New Books in East Asian Studies
Episodes
Alessandro Arduino and Xue Gong, "Securing the Belt and Road" (Red Globe Press, 2018)
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Alessandro Arduino and Xue Gong’s Securing the Belt and Road, Risk Assessment, Private Security and Special Insurances Along the New Wave of Chinese...
Judd C. Kinzley, "Natural Resources and the New Frontier: Constructing Modern China’s Borderlands" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As public knowledge grows of the Chinese state’s subjugation of the central Asian region of Xinjiang, many may find themselves wondering what Beijin...
Howard Chiang, "After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2018)
17 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Howard Chiang’s new book is a masterful study of the relationship between sexual knowledge and Chinese modernity. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, ...
Jinping Wang, "In the Wake of the Mongols: The Making of a New Social Order in North China 1200-1600" (Harvard Asia Center, 2018)
14 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On the background of widespread portrayals of China as a monolithic geographical and political entity moving through time, insights into the endlessly...
Chad R. Diehl, "Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction and the Formation of Atomic Narratives" (Cornell UP, 2018)
11 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki both play a central role in any narrative of the end of the East Asia-Pacific War in 1945, yet Hiroshima...
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of Gener...
Jennifer Altehenger, "Popularizing Laws in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1989" (Harvard U Asia Center, 2018)
04 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, historian Jennifer Altehenger, a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese History at King’s College London, grapples with the comple...
Pedith Pui Chan, “The Making of a Modern Art World: Institutionalization and Legitimization of Guohua in Republican Shanghai” (Brill, 2017)
20 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Making of a Modern Art World: Institutionalization and Legitimization of Gouhua in Republican Shanghai (Brill, 2017) investigates the production a...
Patrick Fuliang Shan, “Yuan Shikai: A Reappraisal” (UBC Press, 2018)
07 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When he was elected president of China in 1912, Yuan Shikai was hailed as his nation’s George Washington, yet four years later he would die as the l...
Sandra Fahy, “Marching Through Suffering: Loss and Survival in North Korea” (Columbia UP, 2015)
06 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Amidst an atmosphere of hope on the Korean Peninsula over the past year, questions over the wellbeing of North Korea’s population have again come to...
Justyna Weronika Kasza, “Hermeneutics of Evil in the Works of Endō Shūsaku: Between Reading and Writing” (Peter Lang, 2016)
26 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In literature, evil can appear in a broad spectrum of shapes, images and motifs. For Endō Shūsaku, the problem of evil is central to the reality of ...
Ching Kwan Lee, “The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
25 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked with Ching Kwan Lee, professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has just published The Specter of Glob...
Martin Saxer and Juan Zhang, eds., “The Art of Neighbouring: Making Relations Across China’s Borders” (Amsterdam UP, 2017)
18 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
China’s growing presence in all of our worlds today is felt most keenly by those living directly on the country’s borders. They, together with the...
Yulia Frumer, “Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
17 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Yulia Frumer’s new book follows roughly three hundred years of transformations in how time was conceptualized, measured, and materialized in Japan. ...
Elizabeth McGuire, “Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution” (Oxford UP, 2017)
08 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
If Sino-Russian relations today sometimes seem bluntly pragmatic, things were not always so, and as imperial dynasties in both countries crumbled one ...
James M. Dorsey, “China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For all that China’s twenty-first-century ‘rise’ is a much-discussed notion both within the country and globally, it is an increasingly difficul...
Hilary A. Smith, “Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine” (Stanford UP, 2017)
25 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Hilary A. Smith’s new book examines the evolution of a Chinese disease concept, foot qi (jiao qi) from its documented origins in the fourth century ...
Stephen R. Platt, “Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age” (Knopf, 2018)
24 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” ...
Nick Kapur, “Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo” (Harvard UP, 2018)
21 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Kapur’s Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Harvard University Press, 2018) is an ambitious look at the transformation...
Ruth Gamble, “Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism: The Third Karmapa and the Invention of a Tradition” (Oxford UP, 2018)
21 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ruth Gamble’s Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism: The Third Karmapa and the Invention of a Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a thorough a...
Michael Szonyi, “The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China” (Princeton UP, 2017)
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At the heart of Michael Szonyi’s new book are two questions: 1) How did ordinary people in the Ming deal with their obligations to provide manpower ...
