A practising artist for more than 60 years, my main source of inspiration is people and the natural world. I work in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Drawing is the foundation of my art and I always keep a sketchbook handy. As a left-hander in a right-handed world, drawing became my main means of expression from an early age, when I instinctively wrote back-to-front with my left hand but was made to use my right. In addition to my art practice, I have taught drawing and developed a teaching method based on 7 principles that are outlined in Draw Like da Vinci.
Hokusai, my favorite artist, described himself as "the man mad about drawing." Mad about drawing myself, I never cease to learn from studying his woodblock prints. This publication contains a rare collection of Hokusai’s original brush drawings. Most of his countless originals were lost when they were glued to a woodblock during the printing process. This book covers the scope of Hokusai’s subject matter of landscapes, flora and fauna, everyday life, and the supernatural, and reveals his sense of humor. I consider Hokusai ‘The Leonardo of the East’ – both artists drew everything with masterful skill and shared a common humanity. Hokusai’s skill with brush alone is phenomenal. He creates subtle tones, expressive movement and varies the thickness of his line down to a single hair.
Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) is considered by many to be Japan’s greatest artist. During his seventy-year career, he produced a considerable oeuvre of some 3,000 color prints, illustrations for over 200 books, hundreds of drawings, and over 1,000 paintings. This exciting collection of 103 exquisite small drawings were made for an unpublished book called The Great Picture Book of Everything – featuring wide-ranging subjects from depictions of religious, mythological, historical, and literary figures to animals, birds, flowers, and other natural phenomena, as well as landscapes. They are dominated by subjects that relate to ancient China and India, also Southeast and Central…
I am a reporter and author with a passion for seeking out stories less told, and there are plenty of those in Central Asia, where I made my home more than two decades ago: first in Uzbekistan and, since 2005, in Kazakhstan. I have found telling overlooked tales from an overlooked region that is overshadowed by its mighty neighbours – the Russian bear to the north and the Chinese dragon to the east – to be both rewarding and valuable. I hope these book selections will bring more stories about the people who populate Central Asia to the attention of readers with inquisitive minds.
As I perched on the ramparts of the citadel in Khiva one sunny morning in autumn of 2001, the scene in the bazaar below of sellers hawking everything from recalcitrant sheep to giant melons and elaborately-carved furniture summoned up the exotic past of a town once traversed by caravans of merchants plying their trade between China and Europe. But what is compelling about this book is its focus not on Khiva’s illustrious history but on the present-day lives of the people the author encountered when he lived among them running a carpet-making workshop. Fascinating both for its forensic exploration of that ancient craft and for the sensitive depictions of the people of Khiva, this book is a true tale of the modern-day Silk Road.
The Silk Road conjures images of the exotic and the unknown. Most travellers simply pass along it. Brit Chris Alexander chose to live there. Ostensibly writing a guidebook, Alexander found life at the heart of the glittering madrassahs, mosques and minarets of the walled city of Khiva - a remote desert oasis in Uzbekistan - immensely alluring, and stayed.
Immersing himself in the language and rich cultural traditions Alexander discovers a world torn between Marx and Mohammed - a place where veils and vodka, pork and polygamy freely mingle - against a backdrop of forgotten carpet designs, crumbling but magnificent…
Pantucci has travelled in the footsteps of the great explorers and the players in the ‘Great Game.’
He explains the linkages between Xinjiang and Central Asia, which stand at the heart of Chinese efforts in the region. He shares his views on the implications of China’s involvement in Eurasia and what that means to the rest of the world. Pantucci understands and can explain this vast and rich hinterland in the Eurasian heartland.
An area replete with opportunities, ancient civilisations, and culture. A part of the world that is increasingly becoming a core interest to China and Russia. And if historical British geographer Halford Mackinder is to be believed, the key to take control of the “world island.”
Based on more than a decade's writing, research, and travel, this book offers a rare glimpse into China's expanding economic, cultural, and political power in the Eurasian heartland.
China's rise is changing the world. Much attention has been given to how China's geo-economic vision is playing out in the global economy, or how its technology is reshaping the planet, yet it is over its western borders, in Central Asia, that China's influence has been quietly expanding in a more pervasive way. It is here that you can find the first strand of Xi Jinping's grand Belt and Road Initiative, China's…
I traveled to Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the summer of 2019, where I saw for myself many of the tools of surveillance and control that the Chinese Communist Party has used to turn the region into an open-air prison. Since returning to the United States, I have tried to draw attention to the Uyghur genocide through my published articles and through my book, Middle Country, where I tell the story of the Uyghur genocide by weaving facts, history, and analysis into a narrative account of the week I spent in Xinjiang. I hope that my book can make this profoundly complex and multifaceted issue more accessible to the average person.
