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“Sea of Treasures” by Jeremy A Simmons
When Alaric laid siege to Rome in 408 CE, the desperate city sued for peace, paying 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver … and 3,000 pounds of pepper. That a Visigoth warlord made a commodity from the Malabar Coast central to his demands shows the pervasive role of Asian imports in Roman affairs….
“Electric Vehicles: Implications for Developing Countries”
Electric Vehicles is a dense and chart-laden monograph; it is not for the faint-hearted. What makes it worth the effort,…
“Blood Dawn: World War II and the Making of Modern Asia” by Hans Van de Den
World War II, as Hans Van De Ven writes in his new book Blood Dawn, reordered Asia’s geopolitics. During the…
“Pink Auteur, Red Outlaw: Adachi Masao and Japan’s Cinema of Revolution” by William Andrews
There is an irresistible temptation to read filmmaker Adachi Masao’s life as if it were itself a movie. A Japanese…
“Entangled Empires: Four Centuries of China-Russia Relations”
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin know each other well. Since 2013, when Xi completed his ascent to the top of…
“Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir and the Mughal Empire” by Munis D Faruqui
The battle lines around Emperor Aurangzeb’s posthumous reputations are clearly drawn. On one side, the monumental five-volume history by Jadunath Sarkar over a century ago defined the last great Mughal as a bigot, a fanatic, a bloodthirsty tyrant, and the gravedigger of the empire. Moreover, some claim that the brother whom Aurangzeb defeated and executed…
“Masters of Sleep” by Zhu Ye
Masters of Sleep by Zhu Yue, a Beijing-born author with both a legal and philosophical background, is one of three published collections of short stories, and the first translated into English. Translated by Jianan Que and Alyssa Asquith, it is an esoteric, ironic book. Some stories read as if written in the Victorian era. Others…
“Wedding on the Maharaja Express” by Prakhar Vishwani
The title of Prakhar Vishwani’s debut, Wedding on the Maharaja Express, evokes the classic mystery Murder on the Orient Express….
“The Bride at Sixty” by Kyoko Hayashi
On 9 August 1945, an American plane dropped a nuclear bomb over Nagasaki at 11:01 am local time. It exploded…
“Northern Tomb” by Isabelle Li
Few novelists dare to take on the backdrop of COVID-19 in China but Isabelle Li does not shy away. In…“The Pinnacle” by Abir Mukherjee
Once a major Hollywood star, George Abercrombie’s career has quietly cratered after a string of box-office flops. He has moved…
“Hello, Limerence” by Momo Yamaguchi
The unusual word “limerence” in the title of Momo Yamaguchi’s debut novel is never in fact used in the book itself. It is a term coined by a psychologist in the 1970s and which hasn’t yet entered common parlance, requiring it to be defined on the book’s back cover—“the state of being obsessively infatuated with…
“My Wild City: Finding Nature, Meaning, and Hope in India’s Capital” by Neha Sinha
In My Wild City, acclaimed nature writer Neha Sinha takes us on an unforgettable journey through the hidden wildernesses of the bustling metropolis of Delhi, India, where she finds as…
“Chinese Media Improvisations” by Xuenan Cao
Xuenan Cao offers an unexpected angle on China’s technological rise, spotlighting the role of deficit-driven improvisation. As Cao demonstrates, where printing paper, computers, and microchips have been in shortage, media…
“Stormy Seas” by Thung-Hong Lin
How can a small democracy resist the influence of a powerful authoritarian neighbor? Taiwan is frequently praised for its successful economic development and peaceful transition to democracy, serving as a…
“From Lab to Life: How AI Works in China” by Collin Hogue-Spears
From Lab to Life: How AI Works in China argues that China built the world’s first governed AI ecosystem, a market in which regulation, commercial capability, and distribution developed together. Since August 2023, China has required consumer-facing generative AI services to clear government filing before…
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