Shows / Asian Review of Books
Asian Review of Books
The Asian Review of Books is the only dedicated pan-Asian book review publication. Widely quoted, referenced, republished by leading publications in Asian and beyond and with an archive of more than two thousand book reviews, the ARB also features long-format essays by leading Asian writers and thinkers, excerpts from newly-published books and reviews of arts and culture. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review
Episodes
- Asian Review of Books
Michelle T. King, "Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-Mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food" (Norton, 2024)
In 1971, the New York Times called the Taiwanese-Chinese chef, Fu Pei-Mei, the “the Julia Child of Chinese cooking.” But, as Michelle T. King notes in her book…
- Asian Review of Books
Jin Feng, "The Transpacific Flow: Creative Writing Programs in China" (Association for Asian Studies, 2024)
In 2009, Fudan University launched China’s first MFA program in creative writing, spurring a wave of such programs in Chinese universities. Many of these…
- Asian Review of Books
Clare Hammond, "On the Shadow Tracks: A Journey Through Occupied Myanmar" (Allen Lane, 2024)
In 2016, journalist Clare Hammond embarked on a project to study the railways of Myanmar–a transportation network that sprawls the country, rarely used and not…
- Asian Review of Books
Sudev Sheth, "Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Running and securing an empire can get expensive–especially one known for its opulence, like the Mughal Empire, which conquered much of northern India before…
- Asian Review of Books
Scott Crawford, "The Han-Xiongnu War, 133 BC-89 AD: The Struggle of China and a Steppe Empire Told Through Its Key Figures (Pen & Sword, 2023)
For two centuries, the Xiongnu people–a vast nomadic empire that covered modern-day Siberia, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang—were one of the Han Dynasty’s…
- Asian Review of Books
Gary J. Bass, "Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia" (Knopf, 2023)
In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to…
- Asian Review of Books
Peter Harmsen, "Bernhard Sindberg: The Schindler of Nanjing" (Casemate, 2024)
In December 1937, Bernhard Sindberg arrives at a cement factory outside of Nanjing. He’s one of just two foreigners, and he gets there just weeks before the…
- Asian Review of Books
Rajrishi Singhal, "Slip, Stitch and Stumble: The Untold Story of Financial Reforms in India" (Viking, 2024)
India’s stock markets are booming. One calculation from Bloomberg puts India as the world’s fourth-largest equity market, overtaking Hong Kong, as domestic and…
- Asian Review of Books
Jeremy Garlick, "Advantage China: Agent of Change in an Era of Global Disruption" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
China’s rise to global prominence is a pretty good contender for the most important world development in the past 30 years. But now the question is how Beijing…
- Asian Review of Books
Katie Gee Salisbury, "Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong" (Dutton, 2024)
In 2022, the U.S. Mint released the first batch of its American Women Quarters series, celebrating the achievements of U.S. women throughout its history. The…
- Asian Review of Books
Mukund Padmanabhan, "The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Panicked over a Japanese Non-invasion (Vintage Books, 2024)
In April 1942, at least half a million people fled the city of Madras, now known as Chennai. The reason? The British, after weeks of growing unease about the…
- Asian Review of Books
Jonathan Chatwin, "The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 Southern Tour has become a milestone in Chinese economic history. Historians and commentators credit Deng’s visit to Guangzhou Province…
- Asian Review of Books
Robert D. Kaplan, "The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China" (Random House, 2023)
The Middle East remains one of the world’s most complicated, thorny—and, uncharitably, unstable—parts of the world, as countless headlines make clear. Internal…
- Asian Review of Books
Kyokutei Bakin, "Eight Dogs, Or Hakkenden: Part Two--His Master's Blade" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Glynne Walley, translator of classic Japanese novel Hakkenden, joins us on the podcast again to talk about his second translated volume: Hakkenden, Part 2: His…
- Asian Review of Books
David Veevers, "The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British Empire" (Ebury Press, 2023)
It’s very easy to study the history of the British Empire from the perspective of, well, the British–and to extend the early 20th century version of the empire…
- Asian Review of Books
Noo Saro-Wiwa, "Black Ghosts: A Journey Into the Lives of Africans in China" (Canongate Books, 2024)
Just a decade ago, before COVID upended everything, tens of thousands of migrants from African countries traveled to China in search of economic opportunity…
- Asian Review of Books
Julie Kalman, "The Kings of Algiers: How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond" (Princeton UP, 2023)
On July 27th, 1827, the dey of Algiers struck the French consul over his country’s refusal to pay back its debts–specifically, to two Jewish merchant families…
- Asian Review of Books
Ben Rothenberg, "Naomi Osaka: Her Journey to Finding Her Power and Her Voice" (Dutton, 2024)
In July 2021, Naomi Osaka—world number 1 women’s tennis player—lit the Olympic Cauldron at the Tokyo Olympic Games. The half-Japanese, half-American, Black…
- Asian Review of Books
Thomas J. Barfield, "Shadow Empires: An Alternative Imperial History" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Empires are one of the most common forms of political structure in history—yet no empire is alike. We have our “standard” view of empire: perhaps the Romans…
