Tragic Mountains tells the story of the Hmong's struggle for freedom and survival in Laos from 1942 through 1992. During those years, most Hmong sided with the French against the Japanese and Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh, and then with the Americans against the North Viemamese.

The work of Sam Peckinpah represents a high point in American cinema. This text is the first theoretical and critical attempt to place Peckinpah within the 2,000-year-old tradition of western tragedy. The tradition, enfolding the Greeks, Shakespeare and modern tragedians, is represented in Peckinpah's art in numerous ways, and the fact that he worked in the mode throughout his career distinguishes him from most American film directors. Films covered include Ride the High Country, Noon Wine, The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

The Origin of German Tragic Drama is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Benjamin also comments on the engravings of Durer and the theatre of Calderon and Shakespeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history. Georg Lukacs, an opponent of Benjamin's aesthetics, singled out The Origin of German Tragic Drama as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century.

The first comprehensive account of China policy during the Kennedy years, this study profiles John F. Kennedy as a man whose inner struggles and disparate characteristics made for an unpredictable foreign policy. While he was often a hostage to the Cold War, to constrictive perceptions of the domestic climate, and to the image of a predatory China, Kennedy recognized Washington's finite capacity to shape events on the China Mainland. With the possible exception of a preventive strike against China's nuclear installations, he was also reluctant to run the risk of a military confrontation with Beijing. On the eve of his assassination, Kennedy may have even contemplated a China policy departure during his second term. A calm appraisal of China's capabilities and intentions constituted the distinguishing feature of revisionist thinking during the Kennedy years. The disjointed revisionist effort settled, in late 1963, on a pedagogic course, which still implied a search for American primacy. The revisionist approach did ultimately facilitate the transformation of bilateral relations in the early 1970s. From a shorter-range perspective, however, the Kennedy era only added fuel to the fire of Sino-American confrontation. The Limited Test Ban Treaty accentuated the sense of encirclement and vulnerability in Beijing's psyche, and clouds gathered ominously over Vietnam. Kennedy does bear some responsibility for the bilateral impasse, as he personified a decisionmaker so obsessed with the objective of deterrence as to overlook the security dilemma: nonetheless, Mao's preference for a radical course, independent of Kennedy's conduct, contributed as well. Neither side was yet ready for a breakthrough.

From 19611975, the United States found itself embroiled in two wars in Southeast Asia, but for most of that time, the citizens of our country were aware of only one. While scenes from Vietnam made the national news, few Americans knew that their countrymen were also fighting a secret war in the tiny kingdom of Laos. Billy G. Webb's book peels back the layers of secrecy, revealing the truth about a conflict waged below the radar against the relentless forces of Communism. His story celebrates the near-forgotten sacrifices of not just the United States and allied soldiers but courageous civilians as well.