N.A.J. Taylor and R. Jacobs, eds., “Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War” (Routledge, 2017)
05 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
N.A.J. Taylor and Robert Jacobs,’s edited volume Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War (Routledge, 2017) deve...
Tom Cliff, “Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang” (U Chicago Press, 2016)
04 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Compared to the provinces’s native Uyghur population, Han Chinese settlers in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have not attracted as much...
Fabio Lanza, “The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies” (Duke UP, 2017)
31 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
If you work in Asian studies as a scholarly field, you should read Fabio Lanza’s new book. The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Stu...
Laura Neitzel, “The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan” (MerwinAsia, 2016)
30 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Neitzel’s The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan (MerwinAsia, 2016) is a chronicle of the large, ...
Philip Thai, “China’s War on Smuggling: Law, Economic Life, and the Making of the Modern State, 1842-1965” (Columbia UP, 2018)
21 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
From petty runs to organized trafficking, the illicit activity of smuggling on the China coast was inherently dramatic, but now historian Philip Thai ...
Lily Wong, “Transpacific Attachments: Sex Work, Media Networks, and Affective Histories of Chineseness” (Columbia UP, 2018)
20 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Lily Wong‘s Transpacific Attachments: Sex Work, Media Networks, and Affective Histories of Chineseness (Columbia University Press, 2018) traces the...
Zhang Tianyi (tr. David Hull), “The Pidgin Warrior” (Balestier Press, 2017)
10 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“Big boys, the story in this little book is told for you.” Thus begins the preface to Zhang Tianyi’s The Pidgin Warrior (Balestier Press, 2017),...
Andrew B. Kipnis, “From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat” (U California Press, 2016)
08 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“When I first went to Zouping in 1988,” writes Andrew B. Kipnis in From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat (Universit...
Reginald Jackson, “Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls” (U Michigan Press, 2018)
02 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Reginald Jackson’s inspiring new book takes a transdisciplinary approach to rethinking how we read, how we pay attention, and why that matters deepl...
Kate McDonald, “Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan” (U California Press, 2017)
01 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Kate McDonald‘s Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan (University of California Press, 2017) is a thoughtful and pro...
Ari Heinrich, “Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body” (Duke UP, 2018)
10 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ari Larissa Heinrich’s new book, Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body (Duke University Press, 2018), is a fas...
Michelle C. Wang, “Mandalas in the Making: The Visual Culture of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang” (Brill, 2018)
05 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Michelle C. Wang’s new book Mandalas in the Making: The Visual Culture of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang (Brill, 2018) joins a growing body of schola...
Gordon Mathews, “The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
03 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of globalization and global cities, we might be inclined to think of New York or London. Yet in recent years, Guangzhou, the central man...
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford UP, 2018)
29 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“Knowing about China,” Maura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey Wasserstrom note in the preface to China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to...
Ross King, “Seoul: Memory, Reinvention and the Korean Wave” (University of Hawaii Press, 2018)
14 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Seoul, as any listener who has visited will recognize, can be a pretty overwhelming place. This is well recognized by Ross King, Professorial Fellow i...
Ronald P. Loftus, “The Turn Against the Modern: The Critical Essays of Taoka Reiun (1870-1912)” (Association for Asian Studies, 2017)
08 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Taoka Reiun (1870-1912) was a literary critic and thinker who was active from the early 1890s in Meiji period Japan. Not satisfied with the meaning of...
Ji-Yeon O. Jo, “Homing: An Affective Topography of Ethnic Korean Return Migration” (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
31 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For anyone with an interest in Korean studies, the study of diaspora and globalization, and indeed in broader questions around transnational identitie...
Michele Zack, “The Lisu: Far from the Ruler” (UP of Colorado, 2017)
30 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Recent years have brought a burgeoning interest in how highland people in mainland Southeast Asia live and communicate along and across the boundaries...
Christina Maags and Marina Svensson, “Chinese Heritage in the Making: Experiences, Negotiations, and Contestations” (Amsterdam UP, 2018)
25 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Chinese Heritage in the Making: Experiences, Negotiations, and Contestations (Amsterdam University Press, 2018), edited by Christina Maags and Mari...
Simeon Man, “Soldiering through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific” (U California Press, 2018)
25 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Simeon Man‘s book Soldiering through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific (University of California Press, 2018) focuses on the ...
