John Walsh
John Walsh is Assistant Professor at Shinawatra International University, Bangkok.
Taiwan under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1895-1945 by Liao Ping-Hui and David Der-Wei Wang, eds.
JOHN WALSH | 31 May 2007For most of its history, Taiwan has been occupied and colonized by one external power or another. Whether it was the Chinese, the Dutch, Portuguese or Japanese, the Taiwanese people have had to do the bidding of someone else. Dominated by others for so long, what does it mean to be a Taiwanese? Is it possible to separate a sense of belonging to a particular state that is not thoroughly compromised by the impact of... [ more ]
In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce
JOHN WALSH | 06 April 2007Perhaps the overwhelming impression I received from my very limited experience in India is the diversity of the people. There seemed to be at least twenty different nations jammed up against each other with not quite enough space, although seemingly oblivious to each other.
While cows, donkeys, goats and even a camel wandered around, poor construction workers sought to wash their dusty children with... [ more ]
In the Line of Fire by Pervez Musharraf
JOHN WALSH | 01 March 2007Pervez Musharraf is the head of the Pakistani army who took control after a coup d'etat and subsequently arranged to have himself elected as President. His justification for seizing power to end what he calls, using speech marks himself, 'the "dreadful decade of democracy"', was that the democratically elected Prime Minister of Pakistan was trying to replace him with a rival. The democratically elected Prime Minister is... [ more ]
God's Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad by Charles Allen
JOHN WALSH | 15 January 2007The threat of international terrorism seems to affect every country in the world. It has become a matter of some urgency to understand the nature of those people who believe it justified to blow people up in the name of religion and, to some extent, understand why they do so.
JOHN WALSH | 17 July 2006Many industries claim to be globalised but very few really are. Apart from some high profile consumer goods, only firms involved in oil or mineral resource extraction, defence or large-scale construction can really consider themselves to be globalised. One additional industry in this category is shipping, which links nearly every country of the world, apart from those which are landlocked. Ships crisscross the seas and oceans... [ more ]
Gordon Wu: The Man Who Turned The Lights On: Gordon Wu by Rosemary Sayer
JOHN WALSH | 02 July 2006Gordon Wu is the Hong Kong businessman who created Hopewell Holdings and who achieved huge success and wealth in developing the infrastructure of Hong Kong and mainland China. Inspired by his university education at Princeton in the USA, he took his engineering skills and combined them with the entrepreneurial spirit from his father, who created Hong Kong's first taxi fleet, and combined them innate drive to develop one of the... [ more ]
China Syndrome: The True Story of the 21st Century's First Great Epidemic by Karl Taro Greenfeld
JOHN WALSH | 20 April 2006Prosperity in Guangzhou meant the era of wild flavour: Korean karaoke girls in slit skirts, foreign cigarettes and exotic animal meat -- snake, civet, camel, mountain lion, monkey, pangolin, muskrat, if it could be caught, then it would be for sale at the Wild Animal Markets. Jammed together in cages, scarcely able to move, the animals mixed their body fluids, their faeces and their viruses. The combination had never been... [ more ]
Crossfire by Miyuki Miyabe
JOHN WALSH | 25 March 2006A young Japanese woman, Junko Aoka, wields tremendous pyrokinetic power, being able to cause people to explode into flame with such force that she causes their necks to break first. This means they do not, as a consequence, suffer too badly. And those she chooses to kill are, she believes, perfectly suitable candidates for... [ more ]
