Gold Warriors
In 1945, US intelligence officers in Manila discovered that the Japanese had hidden large quantities of gold bullion and other looted treasure in the Philippines. President Truman decided to recover the gold but to keep its riches secret. These, combined with Japanese treasure recovered during the US occupation, and with recovered Nazi loot, would create a worldwide American political action fund to fight communism. This ‘Black Gold’ gave Washington virtually limitless, unaccountable funds, providing an asset base to reinforce the treasuries of America’s allies, to bribe political and military leaders, and to manipulate elections in foreign countries for more than fifty years. Drawing on a vast range of original documents and thousands of hours of interviews, Gold Warriors exposes one of the great state secrets of the twentieth century.
“The reader will walk away from this book astounded and outraged at the immensity of the fraudulent activities that the world’s governments, banks, and spies are engaged in. Gold Warriors is chilling in its accumulation.”—Counterpunch
“Easily the best guide available to the scandal of Yamashita’s gold.”—London Review of Books
“One is swept up in the high intensity story the Seagraves tell.”—Publishers Weekly
“The Seagraves have uncovered one of the biggest secrets of the twentieth century.”—Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking
Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China
The author of the New York Times bestseller, The Soong Dynasty, gives us our most vivid and reliable biography yet of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, remembered through the exaggeration and falsehood of legend as the ruthless Manchu concubine who seduced and murdered her way to the Chinese throne in 1861.
"An all-out revisionist assault on the established perception of Tzu Hsi...Seagrave provides as sad and outrageous a record of imperialism as can be found anywhere in the world."
--The San Francisco Chronicle
“Seagrave has disinterred one of Chinese history's more shadowy figures and proven that truth is far more interesting than the bizarre myths that were attached to her." -- Paul Theroux
"Seagrave writes with the assurance, wit and irony that derive from expert knowledge of Chinese history.”-- Anthony Burgess, The Observer
“A fine book... full of glories and horrors... rich, dense and angry.”--Chicago Sun-Times
“Superb, impeccably researched...”--Publishers Weekly
The Soong Dynasty
The Soong Dynasty is the first full behind-the-scenes account of the extraordinary Soong family whose power and wealth dominated China and American policy towards Asia in the Twentieth Century.
It is an extraordinary work of historical detection which traces the family’s roots from the middle of the last century and their explosive rise thereafter.
Descendants of a runaway, they grew up in America under the protection of the Methodist church and returned to their homeland to make a fortune selling Western bibles.
The Soong Family became the principal rulers of China during the first half of the Twentieth Century.
In The Soong Dynasty, Sterling Seagrave describes for the first time the intricate and fascinating rise to power of Charlie Soong and his children, whom he married to some of China’s most powerful men to create a network of power and influence which was to last for over fifty years.
It is a classic tale of power, money, corruption and greed with elements of tragedy and comedy.
"Seagrave knows China, and has caught the atmosphere of that weird, melancholy place … he has shed light into so many dark places, and turned a difficult piece of history into an engrossing narrative" - Daily Telegraph
"Seagrave s marathon probe includes much new evidence … It is an important segment of twentieth century world history … People should therefore be encouraged to read it" - Dervla Murphy, Irish Times
‘The Soong Dynasty brings much pungent material to light … [it is] a story unraveled with fluency and flair’ - Time
"A gripping book. Seagrave has tackled a mighty subject with resourcefulness and spirit" - Washington Post
"Compulsively readable" – International Herald Tribune
"Mr Seagrave is a fine investigative reporter — digging up information from a multitude of sources, much of it original, and piecing together a gripping account of epochal events" – Wall Street Journal
The Marcos Dynasty
Arch swindler. Conman. Survivor. Poseur.
Between American business, organised crime, the CIA, the Pentagon and four White House administrations, Ferdinand Marcos was able to maintain his iron grip over the Philippines for over two decades. During this time the Filipino lawyer-turned-President and his First Lady, Imelda, accumulated vast wealth and transformed the islands into a gaudily-masked criminal hub. Brutality and sordidness went hand in hand, yet it was only after “people power” toppled the Marcos dictatorship in 1986 that the world learned the true extent of their depravity. That, and of Imelda’s 3,000 pairs of shoes and bulletproof brassiere. In investigating figures known for manipulating histories and facts to suit circumstances, Sterling Seagrave untangles a web of truths and untruths to reveal the howsand whys of The Marcos Dynasty. It is an account rivalling the richest of political thrillers … and is all the more compelling for its veracity.
“[A] merciless account of the Filipino dictator’s rise and fall.” — Time
“Offers a wealth of new information about the personal lives of ‘Ferdy’ and Imelda … a couple who were not just greedy beyond belief but also deceitful, ruthless and embarrassingly tacky … Seagrave delivers the goods.” — UPI
“Fascinating.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Seagrave’s history of how the Philippines’ former president and first lady managed to become so awfully corrupt and so immensely rich and powerful will satisfy the cravings of those addicted to such tales — which may include just about everybody.” — The Washington Post Book World
“I found The Marcos Dynasty fascinating reading. Of particular interest was his detailed examination of Marcos’ connections to the so-called Yamashita Treasure. He provides a detailed examination of Marcos’ ties to top CIA, Mafia, business, and political leaders in the United States as well as in Japan and several European countries. While parts of The Marcos Dynasty read like a fast-paced thriller, there is an underlay of thorough investigative work.” — Lewis M. Simons, author of Worth Dying For
“The Marcos Dynasty tells a story that is so slimy, sleazy and bizarre that it reads as if Seagrave were exposing underworld characters in some powerful crime syndicate. Sadly, of course, he is.” — The Boston Herald
“There is much that is fresh and invigorating about Seagrave’s book — he is a fine writer with a good eye for drama. And there is much drama to mine out of the Marcos story … Gripping and very persuasive.” — Newsday
The Yamato Dynasty
In The Yamato Dynasty, Sterling Seagrave, who divulged the secrets of Mao Tse-tung and the ruthlessness of Chiang Kai-shek in the New York Times bestseller The Soong Dynasty, and his wife and longtime collaborator, Peggy, present the controversial, never-before-told history of the world’s longest-reigning dynasty–the Japanese imperial family–from its nineteenth-century origins through today. In the first collective biography of both the men and women of the Yamato Dynasty, the Seagraves take a controversial, comprehensive look at a family history that crosses two world wars, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American occupation of Japan, and Japan’s subsequent phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the Second World War. The Yamato Dynasty tells the story of the powerful men who have stood behind the screen–the shoguns and financiers controlling the throne from the shadows–taking readers behind the walls of privilege and tradition and revealing, in uncompromising detail, the true nature of a dynasty shrouded in myth and secrecy.
