN IN CHINA is a thoroughly engrossing documentary that revolves around the filmmaker's discovery of eighty-six-year-old Huan-yi Yang, the only living resident of the Nu Shu area still able to read and write Nu Shu. Exploring Nu Shu customs and their role in women's lives, the film uncovers a women's subculture born of resistance to male dominance, finds a parallel struggle in the resistance of Yao minorities to Confucian Han Chinese culture, and traces Nu Shu's origins to some distinctly Yao customs that fostered women's creativity.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Social sciences.; Anthropology.; Asians.; Foreign study.; Second language acquisition.; Sociology.; Gender identity.; Documentary films.; Women's studies.; Current affairs.; History.; China.; Language and languages.;
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