Asia Audiobooks | History

A moving memoir by a survivor of anti-Muslim violence in contemporary India that delicately weaves political and family histories in a tribute to India's vibrant multiethnic society and the resilience of its women and minorities, especially in the face of growing religious extremism "A warning, thrown to the world, and a stunning debut-Chowdhary is a much-needed new voice.'-Alexander Chee In 2002, Zara Chowdhary was sixteen years old and living with her family in Ahmedabad, one of India's fastest-growing metropolises, when a gruesome anti-Muslim pogrom upended her world. Instead of taking her school exams, she was put under a three-month lockdown with thousands of others, fearing for their community and their lives. The chief minister in the state at the time, Narendra Modi, accused of fomenting anti-Muslim violence, would become prime minister of India and lead a government committed to eroding the rights of India's 220 million Muslims. In The Lucky Ones, Chowdhary weaves the past and the present of her multigenerational Muslim family, juxtaposing the horrific violence of rising fascistic forces on the streets with the more mundane violence of patriarchal Indian joint families at the dinner table. Through the stories of sisters, daughters, and mothers raising each other, Chowdhary shows how women hold this world together with their ability to forgive, find laughter, and offer grace even as the world they know, and their place in it, is falling apart. With lyrical clarity and intimacy, The Lucky Ones is a poetic remembrance of how a country's promise of a multiethnic secular democracy can so easily dissolve and descend into extremism. Chowdhary's story is a protest against the erasure of India's Muslims, a testimony of a lost girlhood, and a testament to her family and country's entwined lives.

Zara Chowdhary (Author), TBD, Zara Chowdhary (Narrator)

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Tinderbox: India’s Slide Towards Turmoil

A devastating critique of India’s failure to fulfil its founding promises. Since claiming independence from the British Empire in 1947, India has dramatically changed its nature and its place on the world stage. Today, it is common knowledge that the country glitters with formidable potential. India is the largest democracy in the world and it has the third-most billionaires after the US and China. It is predicted it will have the world’s third-largest economy by 2030, the largest middle class by 2033 and the third biggest navy by 2035. India boasts a raft of savvy English-speaking academics and business-leaders, an army of talented software engineers and a youthful population buzzing with ideas and ambition. But can all that India has promised – to itself and the wider world – come to fruition? In Tinderbox, acclaimed Wall Street Journal columnist Sadanand Dhume takes a hard look at the country’s progress and potential, bringing together a view of politics, history, economic thinking and social attitudes. Dhume points to why the economic progress of India is stuttering, with a seemingly unbridgeable gap between the desires of its technocrats and its politicians; he shows how democracy is fraying, Hindu nationalism cutting away at the nation’s fabled pluralism; and he accounts for the country’s continuing paradox of astonishing contradictions, what with its record-numbers of billionaires and mass poverty, its technological advances but overall lack of access to electricity and clean water. In short, it’s time to revisit the view that India’s growth and progress will continue at its prophesied pace. And it’s time to overturn the widespread assumption that a familiar India will remain familiar.

Sadanand Dhume (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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On the Shadow Tracks: A Journey through Occupied Myanmar

Brought to you by Penguin. In 2016, while working as a journalist in Yangon, Clare Hammond discovered an obscure map that showed a web of new railways spanning the length and breadth of the country - railways not shown on any other publicly available maps. She was determined to uncover the railways' origins, purpose, and most of all, the silence that surrounded them. She would spend three months travelling on these mysterious railways, and the next five years piecing their story together. Her journey would take her from Myanmar's tropical south to the embattled mountain towns that border India and China. In dilapidated carriages, along tracks in disrepair, through contested ethnic states and former sites of forced labour, visiting temples, tea shops and festivals, Clare encountered a colourful and contradictory Myanmar through the stories of its people. Simultaneously a lush and evocative travelogue, an unsparing account of Myanmar's recent history, and an astonishing, conversation-shifting engagement with Britain's colonial legacy, On the Shadow Tracks is that rare and necessary thing: a book that finds and tells the truth. ©2024 Clare Hammond (P) 2024 Penguin Audio

