Download or read book Blood Red Sunset written by Ma Bo and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1996-07-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A searing first hand account of China's Cultural Revolution that joins the ranks of great memoirs such as Life and Death in Shanghai, Wild Swans and A Chinese Odyssey First banned in its native land, this earthy, unflinching memoir has become one of the biggest bestsellers in the history of China. In 1968, a fervent young Red Guard joined the army of hotheaded adolescents who trekked to Inner Mongolia to spread the Cultural Revolution. After gaining a reputation as a brutal abuser of the local herd owners and nomads, Ma Bo casually criticized a Party Leader. Denounced as an “active counterrevolutionary” and betrayed by his friends, the idealistic youth was brutally beaten and imprisoned. Charged with passion, never doctrinaire, Blood Red Sunset is a startlingly vivid and personal narrative that opens a window on the psyche of totalitarian excess that no other work of history can provide. This is a tale of ideology and disillusionment, a powerful work of political and literary importance. “A deceptively straightforward story carried forward by deep currents of insight.”—The Washington Post “A genuine, no-holds-barred, unadorned piece of writing…echoing the realities of contemporary China.”—Liu Binyan, The New York Times Book Review

Download or read book Snow Falling in Spring written by Moying Li and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-03-06 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people cannot remember when their childhood ended. I, on the other hand, have a crystal-clear memory of that moment. It happened at night in the summer of 1966, when my elementary school headmaster hanged himself. In 1966 Moying, a student at a prestigious language school in Beijing, seems destined for a promising future. Everything changes when student Red Guards begin to orchestrate brutal assaults, violent public humiliations, and forced confessions. After watching her teachers and headmasters beaten in public, Moying flees school for the safety of home, only to witness her beloved grandmother denounced, her home ransacked, her father's precious books flung onto the back of a truck, and Baba himself taken away. From labor camp, Baba entrusts a friend to deliver a reading list of banned books to Moying so that she can continue to learn. Now, with so much of her life at risk, she finds sanctuary in the world of imagination and learning. This inspiring memoir follows Moying Li from age twelve to twenty-two, illuminating a complex, dark time in China's history as it tells the compelling story of one girl's difficult but determined coming-of-age during the Cultural Revolution. Snow Falling in Spring is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Download or read book Fractured Rebellion written by Andrew G. Walder and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-05 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fractured Rebellion is the first full-length account of the evolution of China’s Red Guard Movement in Beijing, the nation’s capital, from its beginnings in 1966 to its forcible suppression in 1968. Andrew Walder combines historical narrative with sociological analysis as he explores the radical student movement’s crippling factionalism, devastating social impact, and ultimate failure. Most accounts of the movement have portrayed a struggle among Red Guards as a social conflict that pitted privileged “conservative” students against socially marginalized “radicals” who sought to change an oppressive social and political system. Walder employs newly available documentary evidence and the recent memoirs of former Red Guard leaders and members to demonstrate that on both sides of the bitter conflict were students from comparable socioeconomic backgrounds, who shared similar—largely defensive—motivations. The intensity of the conflict and the depth of the divisions were an expression of authoritarian political structures that continued to exert an irresistible pull on student motives and actions, even in the midst of their rebellion. Walder’s nuanced account challenges the main themes of an entire generation of scholarship about the social conflicts of China’s Cultural Revolution, shedding light on the most tragic and poorly understood period of recent Chinese history.

Download or read book Blood Meridian written by Cormac McCarthy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-08-11 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road: an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

Download or read book Blood Sunset written by Jarad Henry and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2009-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a young runaway is found dead one morning, a syringe hanging out of his arm, no one is terribly shocked. A known junkie, even local detective Rubens McCauley is quick to conclude that Dallas Boyd died of an accidental overdose. But anomalies in the boy's death—and the haunting memory of a childhood friend—continue to nag at McCauley. Unable to shake his unease, he soon digs deeper into the case and finds himself enmeshed in a secret network of pedophiles, child abusers, and underage prostitutes. Forced to look evil in the eye, McCauley must conquer his own demons as he battles to find justice for a young boy he never even met.

Download or read book Mao s Last Revolution written by Roderick MACFARQUHAR and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 742 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, and shows his Machiavellian role in masterminding it. This book documents the Hobbesian state that ensued. Power struggles raged among Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Qing - Mao's wife and leader of the Gang of Four - while Mao often played one against the other.

