Category: Books
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Bookshelf — Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
Walk up the stairs to the “goblet” level of the National Monument in Jakarta’s Merdeka Square and you’ll enter the Hall of Independence. On a Sunday afternoon, the room is filled with people seated on all levels of the risers that ring the hall’s exterior. Adults chat or look at their phones, while kids dash…
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Pre-Departure Reading: Indonesia
Welcome to Indonesia Week here at The Wandering Life! I traveled to Indonesia for the first time in early July, spending a week there for the AAS-in-Asia conference held at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta. My trip was, of course, very short, and I only made two stops, in Jakarta and Yogyakarta (pronounced “JO-Jakarta,” often…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 13, 2024
What a week. I try to think of everything that’s happened around the world in the past seven days and it feels like a grim verse from “We Didn’t Start the Fire (2024 Version).” I can barely keep up with the news, let alone read in-depth stories about it. And, in some ways, I just…
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Bookshelf: Yellowstone and the West
I am (a) a huge nerd and (b) attempting to be more intentional with my reading. Rather than grabbing whatever looks most appealing on any given day, I’m picking through my shelves and library loans to select the volumes that fit in with what’s going on in my life: travel, author talks in Ann Arbor,…
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Weekly Wanderings: September 29, 2024
September 28, 2014 marked the start of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. While these protests were by no means the first mass activism in Hong Kong agains Beijing’s rule, they captured worldwide attention in a way that previous demonstrations had not. Student movement leaders like Joshua Wong and Nathan Law became media celebrities; photographers and journalists…
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Weekly Wanderings: August 25, 2024
At 4:00pm this past Friday, I shut down the computer in my office at the Association for Asian Studies and officially started a month-long sabbatical. I like my job very much—I’m fortunate to have found a position that keeps me tied in to academia while also devoting my days to reading, writing, and editing. After…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 31, 2024
Sometimes … well, sometimes a week is more like 10 days, which feel like a month. Can’t explain it, time works in mysterious ways. Thanks for reading. Recent Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories David Bandurski, “Xi’s Ten-Year Bid to Remake China’s Media” Cate Cadell, Nick Miroff, and Li Qiang, “Walk the Line: Chinese migration surge…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 15, 2024
No note from me up top this week because (a) What a wild weekend we’ve just had in the United States, and (b) I flew back from Indonesia on Friday-Saturday so my brain is nothing but mush at the moment. I do have a new piece of writing to share. The Wall Street Journal has…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 30, 2024
At the AAS #AsiaNow blog, I have a new interview in my series of exchanges with authors (which you can now find all linked here at my website). This time, I talked with historian Douglas Ober about his first book, Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India. Ober takes on the…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 16, 2024
A few years ago I ate dinner at The Delft Bistro in Marquette, the largest city on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I could guess from the large marquee outside and the film-themed decor inside that the building had once been a movie theater, and that the restaurant’s owners had decided to pay homage to that history…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 