Category: Books
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Weekly Wanderings: December 14, 2025
Two housekeeping notes to start: (1) If you’re in Clawson, Michigan, on Sunday, January 4, I’ll be the discussant for a talk by Joseph Torigian on his book, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping (read my write-up of the book from earlier this year). Tickets are free,…
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Weekly Wanderings: November 17, 2025
This week’s post comes a day late and many links short, as I just never got the time to read all the stories I’d been saving. Instead, as is apparent by the number of Goodreads reviews below, I’ve spent most of my free time recently deeply committed to my November novel-reading project. This is not…
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Weekly Wanderings: November 9, 2025
Greetings from the first snow of the season in Ann Arbor. Although I saw one forecast yesterday that predicted 4-6 inches of snow for us today, it has now settled down to 1-3 inches—enough to make for a picturesque Sunday at home, not enough to make life overly difficult for anyone on the roads. My…
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Weekly Wanderings: November 3, 2025
November. The penultimate month of a year that has often felt endless and yet flown by. November always seems like a month that people want to rush through, eager to get to the December holidays and end-of-year celebrations. Christmas commercials are playing regularly on TV now; one of the radio stations I usually listen to…
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Bookshelf: Silk Roads
As much as I love to cook, I’m hopeless at reverse-engineering recipes. I’ve eaten plenty of dishes that I wish I could replicate at home, only to be defeated by my lack of skills. (Also, probably, my unwillingness to use as much butter and salt as the original chef likely did.) I have little sense…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 20, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories Eliot Chen, “Laura Murphy on Enforcing America’s Ban on Uyghur Forced Labor” Wang, who has more than 800,000 subscribers on YouTube, is representative of a small but influential part of the Mandarin-language media landscape. He is part of an exodus of media professionals…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 12, 2025
The Phillies season has ended; the Flyers season has begun. Time marches on. Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories Emma Belmonte, “A Surrogacy Silk Road: Chinese Parents Head West for Babies” Yangyang Cheng, “No Country for A Woman” While men and boys are perceived to have more potential, are allowed more time,…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 28, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Review Recommendations China Stories James T. Areddy, “Jerome Cohen, the First American to Practice Law in China, Dies at 95” Yangyang Cheng, “Being a Journalist in China” (audio) Eric Fish, “The ‘Iron Dam’ that became China’s deadliest secret” (audio) Francesca Regalado, “A Curator Flees Bangkok After China Deems…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 21, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories Chang Che, “‘I have to do it’: Why one of the world’s most brilliant AI scientists left the US for China” Beijing’s white paper on national security, published in May, pivots from emphasising the pre-eminence of internal and regime security to lauding China…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 14, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. Recent Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories As the United States slides further into autocracy, the numbing freeze of fear is creeping back into my veins. I have accepted exile, but I’m not ready for imprisonment. I have left the old country, but I’m not ready to abandon the new…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 