Erik Mueggler, “Songs for Dead Parents: Corpse, Text, and World in Southwest China” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
21 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Lòlop’ò of Southwest China’s Yunnan Province have a folktale in which they, Han Chinese, and Tibetans were given the technology of writing. ...
Holly Gayley, “Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet” (Columbia UP, 2016)
10 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Often when people think of Tibetan Buddhism they have a limited vision of that social reality, perhaps one that imagines monks sitting in meditation o...
Kathlene Baldanza, “Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
07 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Kathlene Baldanza explores the complex diploma...
Ji-Young Lee, “China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination” (Columbia UP, 2017)
03 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ji-Young Lee’s book investigates the changing nature of tribute relations during the Ming and High Qing between a dominant China and its less powerf...
David Wanczyk, “Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind” (Swallow Press, 2018)
03 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We all know baseball as one of America’s fondest pastimes, but did you know there’s a version of the sport designed specifically for the blind? It...
Kaori Okano and Yoshio Sugimoto, eds., “Rethinking Japanese Studies: Eurocentrism and the Asia-Pacific Region” (Routledge, 2018)
01 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Rethinking Japanese Studies. Eurocentrism and the Asia-Pacific Region (Routledge, 2018) is co-edited by Kaori Okano and Yoshio Sugimoto. The book trie...
Yutao Sun and Seamus Grimes, “China and Global Value Chains” (Routledge, 2018)
30 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today I was joined by Seamus Grimes from Ireland where he is Emeritus Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. With Yutao Sun (Dalian ...
David Atkinson, “The Burden of White Supremacy: Containing Asian Migration in the British Empire and the United States” (UNC Press, 2016)
19 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Recent historical scholarship stresses the transnational linkages between movements to restrict Asian migration in the Anglophone world. David Atkinso...
Nick Admussen, “Recite and Refuse: Contemporary Chinese Prose Poetry” (U Hawaii Press, 2016)
11 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Published by the University of Hawaii Press in 2016, Nick Admussen’s exciting new book Recite and Refuse: Contemporary Chinese Prose Poetry explores...
Craig Clunas, “Chinese Painting and Its Audiences” (Princeton UP, 2017)
05 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his latest book, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences published in 2017 by Princeton University Press, Craig Clunas puts to question the entire conce...
Sida Liu and Terence C. Halliday, “Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sida Liu and Terence C. Halliday spent ten years interviewing criminal defense attorneys throughout China in order to compile the evidence on the prof...
Taisu Zhang, “The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship Property in Preindustrial China and England” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
27 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Taisu Zhang ties together cultural history, legal history, and institutional economics in The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property...
Shinshu Roberts, “Being-Time: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji” (Wisdom Publications, 2018)
22 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Being-Time: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji (Wisdom Publications, 2018), Shinshu Roberts focuses on the practica...
Anna Andreeva, “Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan” (Harvard Asia Center, 2017)
07 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her recent monograph, Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2017), Anna Andreev...
Stephen G. Craft, “American Justice in Taiwan: The 1957 Riots and Cold War Foreign Policy” (Kentucky UP, 2017)
18 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On May 23, 1957, US Army Sergeant Robert Reynolds was acquitted of murdering Chinese officer Liu Ziran in Taiwan. Reynolds did not deny shooting Liu b...
Thomas Mullaney, “The Chinese Typewriter: A History” (MIT Press, 2017)
09 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Mullaney’s new book The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press, 2017) provides a fascinating first look at the development of modern Chinese i...
Andrew McKevitt, “Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America” (UNC Press, 2017)
08 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America (UNC Press, 2017), Andrew McKevitt explores the intense and ultimately fleeti...
Terry Kleeman, “Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities” (Harvard UP, 2016)
07 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Despite the general perception that Daoism is simply an informal and carefree philosophical perspective, the Daoist tradition is a highly formalized s...
Bryan D. Lowe, “Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan” (U of Hawaii Press, 2017)
04 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his recent monograph, Ritualized Writing: Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), Bryan D. L...
Kristian Petersen, “Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab” (Oxford UP, 2017)
10 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his monumental new book, Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017), Kristia...
John Powers, “The Buddha Party: How the People’s Republic of China Works to Define and Control Tibetan Buddhism” (Oxford UP, 2016)
07 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his recent book, The Buddha Party: How the People’s Republic of China Works to Define and Control Tibetan Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2016...
Justin R. Ritzinger, “Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism” (Oxford UP, 2017)
09 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his recent monograph, Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2017), Justin...
