I actually have three books going at the moment; usually by summer's end I get too busy and am back to reading one at a time.
Noah Feldman's "Cool War" - about US-China relations, the mutual benefits and risks in their economic cooperation and competition. I'm very curious about how China will continue to develop its Latin American interests, and have no idea if this book treats that, but it looked interesting and now it's seriously trying to muscle in on the time I've been spending on the two books below:
Ma Jian's "The Dark Road" -- this is a novel, but informed by history, and it's dark indeed. Much of it is focused on the one-child policy and what that has done to disrupt the lives of impoverished rural residents, where enforcement of the policy is or has been in the past very brutal. There are also disturbing glimpses into the effects on people and ecosystems of the kinds of jobs that have become available as Westerners discard their Chinese-made goods, which then come back to China for recycling. Still I have been liking the book a lot, even better than his "Beijing Coma" which was also pretty dark. The Chinese government is probably not a big fan of Ma Jian but his stories have needed telling.
Scott Anderson's "Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East" - This one's a pretty unusual presentation of the emergence of the Middle Eastern countries as the Ottoman Empire broke up, putting the focus on T.E. Lawrence and three other individuals, one German (a diplomat, spy and agitator), one American (a Standard Oil guy who was from the family that founded Yale University) and one Romanian-born Zionist whose specialty was agricultural crop production. I began reading this quite recently and have trouble putting it down. I had decided to get the audiobook too, so even when I put it down I find myself reaching for the iPod touch that has the audio version on it.
I can see my early fall chores are going to fall off schedule...
Noah Feldman's "Cool War" - about US-China relations, the mutual benefits and risks in their economic cooperation and competition. I'm very curious about how China will continue to develop its Latin American interests, and have no idea if this book treats that, but it looked interesting and now it's seriously trying to muscle in on the time I've been spending on the two books below:
Ma Jian's "The Dark Road" -- this is a novel, but informed by history, and it's dark indeed. Much of it is focused on the one-child policy and what that has done to disrupt the lives of impoverished rural residents, where enforcement of the policy is or has been in the past very brutal. There are also disturbing glimpses into the effects on people and ecosystems of the kinds of jobs that have become available as Westerners discard their Chinese-made goods, which then come back to China for recycling. Still I have been liking the book a lot, even better than his "Beijing Coma" which was also pretty dark. The Chinese government is probably not a big fan of Ma Jian but his stories have needed telling.
Scott Anderson's "Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East" - This one's a pretty unusual presentation of the emergence of the Middle Eastern countries as the Ottoman Empire broke up, putting the focus on T.E. Lawrence and three other individuals, one German (a diplomat, spy and agitator), one American (a Standard Oil guy who was from the family that founded Yale University) and one Romanian-born Zionist whose specialty was agricultural crop production. I began reading this quite recently and have trouble putting it down. I had decided to get the audiobook too, so even when I put it down I find myself reaching for the iPod touch that has the audio version on it.
I can see my early fall chores are going to fall off schedule...
