“The US vs China: Asia’s New Cold War?” by Jude Woodward
Jude Woodward’s thesis in her latest book is quite simple: Washington is engaged in an orchestrated plot to contain the rise of China economically, militarily and ideologically.
“Empire of the East: How a European Slave Girl became Queen of the Ottoman Empire” by Leslie Peirce
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus once observed that “seekers for gold dig much earth, but find little gold.”
“The Phoenix Years: Art, resistance and the making of modern China” by Madeleine O’Dea
A few years ago, President Xi Jinping gave a speech which offered his views on the role art should play in Chinese life.
“Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream is the New Threat to World Order?” by Steven W Mosher
Steven Mosher has written important books about the everyday lives of the rural Chinese and China’s coercive population policies. In his new book, Bully of Asia, he ventures into the realm of geopolitics and perceives a global, zero-sum conflict between China and the United States.
“Dawn of Victory: Thank You China” by Jim Maultsaid
They say that armchair generals discuss tactics but real generals discuss logistics. So here’s something different. Dawn of Victory is an account of World War I focused entirely on logistics. Jim Maultsaid enlisted at the outbreak of the war in 1914 and was immediately sent to the front where he was badly wounded on the…
“China’s World” by Kerry Brown
The subtitle of Kerry Brown’s new book, China’s World: What Does China Want?, is a question that is on the minds of the world’s statesmen, policymakers, international relations scholars, global investment advisors, international business leaders and geopolitical thinkers. Given China’s growing global diplomatic, economic, and military footprint, the answer to that question will shape the…
“Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America’s Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia” by Eugene Ford
“Over the past two years Chinese communists have devoted increasing attention to extending their influence in the Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia,” reads an United States government report from 1957. To counter that influence, Eugene Ford writes in Cold War Monks, the US developed a strategy of “considerable guile, sophistication, and determination”, a funneling of…
“Political Violence in Ancient India” by Upinder Singh
The Indian stand up comedian Anuvab Pal jokes that Gandhi gave the mantra of nonviolence or the message of “Don’t Fight” to the people who did not want to fight in the first place. Gandhi recognized the reluctance and laziness among the Indians to fight against the British. Well, that’s one theory.
“In The Land Of Pagodas: A Classic Account of Travel in Hong Kong, Macao, Shanghai, Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou” by Alfred Raquez
Think hard; use your imagination. Try to remember the time when the world was not an oyster, with its pearl geolocalized on Google Maps, rated on TripAdvisor, its best sights already pre-dissected on The Lonely Planet and travel blogs. There was an era during which the world had not shrunk yet to a global playground…
“A Few Planes for China: The Birth of the Flying Tigers” by Eugenie Buchan
World War II created its fair share of myths: on the American side, the “Flying Tigers”—a “small private air force that fought the Japanese over Burma and Western China”—became one of the first, providing as it did some of the few bright spots in the days after Pearl Harbor. From December 1941 to June 1942,…
“Choked: Everything You Were Afraid to Know about Air Pollution” by Pallavi Aiyar
It is that time of the year again. The day after Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights loudly celebrated with an army of firecrackers, Delhi residents wake up with something that is worse than a hangover: a cloud of toxic fumes stubbornly sitting on the face of the Indian capital, choking it to a slow…
“The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao” by Ian Johnson
The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, by journalist Ian Johnson, is an infectious, celebratory book about the state of religion in mainland China since the 1980s. Framed around the lives of various religious devotees in China—ranging from solitary seekers to associations to experts —Johnson explores different aspects of Chinese religion and…
Literate Modernism: How and Why China Has Shaped Chinese
In mid-19th century China, after suffering multiple humbling defeats by imperial powers, a movement to modernize China’s military developed. The idea was that the national essence or culture of China could be better defended with superior Western methods and technology than outdated Chinese methods—seen as the extension of a static political culture. That the methods…
“Reduced to a Symbolical Scale: The Evacuation of British Women and Children from Hong Kong to Australia in 1940” by Tony Banham
Tony Banham has produced a very clear and detailed account of the civilian evacuations from Hong Kong in July of 1940. His extensive detail makes it clear that the evacuation’s potentially complicated logistics in fact went off much more smoothly than might have been expected. Less than half of Hong Kong’s British population was evacuated,…
“Into Sur’s Ocean: Poetry, Context, Commentary” by John Stratton Hawley
A little before John Donne and George Herbert penned their devotional poetry in the sixteenth century, a couple of bhakti (devotional) or sant (saint) poets in India began to write about the glory of God and the sentiment of devotion. Surdas, Tulsidas, Mirabai and Kabir are among the medieval saint poets becoming increasingly well-known outside…
