Category: Books
-
Weekly Wanderings: January 20, 2025
A raw wind swept down Baton Rouge’s North 4th Street, threatening to wrench the baseball cap off my head as I waited with 3,500 other people for the Louisiana Marathon to get underway. Wearing ankle-length leggings, a tank top, and a long-sleeved t-shirt, I wished I had brought gloves and a knit hat with me…
-
Bookshelf: The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom
Longtime China journalist John Pomfret regards the relationship between the United States and China as a grand, sweeping epic marked by many highs and lows. “If there is a pattern to this baffling complexity,” Pomfret writes in his 2016 history,* The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present, “it…
-
Bookshelf: After the Last Border
Books published in 2020 often didn’t get the attention they deserved. Kept at home by Covid-19 restrictions, authors weren’t able to tour and promote their new books in person; instead, they tried their best to reach readers through Zoom, podcasts, and social media. Unfortunately, a lot of wonderful and important titles fell through the cracks.…
-
Weekly Wanderings: December 1, 2024
December! Well, Decem-brrrr here in Michigan … it was 19 degrees outside and snowing lightly when I woke up this morning. In addition to the links below, I have a new piece just up at the Los Angeles Review of Books: The creation of character input methods, and how thinking about them has changed our…
-
Weekly Wanderings: November 24, 2024
Thanks for joining me this week. Recent Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories Kelly Ho, “Benny Tai, Joshua Wong among 45 Hong Kong pro-democracy activists jailed up to 10 years in landmark national security case” Joyce Jiang and James Legge, “Young Chinese flock to ‘academic pubs’ as space for free expression shrinks” Dalia Parete, “For Mang…
-
Weekly Wanderings: November 17, 2024
@mauracunningham (2010-2024) I deactivated my Twitter account this morning. It finally felt like time: I hadn’t posted there in months, and the post-election surge in Bluesky users has created a critical mass of other historians, writers, China folks, Ann Arborites, and Phillies/Flyers fans—the people I most want to connect with. Time to officially move on.…
-
Bookshelf: Her Lotus Year
After the relationship between American two-time divorcée Wallis Simpson and Britain’s King Edward VIII became public knowledge in December 1936, rumors about Simpson’s past flew thick and fast. One alleged source was the so-called “China Dossier,” a British government file (likely apocryphal) said to include prurient details about the year Simpson had spent in Hong…
-
Weekly Wanderings: November 10, 2024
What a week. I don’t have any deep insights or grand analysis to share about the election. Since Wednesday, my inbox has been filled with newsletters and articles titled “What did Harris do wrong?” and “What this election means for America” and so forth. I’ve opened all those emails and mostly skimmed over them before…
-
Weekly Wanderings: October 30, 2024
Thanks for joining me this week. #AsiaNow Author Interview Recommendations China Stories Emily Feng, “An opera troupe in Taiwan is preparing a lavish performance for the gods” The journalist’s report centered on the Franklin County Jail, a three-story, brick structure with six steel cells that had been “properly condemned” by the state commissioner of prisons…
-
Bookshelf: Indonesia Etc.
In late 2011, Elizabeth Pisani set off on a yearlong trip throughout Indonesia. This was no Eat, Pray, Love-style journey: Pisani wasn’t going to the archipelago in search of herself. Instead, she was looking for Indonesia. Pisani, in many respects, already knew the country. She had been stationed in Jakarta as a journalist for Reuters…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 