Books

The China Collectors

Thanks to Salem sea captains, Gilded Age millionaires, curators on horseback and missionaries gone native, North American museums now possess the greatest collections of Chinese art outside of East Asia itself. How did it happen? The China Collectors is the first full account of a century-long treasure hunt in China from the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion to Mao Zedong’s 1949 ascent.

See: The China Collectors

Pax Ethnica

This surprising, inspirational tour of five societies—where people of diverse ethnicities, races, and religions live together in peace—offers a blueprint for tolerance.

See: Pax Ethnica

The Empire Trilogy

Kingmakers completes an empire trilogy that pivots on the great power rivalry, covert machinations and the eastward course of empire that commenced in the early 1800's. In Tournament of Shadows (1999), Meyer and Brysac deal with the Great Game, the contest between Britain and Tsarist Russia for dominion of Central Asia and Tibet. In The Dust of Empire (2003), Meyer takes the story westward into the Caucasus and Iran, and forward through two World Wars and the rise of the United States as a major contestant. Now, with Kingmakers (2008), Meyer and Brysac take the Game into new territory, the Middle East, but the same themes recur. Even the ablest men (and women) on the spot prove more successful in swaying their own superiors than in remolding recalcitrant peoples whose ways and faiths confound alien mastery. All this is told with an eye to the revealing and intriguing detail, and for the vivid personalities who sought to invent a new Middle East.

See: Tournament of Shadows | Dust of Empire | Kingmakers

Other recent books

Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra

A gripping and heartbreaking narrative account of an American woman who gave her life in the struggle against the Nazi regime.

 

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