Series: World Social Change

Seeking Home is a memoir of a childhood in China as a refugee from Nazi Germany during the turbulent years 1934-49. Richter recalls the little-known history of North China’s occupation by the Japanese during the World War II years amid the remnants of a dying British colonialism.

This clearly written and engrossing book presents a global narrative of the origins of the modern world from 1400 to the present. Unlike most studies, which assume that the "rise of the West" is the story of the coming of the modern world, this history, drawing upon new scholarship on Asia, Africa, and the New World, and upon the maturing...

At this moment, Americans regard China as a major threat, both economically and strategically, while Chinese regard the US as determined to contain China and impede its development. Tensions between the two countries remain high: human rights, trade, Taiwan, the South China Sea, military budgets. Yet, in spite of all these points of contention, the search for common ground through...