{"title":"Timothy Brook","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTimothy Brook\u003c\/strong\u003e offers a compelling exploration of history through richly detailed narratives that connect global events and cultural insights. His works, such as \u003cem\u003eVermeer's Hat\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Troubled Empire\u003c\/em\u003e, illuminate the intricate interplay between East and West, blending economic, political, and social history with vivid storytelling.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eReaders can expect thoughtful examinations of empire, collapse, and transformation, grounded in meticulous research and accessible prose. Brook's books provide a deeper understanding of the forces shaping our world, making history both engaging and relevant.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"vermeers-hat-by-timothy-brook-9781846681202","title":"Vermeer's Hat","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn one painting, a Dutch military officer leans toward a laughing girl. In another, a woman at a window weighs pieces of silver. In a third, fruit spills from a porcelain bowl onto a Turkish carpet. The officer's dashing hat is made of beaver fur, which European explorers got from Native Americans in exchange for weapons. Beaver pelts, in turn, financed the voyages of sailors seeking new routes to China. There—with silver mined in Peru—Europeans would purchase, by the thousands, the porcelain so often shown in Dutch paintings of the time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eVermeer's\u003c\/em\u003e haunting images hint at the stories behind these exquisitely rendered moments. As Timothy Brook shows us in \u003cem\u003eVermeer's Hat\u003c\/em\u003e, these pictures, which seem so intimate, actually open doors onto a rapidly expanding world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46534291095788,"sku":"9781846681202","price":34.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781846681202.jpg?v=1749422600"},{"product_id":"great-state-by-timothy-brook-9781781258293","title":"Great State","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eChina\u003c\/i\u003e is one of the oldest states in the world. It achieved its approximate current borders with the Ascendancy of the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century, and despite the passing of one Imperial dynasty to the next, it has maintained them for the eight centuries since. Even the European colonial powers at the height of their power could not move past coastal enclaves. Thus, China remained China through the Ming, the Qing, the Republic, the Occupation, and Communism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBut, despite the desires of some of the most powerful people in the Great State through the ages, China has never been alone in the world. It has had to contend with invaders from the steppe and the challenges posed by foreign traders and imperialists. Indeed, its rulers for the majority of the last eight centuries have not been Chinese.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTimothy Brook examines China's relationship with the world from the Yuan through to the present by following the stories of ordinary and extraordinary people navigating the spaces where China met and meets the world. Bureaucrats, horse traders, spiritual leaders, explorers, pirates, emperors, invaders, migrant workers, traitors, and visionaries: this is a history of China as no one has told it before.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46849210220780,"sku":"9781781258293","price":36.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/5283553482822.jpg?v=1759028158"},{"product_id":"the-price-of-collapse-by-timothy-brook-9780691250403","title":"The Price of Collapse","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eHow climate change ushered in the collapse of one of history's mighty empires\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1644, after close to three centuries of relative stability and prosperity, the Ming dynasty collapsed. Many historians attribute its demise to the Manchu invasion of China, but the truth is far more profound. \u003ci\u003eThe Price of Collapse\u003c\/i\u003e provides an entirely new approach to the economic and social history of China, exploring how a global climate crisis spelled the end of Ming rule.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe mid-seventeenth century witnessed the deadliest phase of the Little Ice Age, when temperatures and rainfall plunged and world economies buckled. Timothy Brook draws on the history of grain prices to paint a gripping portrait of the final tumultuous years of a once-great dynasty. He explores how global trade networks that increasingly moved silver into China may have affected prices and describes the daily struggle to survive amid grain shortages and famine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBy the early 1640s, as the subjects of the Ming found themselves caught in a deadly combination of cold and drought that defied all attempts to stave off disaster, the Ming price regime collapsed, and with it the Ming political regime.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA masterful work of scholarship, \u003ci\u003eThe Price of Collapse\u003c\/i\u003e reconstructs the experience of ordinary people under the immense pressure of unaffordable prices as their country slid from prosperity to calamity and shows how the market mediated the relationship between an empire and the climate that turned against it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"NewSouth Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46850366013676,"sku":"9780691250403","price":64.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/2491173482434.jpg?v=1759084628"},{"product_id":"the-price-of-collapse-by-timothy-brook-9780691253695","title":"The Price of Collapse","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHow climate change ushered in the collapse of one of history's mighty empires\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1644, after close to three centuries of relative stability and prosperity, the Ming dynasty collapsed. Many historians attribute its demise to the Manchu invasion of China, but the truth is far more profound. \u003cem\u003eThe Price of Collapse\u003c\/em\u003e provides an entirely new approach to the economic and social history of China, exploring how global climate crisis spelled the end of Ming rule.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe mid-seventeenth century witnessed the deadliest phase of the Little Ice Age, when temperatures and rainfall plunged and world economies buckled. Timothy Brook draws on the history of grain prices to paint a gripping portrait of the final tumultuous years of a once-great dynasty. He explores how global trade networks that increasingly moved silver into China may have affected prices and describes the daily struggle to survive amid grain shortages and famine. By the early 1640s, as the subjects of the Ming found themselves caught in a deadly combination of cold and drought that defied all attempts to stave off disaster, the Ming price regime collapsed, and with it the Ming political regime.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA masterful work of scholarship, \u003cem\u003eThe Price of Collapse\u003c\/em\u003e reconstructs the experience of ordinary people under the immense pressure of unaffordable prices as their country slid from prosperity to calamity and shows how the market mediated the relationship between an empire and the climate that turned against it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47433014509804,"sku":"9780691253695","price":44.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780691253695.jpg?v=1774765807"},{"product_id":"the-troubled-empire-by-timothy-brook-9780674072534","title":"The Troubled Empire","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Mongol takeover in the 1270s changed the course of Chinese history. The Confucian empire—a millennium and a half in the making—was suddenly thrust under foreign occupation. What China had been before its reunification as the Yuan dynasty in 1279 was no longer what it would be in the future. Four centuries later, another wave of steppe invaders would replace the Ming dynasty with yet another foreign occupation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Troubled Empire\u003c\/i\u003e explores what happened to China between these two dramatic invasions. If anything defined the complex dynamics of this period, it was changes in the weather. Asia, like Europe, experienced a Little Ice Age, and as temperatures fell in the thirteenth century, Kublai Khan moved south into China. His Yuan dynasty collapsed in less than a century, but Mongol values lived on in Ming institutions. A second blast of cold in the 1630s, combined with drought, was more than the dynasty could stand, and the Ming fell to Manchu invaders.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAgainst this background—the first coherent ecological history of China in this period—\u003cb\u003eTimothy Brook\u003c\/b\u003e explores the growth of autocracy, social complexity, and commercialization, paying special attention to China's incorporation into the larger South China Sea economy. These changes not only shaped what China would become but contributed to the formation of the early modern world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47487670681836,"sku":"9780674072534","price":64.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/21a4553373564fc773066547ea3e2094.jpg?v=1775770895"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/timothy-brook.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}