Drawing on decades of research, the Seagraves reveal Golden Lily and other secrets of the family's long reign, such as the police state resulting from the Meiji restoration; the folly that led to Japan's 1920s economic crash; the greed that forced hundreds of thousands of working-class girls into prostitution; the devastating effects of the Meiji dogma, which asserts that the imperial family is of divine descent and is infallible; and how money—not Shinto—became the religion of Japan.
"The Yamato Dynasty. . . cannot fail to have a lasting impact upon Japanese national politics, the way the Japanese view themselves, and the way the rest of the world views them."—London Sunday Times
"[The Yamato Dynasty] unveils some of the most enduring secrets of the war in the Pacific. . . with a reality that is both shocking and absorbing."—Business Age
"An incisive biography. . . contains all the elements of a political thriller: family squabbles, power struggles, duplicity and murder. It involves a huge pile of treasure—bullion worth
Lords of the Rim
The invisible empire of the overseas Chinese.
For 2,000 years, China's merchants and adventurers have fled tyrannical dynasties to make their fortunes in other countries. Seagrave reveals for the first time the invisible empire of the Overseas Chinese, how it controls some adopted countries, and how it is tightly knit by a web of dialects, secret societies, triads, and financial networks worth over $2-trillion. Seagrave shows how the tide has reversed and rich Overseas Chinese have helped create China's boom making it now the world's No.1 economic power, while the West struggles to stay afloat. The result is a Chinese renaissance that has put a friendly smile on the face of the dragon in the Chinese century.
An examination of the complex web of Chinese operations dominating the Far East's booming economies is part economic analysis, part history, and part cautionary tale that encompasses murder, betrayal, corruption, and syndicates and features kingmakers, emperors, generals, spies, and pirates.
Yellow Rain
Journey through the terror of chemical warfare
The use of poison gas — chlorine, phosgene, mustard — during World War I forever changed the face of modern warfare.
Yet poison gas, and its far deadlier successors, nerve agents like sarin and soman, remained oddly absent from the world stage during World War II.
The possibility that poison or nerve gas could be used spurred the development of more and deadlier toxins as insurance against other countries taking the same action — the production of which poisons continued unabated even after the war ended, providing the threat beneath the uneasy stalemate of the Cold War.
The United States was left with stockpiles of earlier iterations of gases held in arsenals around the world and nothing to use them for, especially with such weapons banned by international law.
But while the world on the surface seemed content to keep their deadly super-poisons locked away, whispers from around the globe in the latter half of the twentieth century suggested that this was not the case at all.
Since 1979, rumours of a poison hundreds of times deadlier than nerve gas leaked out of the war-zones of Laos, Cambodia, and Afghanistan, born on the lips and bodies of survivors who watched their friends and families die in excruciating pain.
The gas was known as ‘yellow rain’ and, like all chemical weapons, it is banned by every international and moral law.
For years the connections between the sites of distribution were not made — too far apart geographically and in time, with no single known chemical capable of causing the symptoms, each instance was written off as a tragedy without any real answers.
Sterling Seagrave’s investigation into yellow rain takes him across the world as, over the course of several years, he pieces together fragments of information to finally reveal the origin of the super-toxin for the first time.
Seagrave expands his analysis of T2, one of the most lethal poisons ever invented, and created from a virulent spore found on grain, into a terrifyingly readable survey of the silent but steady growth of chemical arsenals worldwide.
‘His story is a terrifying one…he does not confine his investigation to the Russians alone. He is equally critical of American deceits over chemical and biological weapons.’ - The Times
Red Sky in the Morning
The secret history of two men who got away - and one who didn't
True life man-hunt thriller set in postwar Manila, where two innocent Americans and an innocent Russian emigre are falsely identified as Communist agents supplying guns and money to Communist rebels in the countryside. All three are captured and put in notorious Bilibad Prison, but manage to escape. Both Americans flee the country, but the Russian emigre is trapped, tortured, and murdered by being thrown out of a helicopter over the South China Sea. A true story, told by bestselling authors Sterling & Peggy Seagrave. The Seagraves have published ten books about crime and corruption in Asia, many of them bestsellers in different languages. Sterling is the fifth generation of an American family living in Asia, was an investigative reporter for The Washington Post, and then contributed to many magazines and newspapers such as TIME, Newsweek, Esquire, Atlantic Monthly, and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Peggy Seagrave worked for the Smithsonian Institution before joining Time-Life Books where she and Sterling worked on a dozen books together before marrying and moving to Europe. They now divide their time between Frace and Southeast Asia.