"In the late tenth and eleventh centuries, a group of people known in Western and Japanese scholarship as the Tangut established an independent regime in the Ordos (present-day Ningxia, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Inner Mongolia). It quickly grew into the Xia empire, a multiethnic, multilingual state whose ruling dynasty, a people ethnically and linguistically related to Tibetans, adapted elements of Chinese and Inner Asian statecraft, culture, and religion. Xia continued to grow in prominence, and its people became renowned throughout Asia as devout Buddhists. An imperial state was formally born in 1038 and chronicled its existence up to 1227, when it was finally crushed in Chinggis Khan's last campaign." "The Great State of White and High is the first book-length treatment in English of Tangut Xia history. Exhibiting a mastery of languages, Ruth Dunnell has produced a pioneering, systematic study using primary and secondary sources in Tangut and Chinese to reconstruct early imperial Xia history from the inside."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"This is the first introduction to the economic history of the Tangut Empire (1038-1227). Built on a wealth of economic data and evidence, it studies the economic lives and activities, laws and institutions, trade and transactions in the "Great State White and High". It interprets primary sources written in the mysterious Tangut cursive script: taxes, registers, and contracts, alongside archives, chronicles, and law codes. By weaving Song, Liao, and Jin materials with Khara-Khoto, Wuwei, and Dunhuang manuscripts into a historical narrative, the book offers a gateway to the outer shape and inner life of the Western Xia (Xixia) economy and society, and rethinks the Tanguts' influence on the Hexi Corridor and the Silk Road"--

This book is the first comprehensive introduction to the Tangut language and culture. Five of the fisteen chapters survey the history of Western Xia and the evolution of Tangut Studies, including new advancements in the field, such as research on the recently decoded Tangut cursive writings found in Khara-Khoto documents. The other ten chapters provide an introduction to the Tangut language: its origins, script, characters, grammars, translations, textual and contextual readings. In this synthesis of historical narratives and linguistic analysis, the renowned Tangutologist Shi Jinbo offers a guided access to the mysterious civilisation of the ‘Great State White and High’ to both a specialized and a general audience.

The newest volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, The Republic for Which It Stands argues that the Gilded Age, along with Reconstruction--its conflicts, rapid and disorienting change, hopes and fears--formed the template of American modernity.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Japanese Zen often implies that textual learning (gakumon) in Buddhism and personal experience (taiken) in Zen are separate, but the career and writings of the Chinese Tang dynasty Chan master Guifeng Zongmi (780-841) undermine this division. For the first time in English, Jeffrey Broughton presents an annotated translation of Zongmi's magnum opus, the Chan Prolegomenon, along with translations of his Chan Letter and Chan Notes. The Chan Prolegomenon persuasively argues that Chan "axiom realizations" are identical to the teachings embedded in canonical word and that one who transmits Chan must use the sutras and treatises as a standard. Japanese Rinzai Zen has, since the Edo period, marginalized the sutra-based Chan of the Chan Prolegomenon and its successor text, the Mind Mirror (Zongjinglu) of Yongming Yanshou (904-976). This book contains the first in-depth treatment in English of the neglected Mind Mirror, positioning it as a restatement of Zongmi's work for a Song dynasty audience. The ideas and models of the Chan Prolegomenon, often disseminated in East Asia through the conduit of the Mind Mirror, were highly influential in the Chan traditions of Song and Ming China, Korea from the late Koryo onward, and Kamakura-Muromachi Japan. In addition, Tangut-language translations of Zongmi's Chan Prolegomenon and Chan Letter constitute the very basis of the Chan tradition of the state of Xixia. As Broughton shows, the sutra-based Chan of Zongmi and Yanshou was much more normative in the East Asian world than previously believed, and readers who seek a deeper, more complete understanding of the Chan tradition will experience a surprising reorientation in this book.

Genghis Khan - creator of the greatest empire the world has ever seen - is one of history's immortals. In Central Asia, they still use his name to frighten children. In China, he is honoured as the founder of a dynasty. In Mongolia he is the father of the nation. In the USA, Time magazine, voted Genghis Khan 'the most important person of the last millennium'. But how much do we really know about this man? How is it that an unlettered, unsophisticated warrior-nomad came to have such a profound effect on world politics that his influence can still be felt some 800 years later? How he united the deeply divided Mongol peoples and went on to rule an empire that stretched from China in the east to Poland in the west (one substantially larger than Rome's at its zenith) is an epic tale of martial genius and breathtaking cruelty. John Man's towering achievement in this book, enriched by his experiences in China and Mongolia today, is to bring this little-known story vividly and viscerally to life.