Лучшие книги Иэна Бурумы

Она не выглядела ни типичной японкой, ни китаянкой. Было в ней что-то от Великого шелкового пути, от караванов и рынков специй и пряностей Самарканда. Никто не догадывался, что это была обычная японка, которая родилась в Маньчжурии... От Манчжоу-Го до Голливуда. От сцены до японского парламента. От войны до победы. От Чарли Чаплина до Дада Уме Амина. Вся история Востока и Запада от начала XX века до наших дней вместилась в историю одной-единственной женщины.

Однажды утром в Амстердаме известный режиссер и писатель Тео ван Гог, потомок знаменитого художника, ехал на велосипеде в киностудию. Молодой мусульманин хладнокровно выстрелил в него несколько раз и добил жертвенным ножом. Причиной расправы послужил фильм "Покорность", рассказывающий о жестоком обращении с мусульманскими женщинами, который ван Гог снял вместе с членом парламента Нидерландов Айаан Хирси Али, нажившей себе немало врагов открытой критикой ислама. Гибель режиссера потрясла маленькую страну, гордившуюся своей толерантностью, открытостью, гостеприимством по отношению к иностранцам, а также собственной моделью…

Two brilliant scholars at the height of their powers conduct a profound investigation of the history of anti-Western stereotypes - and find their origins in the West itself.

In this book, Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit show that the idea of 'the West' in the minds of its self-proclaimed enemies is still largely unexamined and woefully misunderstood. Occidentalism is their groundbreaking investigation of the demonizing fantasies and stereotypes about the Western world that fuel such murderous hatred in others.

'Radical Islam' is generally perceived as a purely Islamic phenomenon, but Buruma and Margalit show that groups like al-Qaeda share key traits with revolutionary movements going back to the early nineteenth century. The same prejudices appear again and again: the soulless Western city-dweller, the sterile Western mind, the machine society, controlled from the centre - often by Jews - pulling the hidden levers of power, like some demonic Wizard of Oz. The anti-Western virus has spread to the Islamic world for a number of reasons, but it is not an exclusively Islamic issue.

A work of extraordinary range and erudition, Occidentalism will permanently enlarge our understanding of the world in which we live.

A marvelous global history of the pivotal year 1945 as a new world emerged from the ruins of World War II Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the great drama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and a new, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come on a global scale: across Asia (including China, Korea, Indochina, and the Philippines, and of course Japan) and all of continental Europe. Out of the often vicious power struggles that ensued emerged the modern world as we know it. In human terms, the scale of transformation is almost impossible to imagine. Great cities around the world lay in…

Offering a uniquely new perspective on the psyches of Germany and Japan after World War II, an expert on those two countries' politics and history explores how each country dealt with its past and their legacies of guilt in light of the atrocities which were committed during the war.

Compressing a century of complex history into one short but taut narrative, Buruma traces the remarkable metamorphosis that transformed an isolated island shogunate into an expansive military empire and then into a pacified and prosperous democracy. Predictably enough, Buruma begins with the oft-told story of Commodore Perry's 1853 naval mission to open Japan to American traders. But he invests this event with a new and darker meaning as he relates how this pivotal visit helped catalyze a firestorm of civil war, toppling the shogunate and ushering in the Meiji Restoration. The architects of that restoration Buruma depicts as tragically myopic, their nationalistic and religious authoritarianism dooming democracy to stillbirth and converting commercial wealth into imperial armaments. Just as impressive as Buruma's probing account of this cultural tragedy is his lucid analysis of Douglas MacArthur's remarkable--but finally flawed--achievement in guiding Japan toward the exemplary democracy that showcased its astonishing development in the 1964 Olympics, which Buruma takes as his end point. An excellent introductory study, complete with a helpful bibliography for those seeking more rigorous analyses. Bryce Christensen
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A classic memoir of self-invention in a strange land: Ian Buruma's unflinching account of his amazing journey into the heart of Tokyo's underground culture as a young man in the 1970's

In the 1920s Germany was in the grip of social and political turmoil: its citizens were disillusioned by defeat in World War I, the failure of revolution, the disintegration of their social system, and inflation of rampant proportions.