{"title":"Regional Studies","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"strolling-through-istanbul-the-classic-guide-to-the-city-rev-9781838600020b","title":"Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (Revised and Updated)","description":"This classic guide to Istanbul is published in a completely revised and updated new edition.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTaking the reader on foot through this captivating city - European Capital of Culture in 2010 - the authors describe the historic monuments and sites of what was once Constantinople and the capital in turn of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, in the context of the great living city. 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Ngaba was one of the first places where the Tibetans and the Chinese Communists encountered one another. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong’s Red Army fled into the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter—to Tibetans, it was as if they were eating the Buddha. 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Do they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight? \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003eIlluminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one’s culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. 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But it is also misunderstood, and often romanticized. Drawing from her own experience reporting on the politics and culture of her hometown, as well as interviews with musicians, protesters, and writers who have watched their home transform, Karen Cheung gives us a rare insider’s view of this remarkable city at a pivotal moment—for Hong Kong and, ultimately, for herself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn just before the handover to China in 1997, Cheung grew up questioning what version of Hong Kong she belonged to. Not quite at ease within the middle-class, cosmopolitan identity available to her at her English-speaking international school, she also resisted the conservative values of her deeply traditional, often dysfunctional family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrough vivid and character-rich stories, Cheung braids a dual narrative of her own coming of age alongside that of her generation. 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