{"title":"Frank Dikotter","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the meticulously researched and often controversial histories penned by Frank Dikötter. Explore the shaping of modern China through powerful biographies and insightful analyses of pivotal events.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"dictators-book-frank-dikotter-9781526626998","title":"Dictators","description":"From the Samuel Johnson prize-winning author of Mao's Great Famine, a timely and compelling exploration of the cult of personality that surrounded eight twentieth century dictators","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49512936636689,"sku":"GOR010678169","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49736578728209,"sku":"NGR9781526626998","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50051060564241,"sku":"GOR010971918","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50267011678481,"sku":"GOR010727660","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50379454873873,"sku":"CIN1526626993G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50388857356561,"sku":"CIN1526626993A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50510134739217,"sku":"GOR011336891","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52134847578385,"sku":"NLS9781526626998","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1526626993.jpg?v=1757071370"},{"product_id":"discourse-of-race-in-modern-china-book-frank-dikotter-9781849044882","title":"The Discourse of Race in Modern China","description":"First published in 1992, The Discourse of Race in Modern China rapidly became a classic, showing for the first time on the basis of detailed evidence how and why racial categorisation be- came so widespread in China. After the country's devastating defeat against Japan in 1895, leading reformers like Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei turned away from the Confucian classics to seek enlightenment abroad, hoping to find the keys to wealth and power on the distant shores of Europe. Instead, they discovered the notion of 'race', and used new evolutionary theories from Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer to present a universe red in tooth and claw in which 'yellows' competed with 'whites' in a deadly struggle for survival. After the fall of the empire in 1911, prominent politicians and writers in republican China continued to measure, classify and rank people from around the world ac- cording to their supposed biological features, all in the name of science. Racial thinking remains popular in the People's Republic of China, as serologists, geneticists and anthropometrists continue to interpret human variation in terms of 'race'. This new edition has been revised and expanded to include a new chapter taking the reader up to the twenty-first century.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49516221464849,"sku":"GOR008099578","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49734517457169,"sku":"NGR9781849044882","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849044880.jpg?v=1751454547"},{"product_id":"sex-culture-and-society-in-modern-china-book-frank-dikotter-9781850651666","title":"Sex, Culture and Society in Modern China","description":"\"Sex\" emerged as an independent field of study during the New Culture Movement (1915-21). The anatomy of the reproductive system, the physiology of internal secretions, the nature of sex, the determination of sexual differences, the mechanisms of reproduction, the genetic foundation of sexual differentiation and other related issues were investigated by a rapidly growing number of social thinkers. The result was a flood of pamphlets, booklets, surveys and studies, breaking what was called the conspiracy of silence around the \"mystery of sex\" or \"xingshenmi\". New society, it was claimed, had the right to investigate human sexual life scientifically. This book combines the history of science and cultural history to provide a study of the reconceptualization of human sexuality and reproduction. It focuses on the period between the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5 and the communist takeover in 1949, an era of transition marked by the gradual introduction of new thought systems from the West. Notions of \"sex\" in modern China were based on \"new\" ideas about anatomy, physiology and heredity; they were also part of an alternative paradigm defined by evolutionary notions of time and space. \"Sex, Culture and Society in Modern China\" is based on an analysis of both medical and lay texts such as handbooks, marriage guides, and introductions to physiology and sexual hygiene. Texts of scientific popularization are examined in detail, since they provide valuable information on how scientific ideas were re-interpreted and integrated into an indigenous conceptual framework that was marked by a continuity with the past. Texts belonging to the higher levels of culture are equally important, since many members of the academic community in Republican China were influenced by the introduction of evolutionary biology, embryology, anatomy, physiology, and medicine. Within all cultural levels, however, social prejudice and gender bias converged in the use of biology to reconstruct new social categories: the regulation of sexuality became instrumental in the maintenance of social norms.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49561093701905,"sku":"GOR004970010","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1850651663.jpg?v=1750725142"},{"product_id":"age-of-openness-book-frank-dikotter-9780520258815","title":"The Age of Openness","description":"The era between empire and communism is routinely portrayed as a catastrophic interlude in China's modern history. But in this book, Frank Dikotter shows that the first half of the twentieth century was characterized by unprecedented openness. He argues that from 1900 to 1949, all levels of Chinese society were seeking engagement with the rest of the world and that pursuit of openness was particularly evident in four areas: governance, including advances in liberties and the rule of law; greater freedom of movement within the country and outside it; the spirited exchange of ideas in the humanities and sciences; and thriving and open markets and the resulting sustained growth in the economy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49572620534033,"sku":"GOR013561964","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50024773878033,"sku":"CIN0520258819VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51701212152081,"sku":"CIN0520258819G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0520258819.jpg?v=1750846777"},{"product_id":"cultural-revolution-book-frank-dikotter-9781632864239","title":"The Cultural Revolution","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe concluding volume--following \u003ci\u003eMao's Great Famine\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Tragedy of Liberation--\u003c\/i\u003ein Frank Dikötter's award-winning trilogy chronicling the Communist revolution in China.