Download or read book Born Red written by Yuan Gao and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1987-06-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born Red is an artistically wrought personal account, written very much from inside the experience, of the years 1966-1969, when the author was a young teenager at middle school. It was in the middle schools that much of the fury of the Cultural Revolution and Red Guard movement was spent, and Gao was caught up in very dramatic events, which he recounts as he understood them at the time. Gao's father was a county political official who was in and out of trouble during those years, and the intense interplay between father and son and the differing perceptions and impact of the Cultural Revolution for the two generations provide both an unusual perspective and some extraordinary moving moments. He also makes deft use of traditional mythology and proverbial wisdom to link, sometimes ironically, past and present. Gao relates in vivid fashion how students-turned-Red Guards held mass rallies against 'capitalist roader' teachers and administrators, marching them through the streets to the accompaniment of chants and jeers and driving some of them to suicide. Eventually the students divided into two factions, and school and town became armed camps. Gao tells of the exhilaration that he and his comrades experienced at their initial victories, of their deepening disillusionment as they utter defeat as the tumultuous first phase of the Cultural Revolution came to a close. The portraits of the persons to whom Gao introduces us - classmates, teachers, family members - gain weight and density as the story unfolds, so that in the end we see how they all became victims of the dynamics of a mass movement out of control.

Download or read book The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History written by Joseph Esherick and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Download or read book Ten Years of Madness written by Jicai Feng and published by China Books. This book was released on 1996 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of true stories of people who lived through the Cultural Revolution in China from 1966 to 1976.

Download or read book Blood Moon written by John Sedgwick and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An astonishing untold story from the nineteenth century—a “riveting…engrossing…‘American Epic’” (The Wall Street Journal) and necessary work of history that reads like Gone with the Wind for the Cherokee. “A vigorous, well-written book that distills a complex history to a clash between two men without oversimplifying” (Kirkus Reviews), Blood Moon is the story of the feud between two rival Cherokee chiefs from the early years of the United States through the infamous Trail of Tears and into the Civil War. Their enmity would lead to war, forced removal from their homeland, and the devastation of a once-proud nation. One of the men, known as The Ridge—short for He Who Walks on Mountaintops—is a fearsome warrior who speaks no English, but whose exploits on the battlefield are legendary. The other, John Ross, is descended from Scottish traders and looks like one: a pale, unimposing half-pint who wears modern clothes and speaks not a word of Cherokee. At first, the two men are friends and allies who negotiate with almost every American president from George Washington through Abraham Lincoln. But as the threat to their land and their people grows more dire, they break with each other on the subject of removal. In Blood Moon, John Sedgwick restores the Cherokee to their rightful place in American history in a dramatic saga that informs much of the country’s mythic past today. Fueled by meticulous research in contemporary diaries and journals, newspaper reports, and eyewitness accounts—and Sedgwick’s own extensive travels within Cherokee lands from the Southeast to Oklahoma—it is “a wild ride of a book—fascinating, chilling, and enlightening—that explains the removal of the Cherokee as one of the central dramas of our country” (Ian Frazier). Populated with heroes and scoundrels of all varieties, this is a richly evocative portrait of the Cherokee that is destined to become the defining book on this extraordinary people.

Download or read book Red Azalea written by Anchee Min and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed memoir from the bestselling author of Empress Orchid 'Historically remarkable ... intensely moving' SUNDAY TIMES 'The book sings. It is a small masterpiece' VOGUE Born into a devoutly Maoist family in 1950s Shanghai and forced to work on a communal farm from the age of seventeen, Anchee Min found herself in an alienating and hostile political climate, where her only friendships were perilous and intense. Both candid and touching, this compelling memoir documents her isolation and illicit love against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution. From her coming of age in the Red Guard to her recruitment into Madame Mao's burgeoning industry of propaganda movies, Red Azalea explores the secret sensuality of a repressive society with elegance and honesty.

Download or read book Blood Red Snow White written by Marcus Sedgwick and published by Roaring Brook Press. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There never was a story that was happy through and through. When writer Arthur Ransome leaves his unhappy marriage in England and moves to Russia to work as a journalist, he has little idea of the violent revolution about to erupt. Unwittingly, he finds himself at its center, tapped by the British to report back on the Bolsheviks even as he becomes dangerously, romantically entangled with Trotsky's personal secretary. Both sides seek to use Arthur to gather and relay information for their own purposes . . . and both grow to suspect him of being a double agent. Arthur wants only to elope far from conflict with his beloved, but her Russian ties make leaving the country nearly impossible. And the more Arthur resists becoming a pawn, the more entrenched in the game he seems to become. Blood Red Snow White, a Soviet-era thriller from renowned author Marcus Sedgwick, is sure to keep readers on the edge of their seats. This title has Common Core connections.

