Non-Fiction Reviews

Non-Fiction Reviews
“Arise, Africa! Roar, China!: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century” by Gao Yunxiang
16 February 202217 February 2022
At this time of shifting geopolitical relationships—“decoupling” between China and the US, rapprochement between China and Russia—it is unsurprising that the cultural and intellectual as well as political history of these relationships has attracted increasing attention. Recent volumes on Sino-Soviet “internationalist” interaction is now joined by Arise, Africa! Roar, China!, Gao Yunxiang’s recent study of…
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“Inner Harmony: Living in Balance” by Jon Kolkin
13 February 202213 February 2022
This large-format book of wonderful photographs by Jon Kolkin, an American doctor and artist who has spent many years in Asia practicing both his avocations, takes readers away from the purely visual impact of the subject matter to something beyond.
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“War in the Far East: Asian Armageddon, 1944-1945, Volume 3” by Peter Harmsen
11 February 2022
“World War II in the Asia Pacific created the modern world,” writes Peter Harmsen in the beginning of Volume 3 of his War in the Far East, which examines the final twenty months of the War in the region and its immediate aftermath. The United States emerged from the war as the leading world power,…
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma” by Manu S Pillai
2 February 20222 February 2022
Following the Great Rebellion in 1857, the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was deposed, packed in a bullock card, and exiled to Rangoon. The termination of Mughal rule marked the advent of the Raj, but the British still had to contend with hundreds of regional power brokers whose loyalty had to be ascertained. These…
Read More “False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma” by Manu S Pillai
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Where the Gods Dwell: Thirteen Temples and Their (Hi)stories”, a collection of essays
1 February 202223 March 2022
The grand churches of Europe are studied as great works of art and architecture. They continue to fascinate believers, historians, and art historians alike. The great names behind these works are hailed as legends and visionaries blending beauty with devotion to give meaning to the rituals that these buildings were home to. Compared to these…
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“Tales of a Mad Yogi: The Life and Wild Wisdom of Drukpa Kunley” by Elizabeth L Monson
31 January 2022
In the world of religion, it seems that one can find an abundance of crazy or eccentric people whose sayings and doings have found their way into folklore, or who are venerated by generations of people who incorporate them into their spiritual lives as if they were guides, family members or friends.
Read More “Tales of a Mad Yogi: The Life and Wild Wisdom of Drukpa Kunley” by Elizabeth L Monson
Non-Fiction Reviews
“The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir” by Karen Cheung
29 January 2022
Karen Cheung’s new book, The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir, about growing up and coming of age in a city she feels is like no other, is characterized by a narrative style both intimate and candid. It’s hard to avoid being swept up by her story from the beginning as she describes the day…
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“Internationalist Aesthetics: China and Early Soviet Culture” by Edward Tyerman
22 January 202222 January 2022
Sergei Tretyakov is on something of a roll. The Soviet writer has featured in several recent books, including a new translation of (among other plays) Roar, China!, a new biography and a study of the Soviet-led drive for a “Leftist Literary Commons”. He also is a main character, arguably the protagonist, in Edward Tyerman’s Internationalist…
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“Ancient India: Culture of Contradictions” by Upinder Singh
21 January 2022
In her new book Ancient India: Culture of Contradictions, historian Upinder Singh seeks to correct the way Indians project the concerns and aspirations of the present onto the past. Apart from making complex, highly contentious matters of histories of faith, caste, non-violence, desire and tolerance simple to engage with, Singh has a unique quality of…
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“Eleven Winters of Discontent: The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan” by Sherzod Muminov
19 January 2022
On 9 August 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki and three Soviet armies invaded imperial Japan’s puppet state of Manchukuo. Six days later, Emperor Hirohito’s recorded broadcast to the Japanese people told them that the end of the war had arrived. Most Japanese troops in Manchukuo surrendered…
Read More “Eleven Winters of Discontent: The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan” by Sherzod Muminov
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Along the Southern Boundary: A Marine Police Officer’s Frontline Account of the Vietnamese Boatpeople and their Arrival in Hong Kong” by Les Bird
18 January 2022
By most standards, David Tran is an American success story. A major in the South Vietnamese Army, he escaped to the United States in the late 1970s and went on to become a billionaire from his world-famous Sriracha hot sauce. Tran’s success is also a Hong Kong story.
Read More “Along the Southern Boundary: A Marine Police Officer’s Frontline Account of the Vietnamese Boatpeople and their Arrival in Hong Kong” by Les Bird
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Maritime Asia vs Continental Asia: National Strategies in a Region of Change” by Shiraishi Takashi
16 January 202218 January 2022
With the demand for books describing the rise of China and regional dynamics in Asia, more and more translations of works from Asian thinkers have been making it into English. Back in 2015, Shiraishi Takashi, professor and prominent foreign policy commentator in the daily newspapers of Japan, gave a series of influential lectures that were…
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“Bloody Saturday: Shanghai’s Darkest Day” by Paul French
15 January 202223 January 2022
The mass aerial bombing that so characterized World War II and the wars that followed didn’t start with the blitz, Dresden or Tokyo, but was instead prefigured by the lethal bombing of Shanghai on 14 August 1937, preceded only by the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War earlier that year.
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Non-Fiction Reviews
“Green Tea with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America’s Tea Cups” by Robert Hellyer
12 January 20228 September 2023
Green Tea with Milk and Sugar is, at least at first, a perplexing title: the green teas I grew up with and came to know from China and Japan were taken hot and without any additives. Then again, I consume a fair amount of matcha latte, and if the menus of the local bubble tea…
Read More “Green Tea with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America’s Tea Cups” by Robert Hellyer
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern” by Jing Tsu
11 January 202214 January 2022
It is an accident of history that most information technology, from Morse Code to the Internet, was developed in and for English-speaking countries. English, with just 26 letters and no accents or diacritical marks, means that everything from keyboards to displays to internal character codings are simple, deceptively so, because almost no other language makes…
Read More “Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern” by Jing Tsu

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