Clare Hammond (Author), Clare Hammond, TBD (Narrator)

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Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History

Between Wounded Knee and My Lai another American atrocity occurred- bigger than either of them, yet today largely forgotten. But for the existence of a single photograph, it would have been entirely lost in time. In March 1906, American soldiers on the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines surrounded and killed 1000 local men, women, and children, known as Moros, on top of an extinct volcano. The so-called 'Battle of Bud Dajo' was hailed as a triumph over an implacable band of dangerous savages, a "brilliant feat of arms" according to President Theodore Roosevelt. Some contemporaries, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Mark Twain, saw the massacre for what it was, but they were the exception and the U.S. military authorities successfully managed to bury the story. Despite the fact that the slaughter of Moros had been captured on camera, the memory of the massacre soon disappeared from the historical record. In Massacre in the Clouds, Kim A. Wagner meticulously recovers the history of a forgotten atrocity and the remarkable photograph that exposed its grim logic. His vivid, unsparing account of the massacre-which claimed hundreds more lives than Wounded Knee and My Lai combined-reveals the extent to which practices of colonial warfare and violence, derived from European imperialism, were fully embraced by Americans with catastrophic results.

Kim A. Wagner (Author), Robert Petkoff, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Struggle for Taiwan: A History

Brought to you by Penguin. In the overwhelming chaos across Asia at the end of the Second World War, one relatively minor issue was the future of the Japanese colony of Taiwan, a large island some one hundred miles off the coast of Fujian. Handed to the Kuomintang-ruled Republic of China, in 1949 it suddenly became the focus of global attention as a random cross-section of defeated nationalists, including President Chiang Kai-shek, fled there from Mao's triumphant Communist forces. The Struggle for Taiwan is a balanced and convincing account of the sequence of events that has left Taiwan for generations as a political anomaly, with issues around its status and future continuing to threaten war. With deepening democratization, Taiwan further goads Beijing, remaining functionally independent from China even as Xi Jinping clamours for unification. This invaluable book allows readers to understand the complex story of this unique place and its role in international relations. With its striking economic dynamism and commitment to democracy, can Taiwan continue - as Hong Kong once did - to thrive, or will China conquer it? And will the world be able to maintain peace across the Taiwan Strait or will it stumble into war? ©2024 Sulmaan Wasif Khan (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Sulmaan Wasif Khan (Author), Austin Yang, TBD (Narrator)

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Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World

From the NYT bestselling author, a breathtaking account of combat and survival in one of the most brutally challenging and rarely examined campaigns of World War II In April 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army steamrolled through Burma, capturing the only ground route from India to China. Supplies to this critical zone would now have to come from India by air-meaning across the Himalayas, on the most hazardous air route in the world. SKIES OF THUNDER is a story of an epic human endeavor, in which Allied troops faced the monumental challenge of operating from airfields hacked from the jungle, and took on "the Hump," the fearsome mountain barrier that defined the air route.They flew fickle, untested aircraft through monsoons and enemy fire, with inaccurate maps and only primitive navigation technology. The result was a litany of both deadly crashes and astonishing feats of survival. The most chaotic of all the war's arenas, the China-Burma-India theater was further confused by the conflicting political interests of Roosevelt, Churchill and their demanding, nominal ally, Chiang Kai-shek. Caroline Alexander, who wrote the defining books on Shackleton's Endurance and Bligh's Bounty, is brilliant at probing what it takes to survive extreme circumstances. She has unearthed obscure memoirs and long-ignored records to give us the pilots' and soldiers' eye views of flying and combat, as well as honest portraits of commanders like the celebrated "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell and Claire Lee Chennault. She assesses the real contributions of units like the Flying Tigers, Merrill's Marauders, and the British Chindits, who pioneered new and unconventional forms of warfare. Decisions in this theater exposed the fault-lines between the Allies-America and Britain, Britain and India, and ultimately and most fatefully between America and China, as FDR pressed to help the Chinese nationalists in order to forge a bond with China after the war. A masterpiece of modern war history.

