History / History by country / Asia / Central Asia

Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran

by Dilip Hiro

From a critically acclaimed author-a comprehensive history of the part of the world currently making headlines

The former Soviet republics of Central Asia comprise a sprawling, politically pivotal, densely...

A History of Zhang Zhung and Tibet, Volume One: The Early Period

by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu & Donatella Rossi

A History of Zhang Zhung and Tibet, Volume One explores ancient Tibet's Zhang Zhung kingdom and Bon religion that preceded the advent of Buddhism in the seventh century. Countering the long-held idea that Tibet's...

Restless Valley

by Philip Shishkin

It sounds like the stuff of a fiction thriller: two revolutions, a massacre of unarmed civilians, a civil war, a drug-smuggling highway, brazen corruption schemes, contract hits, and larger-than-life characters...

Journeys on the Silk Road: A Desert Explorer, Buddha's Secret Library, and the Unearthing of the World's Oldest Printed Book

by Joyce Morgan & Conrad Walters

A literary thriller-meets-travel adventure-meets-popular history rife with a fascinating cast of characters that includes a misfit explorer named Aurel Stein, a cunning abbot, and a fox terrier named Dash the...

Russia's War in Afghanistan

by David Isby & Ronald Volstad

Text by David Isby. Colour plates by Ron Volstad. This book examines Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The origins and conduct of the war and the operational organisation of Soviet forces are discussed. Afghan resistance...

Stable Outside, Fragile Inside?: Post-Soviet Statehood in Central Asia

by Emilian Kavalski

This timely volume analyses the quality of statehood in Central Asia by assessing the complex dynamics of Central Asian state-making and focusing on the simultaneous patterns of socialization and internalization...

Christianity and Islam Under the Sultans, Volume II

by Frederick William Hasluck

Originally published in 1929, Hasluck's study examines the religious-social changes wrought by the imposition of Islam over Christianity in Asia Minor. This digital edition was derived from ACLS Humanities E-Book's...

No Lack of Courage: Operation Medusa, Afghanistan

by Bernd Horn & R.J. Hillier

No Lack of Courage is the story of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Operation Medusa, the largely Canadian action in Afghanistan from 1 to 17 September 2006, to dislodge a heavily entrenched Taliban...

Old Stories Retold: Narrative and Vanishing Pasts in Modern China

by Andrew G. Stuckey

Old Stories Retold delves into intertextual resonances cultivated with traditional literature in modern Chinese fiction from both the mainland and Taiwan. These resonances develop alternative historical sensibilities...

Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China

by Gray Tuttle

Over the past century and with varying degrees of success, China has tried to integrate Tibet into the modern Chinese nation-state. In this groundbreaking work, Gray Tuttle reveals the surprising role Buddhism...

Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan

by Kamoludin Abdullaev & Shahram Akbarzaheh

The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan chronicles this country through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 600 cross-referenced dictionary entries on important...

Labrang Monastery: A Tibetan Buddhist Community on the Inner Asian Borderlands, 1709-1958

by Paul Kocot Nietupski

This book is a social and political history of Labrang Monastery, located in Tibet's Amdo and China's Gansu Province. It includes a study of the religious heritage of the region and its interactions with surrounding...

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History

by George Crile

Charlie Wilson's War was a publishing sensation and a New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times bestseller. In the early 1980s, a Houston socialite turned the attention of maverick Texas congressman...

Confessions of a Mullah Warrior

by Masood Farivar

Masood Farivar was ten years old when his childhood in peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan was shattered by the Soviet invasion of 1979. Although he was born into a long line of religious and political leaders...

Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic

by Éva Ágnes Csató, Bo Isaksson & Carina Jahani

The authors are outstanding scholars engaged in the study of language varieties spoken in 'convergence areas' in which speakers are multilingual in languages of at least two but sometimes all three language...

The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia

by David Sneath

In this groundbreaking work, social anthropologist David Sneath aggressively dispels the myths surrounding the history of steppe societies and proposes a new understanding of the nature and formation of the...

The Invasion of Afghanistan and UK-Soviet Relations, 1979-82

by Richard Smith, Patrick Salmon & Stephen Robert Twigge

This volume examines British policy towards the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.

The documents in this volume, many released into the public realm for the first...

Statebuilding in Afghanistan

by Nik Hynek & Péter Marton

This edited volume empirically maps and theorises NATO-ISAF's contribution to peacebuilding and reconstruction in Afghanistan. The book provides a contextual framework of the NATO participation in Afghanistan;...

Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords, and One Woman's Journey Through Afghanistan

by Fariba Nawa

When veteran reporter Fariba Nawa returned home to Afghanistan—the nation she had fled as a child with her family during the Soviet invasion nearly twenty years earlier—she discovered a fractured country...