Eurasian Crossroads is an essential resource for anyone seeking to learn about the complex historical context of the genocide taking place in Xinjiang today. James Millward, who is widely regarded as the leading historian of Chinese Central Asia, provides an accessible-yet-thorough examination of the various peoples and empires that have called the region home.
Since antiquity, the vast Central Eurasian region of Xinjiang, or Eastern Turkestan, has stood at the crossroads of China, India, the Middle East, and Europe, playing a pivotal role in the social, cultural, and political histories of Asia and the world. Today, it comprises one-sixth of the territory of the People's Republic of China and borders India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia.
Eurasian Crossroads is an engaging and comprehensive account of Xinjiang's history and people from earliest times to the present day. Drawing on primary sources in several Asian and European languages, James A. Millward surveys Xinjiang's…
I am an associate professor at Nottingham Trent University and my interest in the Mongols first began many years ago during my MA at Royal Holloway University. I had always been interested in the historic relationships between nomadic and agricultural societies, but what I found fascinating about the Mongols was the sheer speed and range of their expansion—how could they have conquered the greater part of the Asia within only a few decades? Exploring how the Mongols grappled with the realities of ruling such a vast imperium remains a very thought-provoking issue, so too is the question of how the peoples they overthrew accommodated themselves to Mongol rule.
As the Mongol Empire expanded it seized control over many different regions, peoples, and religious communities. Among these were many Islamic societies, especially in the Near East. In this remarkable piece of scholarship Peter Jackson examines the nature of Mongol rule in the Near East providing analysis on topics such as: how the onset of Mongol rule influenced the region’s trade, how the Mongols treated the Muslim peoples under their control, and also why the Mongols in the Near East themselves ultimately converted to Islam.
An epic historical consideration of the Mongol conquest of Western Asia and the spread of Islam during the years of non-Muslim rule
The Mongol conquest of the Islamic world began in the early thirteenth century when Genghis Khan and his warriors overran Central Asia and devastated much of Iran. Distinguished historian Peter Jackson offers a fresh and fascinating consideration of the years of infidel Mongol rule in Western Asia, drawing from an impressive array of primary sources as well as modern studies to demonstrate how Islam not only survived the savagery of the conquest, but spread throughout the empire.
I am a historian of Russia and Eurasia at Hamilton College. I teach courses on Russian history, Central Asia, and the modern Middle East. We usually think of these as separate regions of the world, but in fact they are all connected across the vast Eurasian continent. Russians, Turks, Iranians, Mongols and more have been intertwined with each other throughout their histories. My formal research specialty is Soviet Central Asia. I have written on Stalin’s attempt to destroy Islam, on education and creating a historical narrative for Uzbekistan, and on cotton and manual labor under Khrushchev.
Many people are fascinated by the ancient Silk Road, but don’t know much about how we got from there to the “Stans” that emerged out of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. These books showcase the most recent scholarship on how Central Asia was gradually taken over by the Russian and Chinese empires, and how the republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan were created, as well as Xinjiang Province in the People’s Republic of China.
Since the 1960s Central Asia has been the center of the largest man-made water crisis in history with the drying up of the Aral Sea. Peterson’s book, based on work in Central Asian and Russian archives, provides a long-term environmental history of irrigation and its effects in the imperial and Soviet periods up to World War II. She includes a profile of the eccentric Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich Romanov, who set himself up as a local “sultan” near Tashkent, and rich material on the steep challenges that irrigation engineers faced.
The drying up of the Aral Sea - a major environmental catastrophe of the late twentieth century - is deeply rooted in the dreams of the irrigation age of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time when engineers, scientists, politicians, and entrepreneurs around the world united in the belief that universal scientific knowledge, together with modern technologies, could be used to transform large areas of the planet from 'wasteland' into productive agricultural land. Though ostensibly about bringing modernity, progress, and prosperity to the deserts, the transformation of Central Asia's landscapes through tsarist- and Soviet-era hydraulic projects bore the…
I’ve spent my life tracing the first 20,000 years of our drive to dress ourselves, and this book adds unique knowledge to that search.
Aslan traces the development of the three great natural fibers, wool, silk, and cotton, in Central Asia, a remarkably convoluted and fascinating story ranging from handmaking gorgeous textiles to the destruction of people and environments that the growing of water-thirsty cotton for vast markets has caused. Indeed, cotton recently swallowed the entire inland Sea of Azov and its tributaries, leaving the marooned docks and ships stuck in this new desert.
His well-paced page-turner draws from decades of personal experience living and working there, helping rebuild local lives through reconsidered textile industries. The bottom line is we must stop wasting this wonderful but destructive fiber.
