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Into the Groove
On Saturday afternoon, I sat down at my desk with a cup of coffee, intending to open up the file containing Chapter 1 of my dissertation, make a few adjustments to what I’d already written, add a conclusion, and send it off to my advisor (just under three weeks later than promised, which is practically…
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Bookshelf: Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
The seventy-something guy seated next to me on my flight from Philadelphia to Fort Myers, Florida last month peered at the spine of my book and guffawed at the title. “Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking?” he snorted. “I didn’t know they had any food to cook over there!” It’s an easy, obvious joke to…
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The Circle of Mercy Is Timeless
I have not worn my high-school ring in close to fourteen years. There was a time when I never took it off: from the day I received it in March 1999, through the summer after graduation the following year, I wore it every single day, the thick gold band on my finger a weighty, comforting…
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A Deluxe Apartment in the Sky
I loved a lot of things about the apartment I found on Changle Road in October 2012. It was in the heart of the French Concession, surrounded by excellent restaurants and lovely tree-lined streets. It got a ton of sunlight (too much, sometimes!) and had the biggest closets of anywhere I’ve ever lived. The couch…
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Bookshelf: Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade
One of my Fourteen Books for 2014 I’ve always heard that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, but I was not fully aware of how much treasure is out there until I spent the weekend reading journalist Adam Minter’s lucid and engrossing new book on the global scrap and recycling business, Junkyard Planet: Travels…
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LA Review of Books: Missing the Harmony Express
I’ve been in the United States for the past month, and during that time I’ve spent a lot of mental energy comparing China and the U.S. In terms of air quality, ease of accessing information online, and presence of Wawa convenience stores, Philadelphia definitely beats Shanghai. But in other areas, China has the edge, and…
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#AHA2014: Book Mania
Like every other historian I know, I love books and can’t resist a deal (or free ones). Publishers are aware of this, and they enable us to quench our thirst for new reading material by setting up huge exhibition halls at academic conferences like the annual meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA) that I’ve…
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I’ve Become a Talking Head
I’m spending the weekend in the very, very, VERY cold city of Washington, DC, attending the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. I will have more to say about that later, but for the moment, a quick link to a video interview with me that History News Network just posted. HNN’s editor is taping…
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Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926-1945
One of the nice things about going to UC Irvine is that during my coursework years, I had the option of taking classes at any other UC campus at no cost beyond a little bit of paperwork and administrative hassle. For one reason or another, though, it never worked out before my third year as…
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Holding My Breath
Just after noon on Saturday—three hours behind schedule—China Eastern Airlines Flight 721 broke through the clouds on its ascent from Shanghai Hongqiao Airport. From my seat in the middle of the plane, I turned my head left and looked out the window. For the first time in five days, I saw blue sky. Shanghai doesn’t…
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Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 