Category: Books
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Bookshelf: Rock Paper Tiger and Hour of the Rat
As I’ve mentioned, it’s been really, really hot here in Shanghai lately. One of my favorite hot-weather activities is to turn on the air conditioning, lie on the couch, and devour mystery novels. I’ve been spending my summers doing this ever since first cracking open my mother’s hand-me-down Nancy Drew books somewhere around the age…
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New Arrival
I brought a lot of books back with me to Shanghai after a recent trip to the U.S., most of them things I need to read for my dissertation or review copies sent to me by publishers. But one paperback tucked in my carry-on bag was a book I have no desire to crack open.…
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China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know—The Second Edition
Back in the fall of 2011, Jeff Wasserstrom (with whom I’ve co-written several articles, and who’s also my dissertation advisor) asked me if I’d like to be a contributing author on the second edition of a book he’d published in 2010, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know. Part of an Oxford…
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January Recap
At the end of every year, journalist and photographer Howard French posts a list at his website of all the books he read during the preceding twelve months. I decided I wanted to start doing that in 2013, but the end of December seemed too far away—when I’m excited about a book, I want to…
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The House of Bo Will Rise Again (Maybe)
Yesterday marked exactly ten months since Bo Xilai’s spectacular fall from grace on the Ides of March last year. His eventual fate is still unclear, though last week the Xinhua News Agency issued a terse announcement that Bo, the former Party Secretary of Chongqing, had been “handed over to judicial authorities,” meaning that he’s headed…
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On Rereading Gatsby
For well over a decade, I’ve been listing F. Scott Fitzgerald as one of my favorite authors. I went through an intense Fitzgerald phase in high school, enthralled by his descriptions of flappers and bootleggers whooping it up during the Jazz Age while unconscious of the troubles ahead of them. In retrospect, I have to…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 