Three textile roads tangle their way through Central Asia. The famous Silk Road united east and west through trade. Older still was the Wool Road, of critical importance when houses made from wool enabled nomads to traverse the inhospitable winter steppes. Then there was the Cotton Road, marked by greed, colonialism and environmental disaster.
At this intersection of human history, fortunes were made and lost through shimmering silks, life-giving felts and gossamer cottons. Chris Aslan, who has spent fifteen years living and working in the region, expertly unravels the strands of this tangled history and embroiders them with his own…
I have been passionate about the world of espionage for as long as I can remember. I am drawn to the blend of international intrigue, the shaping of relationships between nation-states, and the moral dilemmas of the characters involved. Espionage literature is the best vehicle, I believe, for placing characters in situations where they must constantly choose between self and country. The answers that are revealed are always applicable to how we live our lives as people, communities, and nations.
Another nonfiction and for me, the greatest book ever written on intelligence gathering. Unlike so many other books on espionage, it does not take place in the context of the Cold War but during the time of the struggle between Britain and Russia to control the passes of central Asia.
I loved how this book brought to life the stories of intelligence agents on both sides of the struggle, how they infiltrated hostile territories, won over warlords, and often lost their heads. The action took place before modern technology when agents relied on their powers of disguise, linguistic abilities, and their instinct to detect danger before it cost them their lives.
So much of what occurs in the great game explains the modern world today, which is why I believe this book is a must-read not only for those interested in espionage but international relations in general.
THE GREATGAME: THE EPIC STORY BEHIND TODAY'S HEADLINES
Peter Hopkirk's spellbinding account of the great imperial struggle for supremacy in Central Asoa has been hailed as essential reading with that era's legacy playing itself out today.
The Great Game between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia was fought across desolate terrain from the Caucasus to China, over the lonely passes of the Parmirs and Karakorams, in the blazing Kerman and Helmund deserts, and through the caravan towns of the old Silk Road-both powers scrambling to control access to the riches of India and the East. When play first began, the frontiers…
When I first visited Central Asia in 2008, little did I know that it would become the focus of my life and work. I now advise the World Bank and national governments on economic development, with a particular focus on tourism, and I’m the Chairman of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. I am Uzbekistan’s Ambassador for Tourism, a co-founder of the Silk Road Literary Festival, and I’ve written and updated guidebooks to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Silk Road.
Tragically little Central Asian literature has been translated into English: Hamid Ismailov’s books are notable exceptions. The Devils’ Dance won the 2019 EBRD Literature Prize, and it was the first time an Uzbek writer was awarded a major international prize. It is the desire to see more writers like Hamid be able to bring their books to global audiences that prompted me to co-found the Silk Road Literary Festival.
On New Years' Eve 1938, the writer Abdulla Qodiriy is taken from his home by the Soviet secret police and thrown into a Tashkent prison. There, to distract himself from the physical and psychological torment of beatings and mindless interrogations, he attempts to mentally reconstruct the novel he was writing at the time of his arrest based on the tragic life of the Uzbek poet-queen Oyhon, married to three khans in succession, and living as Abdulla now does, with the threat of execution hanging over her. As he gets to know his cellmates, Abdulla discovers that the Great Game of…
I am a historian of Russia and Eurasia at Hamilton College. I teach courses on Russian history, Central Asia, and the modern Middle East. We usually think of these as separate regions of the world, but in fact they are all connected across the vast Eurasian continent. Russians, Turks, Iranians, Mongols and more have been intertwined with each other throughout their histories. My formal research specialty is Soviet Central Asia. I have written on Stalin’s attempt to destroy Islam, on education and creating a historical narrative for Uzbekistan, and on cotton and manual labor under Khrushchev.
Many people are fascinated by the ancient Silk Road, but don’t know much about how we got from there to the “Stans” that emerged out of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. These books showcase the most recent scholarship on how Central Asia was gradually taken over by the Russian and Chinese empires, and how the republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan were created, as well as Xinjiang Province in the People’s Republic of China.
Morrison’s book is the first in-depth account of Russia’s military campaigns in over 50 years. It is both a good read for fans of military and imperial history and an important corrective to the image of the “Great Game” between the Russian and British empires. Morrison not only gives readers extensive and telling quotes from Russian military and diplomatic documents, but from Bukharan and Khoqandi sources as well. No other historian has written such a comprehensive history of the conquest.
The Russian conquest of Central Asia was perhaps the nineteenth century's most dramatic and successful example of European imperial expansion, adding 1.5 million square miles and at least 6 million people - most of them Muslims - to the Tsar's domains. Alexander Morrison provides the first comprehensive military and diplomatic history of the conquest to be published for over a hundred years. From the earliest conflicts on the steppe frontier in the 1830s to the annexation of the Pamirs in the early 1900s, he gives a detailed account of the logistics and operational history of Russian wars against Khoqand, Bukhara…
