“The Three Kingdoms of Korea: Lost Civilizations” by Richard D McBride II
Even academic books need to be aware of the prevailing zeitgeist. Richard D McBride begins his history of first-millennium Korea with a pop-culture reference to K-Drama.
“Woman of Interest: A Memoir” by Tracy O’Neill
Tracy O’Neill was adopted from South Korea in the 1980s and never thought to search for her birth mother until 2020 when the world seemed to stop. She had just landed a tenure-track position at Vassar and had broken up with a long-term boyfriend. With more time on her hands—teaching online and not leaving her…
“The Alcock Album: Scenes of China Consular Life 1843-1853” by Andrew Hillier
The title (and cover) of Andrew Hillier’s new book The Alcock Album: Scenes of China Consular Life 1843-1853 might lead one to think that it is primarily a collection of drawings and paintings; but while the volume is indeed profusely-illustrated, it is rather more a biography of Henrietta Alcock, the wife of Rutherford Alcock, one…
“Cooperating for the Climate: Learning from International Partnerships in China’s Clean Energy Sector” by Joanna I Lewis
China is often seen by its peer economies as a problem. Yet, as far as climate change is concerned, Joanna Lewis writes in a new book, China has the potential to be part of the solution. Lewis, a distinguished professor at Georgetown University, highlights the importance of national bilateral cooperation with China in Cooperating for…
“Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran” by Farshid Emami
We know a lot about Isfahan in the 17th century. Poets and court chroniclers praised its beauty and recorded its expansion under the great monarch, Shah Abbas (1588-1629). European travelers like John Chardin and Pietro della Valle left us picturesque descriptions of its monuments and people. Artists painstakingly recorded the city-scape. Scholars have long studied…
“Target Hong Kong: A true story of US Navy pilots at war” by Steven K Bailey
In mid-January 1945, US Navy pilots launched a series of attacks on Japanese-held Hong Kong. In his new book Target Hong Kong, Steven K Bailey, whose previous book Bold Venture told the story of the bombing of Hong Kong by US Army Air Corps pilots based in China under the command of General Claire Chennault…
“The Island: A Personal Account of Taiwan’s Extraordinary Transformation” by Mark O’Neill
When Mark O’Neill first came to Taiwan in 1981 to study Mandarin, the island was under martial law that had been in place for several decades. Since then, Taiwan has undergone momentous changes to become a modern and prosperous democracy while remaining one of the world’s geopolitical hotspots, a great deal of which O’Neill witnessed…
Podcast with Gary J Bass, author of “Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia”
In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan’s atrocities in China and its decision to attack the US.
“Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves: Lost Tales from the Philippine Colonial Period, 1565–1946” by Lio Mangubat
In its eclectic choice of subjects, Filipino writer Lio Mangubat’s collection of historical essays Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves betrays its origins as a podcast. It resembles, not least due to Mangubat’s skill at spinning a good yarn, a collection of short stories rather than non-fiction pieces; and what the book lacks in an easily recognizable…
“On the Shadow Tracks: A Journey Through Occupied Myanmar” by Clare Hammond
Railways are major public infrastructural projects; one would therefore think it should therefore be easy to find out which rail lines exist and at what times trains are running. Not in Myanmar. Aside from the well-known main lines, Clare Hammond a myriad of smaller branch lines in remote parts of the country, with little information…
“The Transpacific Flow: Creative Writing Programs in China” by Jin Feng
“What happens when a US cultural institution is imported to China, the purported chief rival of the United States in the twenty-first century?” asks Jin Feng in The Transpacific Flow, a short 100-page study of MFA programs in China.
“Private Revolutions: Four Women Face China’s New Social Order” by Yuan Yang
There are over sixty million “left-behind children” in China at present. These children have been “left behind” by parents who moved for work, or sometimes school. Most left-behind children grow up in rural villages, while their parents sojourn in China’s megalopolises. The phenomenon has touched the lives of Chinese families across generations, but especially since…
“Roving Through Southern China” by Harry Franck
Harry Franck died in 1962. This latest edition of his work consists of a few excerpts from his original Roving Through Southern China published in 1925. The original much larger book described two years of roving that took Franck as far as Yunnan, but these excerpts focus on the few months he and his family…
“Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World” by Roger Crowley
Although it is the Silk Road that captures most of the contemporary attention and discussion, it was in fact spices, not silk, that drove Western Europeans to seek routes to Asia. “Lightweight and durable, spices” writes Roger Crowley in his new history (appropriately entitled Spice), “were the first truly global commodity … they could be…
“Traitor By Default: The Trials of Kanao Inouye, the Kamloops Kid” by Patrick Brode
Canadian lawyer Patrick Brode has written an interesting and fast-moving account of the little-known Allied war crimes and treason trials of Canadian-born Kanao Inouye, known as the Kamloops Kid by the Canadian soldiers who suffered beatings and torture by Inouye and his Japanese confederates in Hong Kong during World War II. It is a tale…