Caroline Alexander (Author), Fred Sanders, TBD (Narrator)

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K-Drama School: A Pop Culture Inquiry Into Why We Love Korean Television

From the Emmy Award-winning Squid Game to streaming sensations like The Glory and Crash Landing on You, Korean television has emerged onto the global pop culture scene as compelling television-but what exactly makes these shows so irresistibly bingeable? And what can we learn about our societies and ourselves from watching them? From stand-up comedian and media studies PhD Grace Jung comes a rollicking deep dive into the cultural significance of Korean television. K-Drama School analyzes everything from common tropes like amnesia and slapping to conspicuous product placements of Subway sandwiches and coffee; to representations of disability, race and gender; to what Korea's war-torn history says about South Korea's media output and the stories being told on screen. With chapters organized by "lessons," each one inquiring into a different theme of Korean television, K-Drama School offers a groundbreaking exploration into this singular form of entertainment, from an author who writes with humor and heart about shows that spur tears and laughter, keeping us glued to the TV while making fans of us all. Shows discussed include: Squid Game, SKY Castle, Crash Course in Romance, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, My Mister, Something in the Rain, One Spring Night, DP, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, Autumn in My Heart, Winter Sonata, Our Blues, and more.

Grace Jung (Author), Grace Jung, TBD (Narrator)

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Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King

There are few historical figures more integral to South Asian history than Emperor Ashoka, a third-century BCE king who ruled over a larger area of the Indian subcontinent than anyone else before British colonial rule. Ashoka sought not only to rule his territory but also to give it a unity of purpose and aspiration, to unify the people of his vastly heterogeneous empire not by a cult of personality but by the cult of an idea-'dharma'-which served as the linchpin of a new moral order. He aspired to forge a new moral philosophy that would be internalized not only by the people of his empire but also by rulers and subjects of other countries, and would form the foundation for his theory of international relations, in which practicing dharma would bring international conflicts to an end. His fame spread far and wide both in India and in other parts of Asia, and it prompted diverse reimaginations of the king and his significance. In this deeply researched book, Patrick Olivelle draws on Ashoka's inscriptions and on the art and architecture he pioneered to craft a detailed picture of Ashoka as a ruler, a Buddhist, a moral philosopher, and an ecumenist who governed a vast multiethnic, multilinguistic, and multireligious empire.

Patrick Olivelle (Author), Neil Shah (Narrator)

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The Martyr and the Red Kimono: A Fearless Priest’s Sacrifice and A New Generation of Hope in Japan

Brought to you by Penguin. On the 14th of August 1941, a Polish monk named Maximilian Maria Kolbe was murdered in Auschwitz. Kolbe's life had been remarkable. Fiercely intelligent and driven, he founded a movement of Catholicism and spent several years in Nagasaki, ministering to the 'hidden Christians' who had emerged after centuries of oppression. A Polish nationalist as well as a monk, he gave sanctuary to fleeing refugees and ran Poland's largest publishing operation, drawing the wrath of the Nazis. His death was no less remarkable: he volunteered to die, saving the life of a fellow prisoner. It was an act that profoundly transformed the lives of two Japanese men. Tomei Ozaki was just seventeen when the US dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, destroying his home and his family. Masatoshi Asari worked on a farm in Hokkaido during the war and was haunted by the inhumane treatment of prisoners in a nearby camp. Forged in the crucible of an unforgiving war, both men drew inspiration from Kolbe's sacrifice, dedicating their lives to humanity and justice. In The Martyr and the Red Kimono, award-winning author Naoko Abe weaves together a deeply moving and inspirational true story of resistance, sacrifice, guilt and atonement. ©2024 Naoko Abe (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Naoko Abe (Author), Ami Okumura Jones, TBD (Narrator)

