Online Resource Center
Book recommendations
Goodreads
At the bottom of this page, you’ll find all the books that the East Asia Resource Center has used during recent seminars and books clubs. You can also browse these books on our Goodreads shelves.
Book databases
For additional recommendations, try searching the Database of Award-winning Children’s Literature and the California Department of Education Recommended Literature List for specific settings, time periods and grade levels.
NCTA recommendations
- Five College Center for East Asian Studies’ “Favorite East Asia Related Books”
- Asia For Educators’ literature recommendations sorted by grade level.
- Indiana University’s East Asian Studies Center’s reading lists for “Teaching East Asian Literature in the High School”
- University of Pittsburgh’s “Selected Books on East Asia for Pre-K to 5th Grade“
Other children’s books
- US Board on Books for Young People’s Outstanding International Books List
- The American Library Association “Growing up around the world” project
Books used in recent EARC seminars and book clubs
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Resisting the Nuclear: Art and Activism across the Pacific
Publication Date:
2024
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Other Rivers: A Chinese Education
Publication Date:
2024
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All Our Ordinary Stories
Publication Date:
2024
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The Boy from Clearwater
Publication Date:
2023
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The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in Ten Lives
Publication Date:
2021
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Shadow Life
Publication Date:
2021
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Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
Publication Date:
2020
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Three Brothers: Memories of My Family
Publication Date:
2020
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The Silence of Bones
Publication Date:
2020
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Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World
Publication Date:
2020
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No Steps Behind: Beate Sirota Gordon’s Battle for Women’s Rights in Japan
Publication Date:
2020
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Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
Publication Date:
2020
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All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team
Publication Date:
2020
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A Bowl Full of Peace: A True Story
Publication Date:
2020
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They Called Us Enemy
Publication Date:
2019
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The Weight of Our Sky
Publication Date:
2019
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The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China
Publication Date:
2019
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The Phone Booth in Mr. Hirota’s Garden
Publication Date:
2019
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The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un
Publication Date:
2019
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The Art of Emptiness
Publication Date:
2019
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Saipan: The Battle That Doomed Japan in World War II
Publication Date:
2019
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Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay
Publication Date:
2019
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Ojiichan’s Gift
Publication Date:
2019
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I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir
Publication Date:
2019
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All The Ways Home
Publication Date:
2019
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A Place to Belong
Publication Date:
2019
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The Astonishing Color of After
Publication Date:
2018
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Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean: Remembering Chinese Scientist Pu Zhelong’s Work for Sustainable Farming
Publication Date:
2018
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Grenade
Publication Date:
2018
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Go
Publication Date:
2018
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Down and Out in Late Meiji Japan
Publication Date:
2018
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Convenience Store Woman
Publication Date:
2018
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Where’s Halmoni?
Publication Date:
2017
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The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War
Publication Date:
2017
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The Forbidden Temptation of Baseball
Publication Date:
2017
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Our School (film)
Publication Date:
2017
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Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve
Publication Date:
2017
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Japanese Garden Design
Publication Date:
2017
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The Silk Road: A New Documentary History to 1400
Publication Date:
2016
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Are You an Echo?: The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko
Publication Date:
2016
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Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940
Publication Date:
2014
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Inventing Asia: American Perspectives Around 1900
Publication Date:
2014
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The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction
Publication Date:
2013
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Dangerous Beauties and Dutiful Wives: Popular Portraits of Women in Japan, 1905-1925
Publication Date:
2011
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Contemporary Art in Asia: A Critical Reader
Publication Date:
2011
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Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization
Publication Date:
2010
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The Housekeeper and the Professor
Publication Date:
2009
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Methods and Theories of Art History
Publication Date:
2009
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Wabi Sabi
Publication Date:
2008
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Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea
Publication Date:
2007
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Keywords for American Cultural Studies
Publication Date:
2007
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Landed
Publication Date:
2006
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American Born Chinese
Publication Date:
2006
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East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History
Publication Date:
2005
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Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art
Publication Date:
2001
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Life Along the Silk Road
Publication Date:
2001
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The Cambridge Illustrated History of China
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Publication Date:
1999
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Japonisme: The Japanese Influence on Western Art Since 1858
Publication Date:
1999
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Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood
Publication Date:
1998
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How to Look at Japanese Art
Publication Date:
1996
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Buddhist Art and Architecture
Publication Date:
1993
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The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight Into Beauty
Publication Date:
1990
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Miracle at Midway
Publication Date:
1983
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No-No Boy
Publication Date:
1978
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Yu the Great: Conquering the Flood, a Chinese Legend
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Youth Culture in China
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Year of Impossible Goodbyes
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Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
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When the Emperor Was Divine
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When My Name Was Keoko
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Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century
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War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