Bradley Camp Davis, “Imperial Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in the China-Vietnam Borderlands” (U of Washington Press, 2017)
29 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Recent years have seen an upsurge in studies asking questions about, and in, borderlands. The topic is certainly not new to scholars of mainland South...
Peter Eisner, “MacArthur’s Spies: The Solider, the Singer, and the Spymaster Who Defied the Japanese in WWII” (Viking, 2017)
20 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The conquest of the Philippines in 1942 brought thousands of Americans under the control of the empire of Japan. While most of them were interned or i...
Albert Wu, “From Christ to Confucius: German Missionaries, Chinese Christians, and the Globalization of Christianity, 1860-1950” (Yale UP, 2016)
19 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Where Europeans have gone, so, too, have their ideas about religion. We know that this was no one-way street, that Christian missionaries have both ch...
Eileen Le Han, “Micro-Blogging Memories: Weibo and Collective Remembering in Contemporary China” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
12 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Since its invention, the Internet has become a fundamental part of our lives. Since the invention of social media, communicative technologies have cha...
Bongrae Seok, “Moral Psychology of Confucian Shame: Shame of Shamelessness” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
15 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Shame is a complex social emotion that has a particularly negative valence; in the West it is associated with failure, inappropriateness, dishonor, di...
Edward Vickers, “Education and Society in Post-Mao China” (Routledge, 2017)
22 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Edward Vickers, Professor of Comparative Education at Kyushu University, joins New Books Network to discuss his recently published book, entitled ...
Dorothy Ko, “The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China” (U. of Washington Press, 2017)
18 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Dorothy Ko‘s new book is a must-read. Troubling the hierarchy of head over hands and the propensity to denigrate craftsmen in Chinese history, The S...
Don Baker, “Catholics and Anti-Catholicism in Choson Korea” (U. Hawaii Press, 2017)
16 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Shortly after the introduction of Catholicism into Korea in the late 18th century, Korea’s Confucian government began to persecute Catholics. Why wo...
Jonathan Schlesinger, “A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule” (Stanford UP, 2017)
13 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Schlesinger‘s new book makes a compelling case for the significance of Manchu and Mongolian sources and archival sources in particular in t...
Roy Bing Chan, “The Edge of Knowing: Dreams, History, and Realism in Modern Chinese Literature” (U. Washington Press, 2017)
04 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Roy Bing Chan‘s new book explores twentieth-century Chinese literature that emphasizes sleeping and dreaming as a way to reckon with the trauma of m...
Timothy Cheek, “The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
02 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the preface to his new book, Timothy Cheek calls out a widespread tendency to focus on dissidents when engaging with Chinese intellectuals. (This i...
Marcia Yonemoto, “The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan” (U of California Press, 2016)
25 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Were women a problem in early modern Japan? If they were, what was the nature of the problem they posed? For whom, and why? Marcia Yonemoto‘s new bo...
Carrie J. Preston, “Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, and Journeys in Teaching” (Columbia UP, 2016)
29 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Carrie J. Preston‘s new book tells the story of the global circulation of noh-inspired performances, paying careful attention to the ways these perf...
Li Zhi, “A Book To Burn And A Book To Keep (Hidden): Selected Writings” (Columbia UP, 2016)
09 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Rivi Handler-Spitz, Pauline C. Lee, and Haun Saussy have created a wonderful resource for readers, researchers, students, and teachers alike. A Book T...
Phoebe Chow, “Britain’s Imperial Retreat from China, 1900-1931” (Routledge, 2016)
07 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
At the start of the twentieth century Britain’s relationship with China was defined by the economic and political dominance Britain exerted in the c...
Quincy Carroll, “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside: A Novel” (Inkshares, 2015)
24 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Quincy Carroll’s new novel Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside: A Novel (Inkshares, 2015) follows the experiences of a handful of expats...
Jayde Lin Roberts, “Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among the Sino-Burmese” (U. Washington Press, 2016)
17 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, scholarship on Burma, or Myanmar, has undergone a renaissance. Jayde Lin Roberts’ Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among t...
Laura Madokoro, “Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War” (Harvard UP, 2016)
06 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Madokoro’s new book is a timely and important study of movement across national borders, migrants, and the refugee label in the global Cold Wa...