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958-1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The Cultural Revolution's goal was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalistic elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. Young students formed the Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semiautomatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976\u003c\/i\u003e draws for the first time on hundreds of previously classified party documents, from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches. After the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the market and hollow out the party's ideology. By showing how economic reform from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, \u003ci\u003eThe Cultural Revolution\u003c\/i\u003e casts China's most tumultuous era in a wholly new light.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49617584783633,"sku":"CIN1632864231VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50466930262289,"sku":"CIN1632864231G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51042254029073,"sku":"NIN9781632864239","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51481638174993,"sku":"CIN1632864231A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1632864231.jpg?v=1750720565"},{"product_id":"discourse-of-race-in-modern-china-book-frank-dikotter-9781850651352","title":"The Discourse of Race in Modern China","description":"Focusing on the discourse of race in modern China, this study looks at the emergence of racial stereotypes in the 19th century, the gradual formation of a racial discourse at the turn of the century and the emergence, institutionalization and habitualization of racial nationalism in this century.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49790454792465,"sku":"GOR013785781","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1850651353.jpg?v=1750995721"},{"product_id":"narcotic-culture-book-frank-dikotter-9781849044721","title":"Narcotic Culture","description":"To this day, the perception persists that China was a civilisation defeated by imperialist Britain's most desirable trade commodity, opium - a drug that turned the Chinese into cadaverous addicts in the iron grip of dependence. But, as this new edition of Narcotic Culture brilliantly shows, the real scandal in Chinese history was not the expansion of the drug trade by Britain in the early nineteenth century, but rather the failure of the British to grasp the consequences of prohibition. They reveal that opium actually had few harmful effects on either health or longevity; in fact, it was prepared and appreciated in highly complex rituals with inbuilt constraints preventing excessive use. Opium was even used as a medicinal panacea in China before the availability of aspirin and penicillin. But as a result of the British effort to eradicate opium, the Chinese turned from the relatively benign use of that drug to heroin, morphine, cocaine, and countless other psychoactive substances. The transition from a tolerated opium culture to a system of prohibition produced a 'cure' that was far worse than the disease. Delving into a history of drugs and their abuses, Narcotic Culture is part revisionist history of imperial and twentieth-century Britain and part sobering portrait of the dangers of prohibition.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49995337761041,"sku":"GOR010818320","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50401107542289,"sku":"CIN1849044724G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50414899364113,"sku":"GOR009643326","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52395245830417,"sku":"NGR9781849044721","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1849044724.jpg?v=1751412497"},{"product_id":"mao-s-great-famine-book-frank-dikotter-9781408812198","title":"Mao's Great Famine","description":"Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up and overtake Britain in less than 15 years. The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives. So opens Frank Dikotter's astonishing, riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era. Dikotter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of one of the most deadly mass killings of human history, as at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death, but also the greatest demolition of real estate in human history, as up to a third of all housing was turned into rubble. The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful meshing of exhaustive research and narrative drive, Dikotter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power - the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders - with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50001282662673,"sku":"GOR003934673","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51939442295057,"sku":"GOR014468756","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1408812193.jpg?v=1751018127"},{"product_id":"narcotic-culture-book-frank-dikotter-9781850657255","title":"Narcotic Culture","description":"\"China was turned into a nation of opium addicts by the pernicious forces of imperialist trade\". This study systematically questions this assertion on the basis of abundant archives from China, Europe and the US, showing that opium had few harmful effects on either health or longevity, that most smokers used it in moderate quantities without any fatal \"loss of control\", and that the substance was prepared and appreciated in highly complex rituals with in-built constraints on excessive use. In a culture of restraint, opium was an ideal social lubricant helpful in maintaining decorum and composure. It was also a medical panacea before the availability of aspirin and penicillin: it allowed ordinary people to relieve the symptoms of dysentery, cholera, malaria and tuberculosis and to cope with pain, fatigue, hunger and cold. If opium was medicine as much as recreation, the book provides abundant evidence that the transition from a tolerated opium culture to a system of prohibition produced a cure which was far worse than the disease. Heroin and morphine were snorted, smoked, chewed or injected in the wake of the anti-opium movement, often in conditions far more harmful than opium smoking. Although heroin pills were smoked at all social levels in relatively small and innocuous quantities, some hardly containing any alkaloids, the dirty needles shared by the poor caused lethal septicaemia and transmitted a range of contagious diseases. Prohibition spawned social exclusion and human misery, engendering the very problems it was designed to contain.