Category: Russia

• Weekly Wanderings: February 1, 2026

  

  Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories The AI race is being waged with the top 1% of the 1% of talent in China; the rest of the 99.9% and the humanities majors have much less to look forward to. In the fourth and fifth-tier cities, one of most arresting problems in China…

  mauracunningham

  February 1, 2026

  Books, China, India, Russia, Weekly Wanderings

• Bookshelf: Volga Blues

  

  A current of tension runs throughout the chapters of Volga Blues: A Journey into the Heart of Russia. Sometimes it’s weak, and I forget that Italian journalist Marzio G. Mian and photographer Alessandro Cosmelli are traveling around Russia without authorization or the proper visas, posing instead as a historian and his friend. But then something…

  mauracunningham

  January 23, 2026

  Books, Russia

• Weekly Wanderings: January 18, 2026

  

  Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories The conviction of Lai, the self-made entrepreneur and pro-democracy media publisher, was in fact an anti-climax — a footnote in a long and carefully orchestrated exercise to silence one of the Party’s most stubborn and effective critics in the nominally autonomous special administrative…

  mauracunningham

  January 18, 2026

  Books, China, Russia, Weekly Wanderings