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Wabi Sabi
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Voices of Early Modern Japan
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Up from the Sea
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Tomo: Friendship through Fiction
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This Next New Year
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The World of Thought in Ancient China
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The Wakame Gatherers
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The Tragedy of Liberation -A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957
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The Sun Gods
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The Search for Modern China
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The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-45
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The Revenge of the 47 Ronin
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The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China
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The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited
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The Pacific War: 1941-1945
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The Pacific War, 1931-1945: A Critical Perspective on Japan’s Role in World War II
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The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China
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The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories
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The Open Empire: A History of China Through 1600
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The Monkey King: A Superhero Tale of China
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The Master Puppeteer
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The Little Monkey King’s Journey: Stories of the Chinese Zodiac
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The Legend of Hong Kil Dong: The Robinhood of Korea
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The House Baba Built: An Artist’s Childhood in China
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The Generalissimo -Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China
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The Foundations of Buddhism
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The Buddha in the Attic
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The Big Wave
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Tales of a Chinese Grandmother: 30 Traditional Tales from China
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Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia, and Deco
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Street of Eternal Happiness
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Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45
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Sources Of Chinese Tradition
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Some Prefer Nettles
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Showa 1939-1944: A History of Japan
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Precarious Japan
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Popular Hits of the Showa Era
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Please Look After Mom
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Paris In Japan: The Japanese Encounter With European Painting
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One Day in Japan with Hokusai
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Old Man Mad about Drawing
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Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
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Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit
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Modern East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History, Vol. 2
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Modern Chinese History (Key Issues in Asian Studies)
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March Was Made of Yarn
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Mao’s Last Revolution
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Mao’s Great Famine -The history of China’s most devastating catastrophe, 1958-1962
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Mao: A Life
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Mao Zedong and China’s Revolutions -A Brief History with Documents
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Mao and Me
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Made in Japan: The Postwar Creative Print Movement
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Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood
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Longfellow’s Tattoos: Tourism, Collecting, and Japan
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Little White Duck : A Childhood in China
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Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short History
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Kira-Kira
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Kamishibai Man
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Japanese Inn
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Japan Envisions the West: 16th-19th Century Japanese Art from Kobe City Museum
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Japan at War: An Oral History
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I Live in Tokyo
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How to Read Chinese Ceramics
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How to Look At Japanese Art
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Hiroshima
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Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
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Giants of Japan -The Lives of Japan’s Most Influential Men and Women
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Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945
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Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping
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Enter the Dragon -China’s Undeclared War Against the U.S. in Korea, 1950-1951
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Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
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Eating Bitterness: Stories from the Front Lines of China’s Great Urban Migration
-
East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History
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Drawing from Memory
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Debating China: The U.S.-China Relationship in Ten Conversations
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Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip
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Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West
-
Chinese Religious Life
-
Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook
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Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land
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China: A New History
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China: A History (Volume 1): From Neolithic Cultures through the Great Qing Empire
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China’s Millennials: The Want Generation
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China in World History
-
China in Transition: Economic Development, Migration, and Education
Publisher:
SPICE
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China in the 21st Century
-
China in Ten Words
-
China in and Beyond the Headlines
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China Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future
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China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975
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Certain Victory: Images of World War II in Japanese Media
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By All Means Necessary: How China’s Resource Quest Is Changing the World
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Boxers and Saints
-
Beyond the Great Mountains: A Visual Poem about China
-
Amaterasu: Return of the Sun, a Japanese Myth
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Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
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Abandon the Old in Tokyo
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A Single Shard
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A History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present
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A Chinese Life
-
49 Myths about China
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1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows