This volume of eighteen essays is an opportunity to deepen our understanding about the landlocked and sparsely populated Laos—a country with a fascinating cultural and political history, too often overshadowed by its larger neighbors.
How many readers of this book will have been subjected to teachers who made them write bad haiku in school? I count myself lucky to have attended a school where such torture didn’t take place, although I am assured that some students actually enjoy the exercise.
The Lives and Love Letters of the Tibetan Visionaries Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tāre Lhamo Holly Gayley (trans) (Shambhala, February 2019)
Professor Holly Gayley offers a full translation of the tantric love letters between Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tare Lhamo, two Buddhist lamas who worked to preserve Tibetan Buddhist culture in the wake of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
The Best Hotel in Hong Kong: an excerpt from “Old Hong Kong Photos and the Tales They Tell” (Vol. 2)
This photo shows the view looking south along Pedder Street, across its junction with Des Voeux Road and Chater Road. It was sold as a postcard, and its title comes from this pencil note on the back.
With almost 17% year-on-year growth, India’s is the world’s fastest growing smartphone population; more than a billion phones are estimated to be sold over the next five years. There are now more Indians with smartphones than the entire population of the United States, driven by phones that cost as little as 10,000 rupees (US$150).
As oceans warm and ice caps melt, it’s hard to be optimistic about slowing, let alone stopping, global warming. Barbara Finamore nonetheless finds reason for optimism in her authoritative look at China’s unfolding energy transition.
In the introduction to Soul Catcher: Java’s Fiery Prince Mangkunegara I, 1726–95, MC Ricklefs notes that fifty years ago the prospect of writing such a biography of a pre-20th-century Javanese figure would have been unthinkable. That such a project is now possible is surely in no small part down to the remarkable work that Ricklefs himself has done in the intervening half-century, opening up a wealth of archival sources as one of the foremost international scholars of Javanese history.