Reviews

Book Review: Fred Barton and the Warlords’ Horses of China

September 7, 2016

John Ross reviews the real life adventure of Montana cowboy Fred Barton, who led the world’s longest horse drive from Siberia through Manchuria and Mongolia into China. [Read More...]

Book Review: The Mercenary Mandarin

August 30, 2016

In a guest post, John Ross reviews David Leffman’s new book, The Mercenary Mandarin: How a British adventurer became a general in Qing-dynasty China now available from Blacksmith Books. [Read More...]

“Out of Autocracy, Off the Shelves”

January 7, 2016

It is an unfortunate axiom of publishing in China that the best way for your book to gain international attention is to have the Chinese government make it unavailable to domestic readers. Such is the fate of Out of Imperial Autocracy (Zouchu dizhi), the latest book by the eminent public intellectual and economic historian Qin Hui, published earlier this year. [Read More...]

From the Ruins of Empire…arise the nation-state

October 30, 2014

Empires want to be respected. Nation-states need to be loved. It's a simple formula, and one that I share with author and historian of empire Pankaj Mishra. [Read More...]

Book Review: The Incarnations by Susan Barker

August 21, 2014

How many lifetimes does it take for two souls to truly bond? Susan Barker’s remarkable book The Incarnations is a time-bending fantasy with an unknown (and possible unreliable) narrator sweeping us down the rabbit hole of history. [Read More...]

Wealth and Power at Capital M

March 22, 2014

Historian John Delury gave an excellent talk at Capital M today about wealth and power as defining recent Chinese history, but how to fit a search for modernity into that equation? [Read More...]

Bad History: Modern Marvels – The Great Wall

January 6, 2014

Downloaded the "Great Wall" episode of Modern Marvels for a class. Wasted $1.99 on a History Channel fail. [Read More...]

Dylan in Beijing: final thoughts and a bit of a rant

April 10, 2011

Those who thought that Dylan was going to get up on stage in Beijing to harangue the CCP and then lead the crowd in a singalong of "Ai Shall be Released" were seriously kidding themselves. [Read More...]