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The Luzon Campaign 1945: MacArthur Returns

The Luzon campaign of 1945 was the longest island campaign of the Pacific War, lasting from January 1945 to September 1945, and only ended with the surrender of Imperial Japan. It is often overlooked or mentioned in passing by most histories of that war, yet hundreds of thousands of Americans and Japanese fought in some of the worst conditions imaginable for eight months to clear Luzon of the invaders. This full account of the Luzon campaign stretches from planning stages to the end of the war and the surrender of over 50,000 Japanese troops under the noted Japanese general Yamashita. The landings at Lingayen Gulf, the Battle for Manila, and the recapture of Corregidor are all included, as well as lesser-known battles for the summer capital of Baguio, the battle for Manila's water supply, constant jungle fighting, the raids to rescue Allied POWs, the recapture of Bataan, destruction of the only Japanese armored division to fight in the Pacific, American parachute drops on Corregidor and Aparri, and much more. Individual acts of heroism are highlighted as are the interactions among the senior commanders involved, including General MacArthur, General Krueger (6th Army) and General Eichelberger (8th Army). The book ends with the surrender of Imperial Japan and the end of the Luzon Campaign in September 1945.

Nathan N. Prefer (Author), David Stifel (Narrator)

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Murder in Manchuria: The True Story of a Jewish Virtuoso, Russian Fascists, a French Diplomat, and a

In Murder in Manchuria, Scott D. Seligman explores an unsolved murder set amid the chaos that reigned in China in the run-up to World War II. The story unfolds against the backdrop of a three-country struggle for control of Manchuria-an area some called China's 'Wild East'-and an explosive mixture of nationalities, religions, and ideologies. Semyon Kaspe, a young Jewish musician, is kidnapped, tortured, and ultimately murdered by disaffected, antisemitic White Russians, secretly acting on the orders of Japanese military overlords who covet his father's wealth. When local authorities deliberately slow-walk the search for the kidnappers, a young French diplomat takes over and launches his own investigation. Part cold-case thriller and part social history, the true, tragic saga of Kaspe is told in the context of the larger, improbable story of the lives of the twenty thousand Jews who called Harbin home at the beginning of the twentieth century. Scott D. Seligman recounts the events that led to their arrival and their hasty exodus-and solves a crime that has puzzled historians for decades.

Scott D. Seligman (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Narrator)

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The Incarcerations

The world’s largest democracy is facing the greatest challenge since the end of British colonial rule in 1947. The Incarcerations pulls back the curtain on Indian democracy to tell the remarkable and chilling story of the Bhima Koregaon case, in which 16 human rights defenders (the BK-16) – professors, lawyers, journalists, poets – have been imprisoned, without credible evidence and without trial, as Maoist terrorists. Alpa Shah unravels how these alleged terrorists were charged with inciting violence at a year’s day commemoration in 2018, accused of waging a war against the Indian state, and plotting to kill the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Expertly leading us through the case, Shah exposes some of the world’s most shocking revelations of cyber warfare research, which show not only hacking of emails and mobile phones of the BK-16, but also implantation of the electronic evidence that was used to incarcerate them. Through the life histories of the BK-16, Shah dives deep into the issues they fought for and tells the story of India’s three main minorities – Adivasi, Dalits and Muslims – and what the search for democracy entails for them. Essential and urgent, The Incarcerations reveals how this case is a bellwether for the collapse of democracy in India, as for the first time in the nation’s history there is a multi-pronged, coordinated attack on key defenders of various pillars of democracy. In so doing, Shah shows that democracy today must be not only about protecting freedom of expression and democratic institutions, but also about supporting and safeguarding the social movements that question our global inequalities.

Alpa Shah (Author), Tania Rodrigues (Narrator)

Audiobook

Asia Audiobooks in History