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50006127477009,"sku":"GOR004429515","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1850657254.jpg?v=1751249019"},{"product_id":"mao-s-great-famine-book-frank-dikotter-9780802777683","title":"Mao's Great Famine","description":"This book gives a detailed account of the scarce water resources of Jordan, with a focus on their quantities, quality, and use for different sectors. It details the political, social, and economic dimensions of the scarce water resources along with their implications on Jordan's cooperation with its neighbors. The book includes implemented projects of dams, canals, water supply networks, waste water treatment, and more. It gives an overview of which projects have been successful and which have failed to achieve their purposes and why. Shared water with other countries and their developmental implications to the water sector are discussed and future water supply projects, such as the Red Sea-Dead Sea conduit project, are elaborated on. The book also touches upon the waves of refugees and their impact on the water sector and water strategies in Jordan.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50273666466065,"sku":"CIN0802777686VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50407763214609,"sku":"GOR005957702","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51416365236497,"sku":"CIN0802777686G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0802777686.jpg?v=1751362077"},{"product_id":"cultural-revolution-book-frank-dikotter-9781632864215","title":"The Cultural Revolution","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe concluding volume--following \u003ci\u003eMao's Great Famine \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Tragedy of Liberation--\u003c\/i\u003ein Frank Dikotter's award-winning trilogy chronicling the Communist revolution in China.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958-1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The Cultural Revolution's goal was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalistic elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. Young students formed the Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semiautomatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976 \u003c\/i\u003edraws for the first time on hundreds of previously classified party documents, from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches. After the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the market and hollow out the party's ideology. By showing how economic reform from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, \u003ci\u003eThe Cultural Revolution\u003c\/i\u003e casts China's most tumultuous era in a wholly new light.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50395747057937,"sku":"CIN1632864215A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50627059319057,"sku":"GOR011463998","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52860727591185,"sku":"CIN1632864215G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1632864215.jpg?v=1750927489"},{"product_id":"construction-of-racial-identities-in-china-and-japan-book-frank-dikotter-9781850653530","title":"Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan","description":"This work reflects on the core issues related to the national and racial mythologies that have been central to nation building in China and Japan over the last century. The contributors demonstrate how the process of modern myth-making and racial identity politics has been at work in the region.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51771697987857,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51771698086161,"sku":"GOR007500007","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781850653530.jpg?v=1751536297"},{"product_id":"age-of-openness-china-before-mao-book-frank-dikotter-9789622099203","title":"The Age of Openness  China before Mao","description":"The era between empire and communism is routinely portrayed as a catastrophic interlude in China's modern history, but this engagingly written book shows instead that the first half of the twentieth century witnessed a qualitatively unprecedented trend towards openness.Frank Dikotter argues that the years from 1900 to 1949 were characterised at all levels of society by engagement with the world, and that the pursuit of openness was particularly evident in four areas: in governance and the advance of the rule of law and of newly acquired liberties; in freedom of movement in and out of the country; in open minds thriving on ideas from the humanities and sciences; and in open markets and sustained growth in the economy.Freedom of association, freedom to travel, freedom of religion, freedom to trade and relative freedom of speech wrought profound changes in the texture of everyday life. While globalisation itself was a vector of cultural diversification, pre-existing constellations of ideas, practices and institutions did not simply vanish on contact with the rest of the world, but on the contrary expanded even further, just as much as local industries diversified thanks to their inclusion into a much larger global market. Arguably the country was at its most diverse in its entire history on the eve of World War II - in terms of politics, society, culture and the economy.Accessible to general readers, while providing an integration of ideas that will be valuable for specialists, this book presents a fresh way of approaching the history of modern China.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52473642385681,"sku":"NLS9789622099203","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53479623590161,"sku":"GOR007588084","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9789622099203.jpg?v=1759840271"},{"product_id":"sex-culture-and-modernity-in-china-book-frank-dikotter-9789622093829","title":"Sex, Culture and Modernity in China","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52820323991825,"sku":"NLS9789622093829","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9789622093829.jpg?v=1764329733"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-frank-dikotter.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}