Download or read book Servant of the Underworld written by Aliette de Bodard and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2010-10-26 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IT IS THE YEAR ONE-KNIFE IN TENOCHTITLAN - THE CAPITAL OF THE AZTECS. The end of the world is kept at bay only by the magic of human sacrifice. A Priestess disappears from an empty room drenched in blood. Acatl, High Priest of the Dead must find her, or break the boundaries between the worlds of th living and the dead. But how do you find someone, living or dead, in a world where blood sacrifices are an everyday occurrence and the very gods stalk the streets? File Under: Fantasy [ Aztec Mystery | Locked Room | Human Sacrifice | The Dead Walk! ]

Download or read book The World Turned Upside Down written by Yang Jisheng and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yang Jisheng’s The World Turned Upside Down is the definitive history of the Cultural Revolution, in withering and heartbreaking detail. As a major political event and a crucial turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) marked the zenith as well as the nadir of Mao Zedong’s ultra-leftist politics. Reacting in part to the Soviet Union’s "revisionism" that he regarded as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called "bourgeois" forces within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This ten-year-long class struggle on a massive scale devastated traditional Chinese culture as well as the nation’s economy. Following his groundbreaking and award-winning history of the Great Famine, Tombstone, Yang Jisheng here presents the only history of the Cultural Revolution by an independent scholar based in mainland China, and makes a crucial contribution to understanding those years' lasting influence today. The World Turned Upside Down puts every political incident, major and minor, of those ten years under extraordinary and withering scrutiny, and arrives in English at a moment when contemporary Chinese governance is leaning once more toward a highly centralized power structure and Mao-style cult of personality.

Download or read book Blood Red Sunset written by Bo Ma and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 1995 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Every so often a book comes along that captures a place and time so well it overturns the platitudes and excuses, and punctures the rationalizations and the blaming. For many years from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s China was convulsed in a nationwide struggle for the soul of the country, known as the Cultural Revolution. For years after, the blame for the terrible destruction lay with Chairman Mao and the Gang of Four." "The cost in lives lost and ruined is still untotaled, but China has returned to something like normal. In the past several years, the West has begun to come to terms with the stark reality of the Cultural Revolution through books like Nien Cheng's Life and Death in Shanghai and films like Farewell, My Concubine. But for the Chinese, the process began with the pseudonymous publication of Ma Bo's extraordinary novel, Blood Red Sunset." "A potent, unbridled memoir of the Cultural Revolution, Blood Red Sunset is one of China's biggest bestsellers in history, selling more than 400,000 copies. It is the story of a young man filled with ideological fervor who wrote a petition - in his own blood - to join the revolution in rural northern China. There he participated in the making of an ecological disaster on the Mongolian grasslands while joining his mates in the often brutal efforts to "re-educate" herd owners and "capitalist Chinese."" "Then, after casually criticizing a Chinese leader, this idealistic youth was denounced as an "active counterrevolutionary," betrayed by his friends, beaten, and imprisoned. His is a story of victimizing and victimization, a reminder of the evil we do to each other and the passionate humanity that survives against all depredations."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Download or read book Spider Eaters written by Rae Yang and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fifteen years after its first publication, Spider Eaters remains my go-to memoir about coming of age during the Mao years. Rae Yang's work is notable for its reflectiveness, complexity, psychological insight, and unflinching honesty. I commend this riveting work to a generation of readers for whom the cultural Revolution is now of 'merely' historical interest."—Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz "By oscillating between scenes that are bland in their matter-of-fact concreteness and ones that are almost unbelievable in their nightmarish cruelty and complexity, Rae Yang skillfully evokes the bizarre and contradictory 'revolutionary' world in which she grew up in Mao's China. Spider Eaters is a reminder of what a traumatic history the Chinese people have undergone this century and that a country's past—even when many would rather forget it—always lives irrevocably on within those who experienced it."—Orville Schell, author of Mandate of Heaven "How can we expect anyone to know the United States without understanding the effect the Sixties had on all of us? Similarly, how can we know China without comprehending the impact the Sixties and the Cultural Revolution had on its politics, culture, and people? Rae Yang's Spider Eaters goes far in building that understanding. It is a gripping memoir."—Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain

Download or read book Blood Skies written by Steven Montano and published by Darker Sunset Press. This book was released on 2011-06-10 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where nightmares stalk the earth and the few survivors must battle the vampire legions of the Ebon Cities, a team of soldiers races to save mankind when a traitor threatens to destroy the future of humanity. Southern Claw warlock Eric Cross is a member of Viper Squad, and his mission is to pursue the witch called Red across the wastelands. His hunt takes him through haunted forests and blighted tundra, into war-torn cities and to the edge of a twisted necropolis. And before the journey is done Cross will uncover the dark origins of magic, and learn the true meaning of sacrifice...