Richard Jean So, “Transpacific Community: America, China, and the Rise and Fall of a Cultural Network” (Columbia University Press, 2016)
23 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Jean So’s new book studies a group of American and Chinese writers in the three decades after WWI to propose a conceptual framework for unde...
Chris Miller, “The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy” (UNC Press, 2016)
29 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most interesting questions of modern history is this: Why is it that Communist China was able to make a successful transition to economic m...
Jan Kiely and J. Brooks Jessup, eds., “Recovering Buddhism in Modern China” (Columbia UP, 2016)
23 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The essays in Jan Kiely and J. Brooks Jessup’s new edited volume, Recovering Buddhism in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2016), collectivel...
Justin M. Jacobs, Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State (U. Washington Press, 2016)
09 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Justin M. Jacob‘s new book proposes that we understand modern China as a national empire, and traces the strategies of difference that have consiste...
Ruth Rogaski, “Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China” (U. California Press, 2014 reprint)
07 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Since it was published in 2004, Ruth Rogaski’s Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (University of California Pre...
Robert Peckham, “Epidemics in Modern Asia” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
06 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Peckham’s Epidemics in Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores the crucial yet under-explored role that epidemics have played...
Kate Merkel-Hess, “The Rural Modern: Reconstructing the Self and State in Republican China” (U. Chicago Press, 2016)
01 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Merkel-Hess‘s new book looks closely at a loose group of rural reformers in 1920s and 1930s China who were trying to create a rural alternative...
Pamela S. Turner, “Crow Smarts/Samurai Rising” (HMH/Charlesbridge, 2016)
28 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Award-winning author, Pamela S. Turner discusses two new books, Crow Smarts: Inside the Brain of the Worlds Smartest Bird (HMH Books for Young Readers...
Jessamyn R. Abel, “The International Minimum: Creativity and Contradiction in Japan’s Global Engagement, 1933-1964” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015)
24 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Jessamyn R. Abel’s new book carefully traces the rise and transformations of an internationalist worldview in modern Japan, from its withdrawal from...
John Prados, “Storm Over Leyte: The Philippine Invasion and the Destruction of the Japanese Navy” (NAL, 2016)
13 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Narratives of the Pacific War frequently examine the 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf from the operational perspective, focusing on the desperate actions of ...
Kristin Stapleton, “Fact in Fiction: 1920s China and Ba Jin’s Family” (Stanford UP, 2016)
05 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Kristin Stapleton’s new book opens onto a political crisis in China, and into a spirit of reform touched off by student demonstrations on May 4, 191...
Ellen Widmer, “Fiction’s Family: Zhan Xi, Zhan Kai, and the Business of Women in Late-Qing China” (Harvard UP, 2016)
21 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Ellen Widmer’s new book tells a story of the life and work of a literary family in China, in order to open out into a fascinating discussion of the ...
Liam Brockey, “The Visitor: Andre Palmeiro and the Jesuits in Asia” (Harvard UP, 2014)
11 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The transmission of a religion closely connected to a particular culture into a very different religious and cultural environment is a difficult act o...
Akiko Takenaka, “Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015)
24 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Akiko Takenaka’s new book looks carefully at Yasukuni Shrine as a war memorial, examining its role in waging war, honoring the dead, promoting peace...
Patricia Buckley Ebrey, “Emperor Huizong” (Harvard UP, 2014)
23 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Song Chinese emperor Huizong (r. 1100-1126 CE) has long been regarded as a failure due to his dynasty’s defeat in their war against the Jurchens...
Richard L. Davis, “From Warhorses to Ploughshares: The Later Tang Reign of Emperor Mingzong” (Hong Kong UP, 2015)
17 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Ruling as he did during the Five Dynasties period of Chinese history, the emperor Mingzong (r. 926-933) has not received the same degree attention fro...
Morgan Pitelka, “Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2016)
10 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Morgan Pitelka’s new book looks closely at the material culture of the Three Unifiers of the late sixteenth century in Japan– Oda Nobunaga, Toyoto...
Paul Roquet, “Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016)
31 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Roquet’s wonderful new book begins with an offering of jellyfish and proceeds to teach us how to read the air. Ambient Media: Japanese Atmosphe...
Mark R. E. Meulenbeld, “Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel” (U. of Hawaii Press, 2015)
25 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Mark R. E. Meulenbeld’s new book looks closely at the relationship between vernacular novels and vernacular rituals in Ming China. Focusing on a par...