Category: History
-
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,…
-
Weekly Wanderings: May 12, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories Eliot Chen, “All the President’s Generals” Chen Yiru, “Dot Dot Dot: What the Last Ever Telegrams From Hangzhou Say” Rachel Cheung, “‘A Vicious Cycle’ — Squeezed by commercial and political pressures, China’s book publishers face an existential crisis.” Jack Neubauer, “The Forgotten ‘Jeep Babies’ of China”…
-
Weekly Wanderings: May 4, 2025
April 30 marked the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces. I have a special little reading round-up here at the top on reflections and analysis published to commemorate the anniversary. Thanks for joining me this week. Vietnam, 50 Years After the Fall of Saigon Minh-Thu Pham, “50 Years After Saigon:…
-
Weekly Wanderings: April 22, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories James T. Areddy, “The China Foe Storming State Capitols” Ben Bland, “Making sense of China-Southeast Asia relations” Jonathan Chatwin, “The Race to Type in Chinese” Chang Che, “‘You Think We’re Afraid of America?’” and “3 takeaways from my visit to Yiwu, the frontlines of the trade…
-
Weekly Wanderings: April 6, 2025
Today marks the launch of National Library Week. It’s probably not a surprise that I love libraries: how else could I ever afford to support my reading habit? Each time I’ve moved to a new place, getting a new library card is one of the first things I do to get settled. Even when I’m…
-
Weekly Wanderings: January 5, 2025
Two weeks without recommendations meant I saved up a bumper crop for today—I hope everyone can find a story or two in the links below to read with their coffee on a cold winter Sunday. Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories The recent shift in exile rhetoric suggests a realization by the…
-
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…
-
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: 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…
-
Weekly Wanderings: July 21, 2024
Recommendations China Stories Amy Hawkins, “‘Garbage time of history’: Chinese state media pushes back on claims country has entered a new epoch” Amy Hawkins, “Wall Street Journal fires new chair of Hong Kong Journalists Association” Ryan Ho Kilpatrick, “Code of Silence” Timothy McLaughlin, “When the Press Turns Its Back on Press Freedom” John Ruwitch, “5…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 