- Asian Review of Books
Simon Partner, "Koume's World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration" (Columbia UP, 2023)
In 1864, on a midsummer’s day, Kawai Koume, a 60-year old matriarch of a samurai family in Wakayama, makes a note in her diary, which she had dutifully written…
- Asian Review of Books
Diego Javier Luis, "The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History" (Harvard UP, 2024)
There’s a popular folk hero in Puebla, Mexico—Catarina de San Juan, who Mexicans hailed as a devoted religious figure after her death in 1688. She’s credited…
- Asian Review of Books
Gregory Wallance, "Into Siberia: George Kennan's Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia" (St. Martin's Press, 2023)
It’s perhaps one of history’s funny accidents that relations between the U.S. and Russia were changed not by one, but two, George Kennans. Decades before…
- Asian Review of Books
Joshua Ehrlich, "The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
The East India Company was a unique entity in world history: More than just a commercial enterprise, the Company tried to act as its own government. Not many…
- Asian Review of Books
Adrian Goldsworthy, "Rome and Persia: The Seven Hundred Year Rivalry" (Basic Books, 2023)
For almost seven centuries, two powers dominated the region we now call the Middle East: Rome and Persia. From the west: The Roman Republic, later the Roman…
- Asian Review of Books
Agnes Chew, "Eternal Summer of My Homeland" (Epigram Books, 2023)
The opening story of Eternal Summer of My Homeland (Epigram Book, 2023) the debut story collection from Singaporean author Agnes Chew, is about grief. Hui Shan…
- Asian Review of Books
Lindsay Pereira, "The Memoirs of Valmiki Rao" (Vintage Books, 2023)
In December 1992, Hindu nationalists seize the Babri Masjid mosque and tear it down, proclaiming their wish to build a Hindu temple in its stead. The brazen…
- Asian Review of Books
Timothy Brook, "The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Ming China in 1642 had suffered a series of disasters. Floods, and then drought had destroyed successive rice crops, sending the price of grain to astronomical…
- Asian Review of Books
Scott D. Seligman, "Murder in Manchuria: The True Story of a Jewish Virtuoso, Russian Fascists, a French Diplomat, and a Japanese Spy in Occupied China" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
On an August night in 1933 Harbin in then-Japanese controlled Manchuria–Semyon Kaspe, French citizen, famed concert musician, and Russian Jew, is abducted…
- Asian Review of Books
Elise Hu, "Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital" (Dutton, 2023)
In August, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to complain about how U.S. regulations are holding local sunscreens back compared to the…
- Asian Review of Books
Hugo Wong, "America's Lost Chinese: The Rise and Fall of a Migrant Family Dream" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Like countless other migrants from China, Hugo Wong’s great-grandfathers–Wong Foon Chuck and Leung Hing–travel across the Pacific to make a life for themselves…
- Asian Review of Books
Susan Blumberg-Kason, "Bernardine's Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China" (Post Hill Press, 2023)
In 1929, Bernardine Szold Fritz left Paris on a train bound for China. She was on her way to her fourth wedding, and her fourth husband: An American investment…
- Asian Review of Books
John Zubrzycki, "Dethroned: The Downfall of India’s Princely States" (Hurst, 2024)
Post-independence India had a big problem–about 40% of its land wasn’t, well, India. Instead, this land was in the hands of the princely states: Rulers who had…
- Asian Review of Books
Jeffrey Angles, ed., "Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again: The Original Novellas by Shigeru Kayama" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
Earlier this month, Toho Studios released “Godzilla Minus One”—the 37th film in the now almost seven-decade-old franchise. Godzilla has gone through many…
- Asian Review of Books
Arupjyoti Saikia, "The Quest for Modern Assam: A History, 1942-2000" (India Allen Lane, 2023)
The northeast Indian state of Assam has had a complex history. As independence loomed, Assam was a large British province, bordering the fellow British colony…
- Asian Review of Books
Aarathi Prasad, "Silk: A History in Three Metamorphoses" (William Collins, 2023)
Silk—a luxury fabric, a valuable trade good, and a scientific marvel. This material, created by the bombyx mori silkworm, has captivated artisans for…
- Asian Review of Books
Toby Matthiesen, "The Caliph and the Imam: The Making of Sunnism and Shiism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
It was common during the years of the U.S. invasion of Iraq to talk about the Sunni-Shia split—and how the sectarian violence was the result of a…
- Asian Review of Books
Gabe Durham, "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" (Boss Fight Books, 2020)
For the third anniversary of the Asian Review of Books podcast, I wanted to do something a little different today—and talk about another one of my hobbies…
- Asian Review of Books
Chris Stowers, "Bugis Nights" (Earnshaw Books, 2023)
In 1987, Chris Stowers ditches his dull job in the UK and embarks on a trip throughout the Asia-Pacific, following countless other adventurers traveling with…
- Asian Review of Books
Hannah Michell, "Excavations: A Novel" (One World, 2023)
Sae, former journalist turned a young mother of two in 1992 Seoul, is waiting for her husband, an engineer for a small construction company. He’s late. A…
- Asian Review of Books
Alexandra Kaloyanides, "Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Adoniram Judson was the 19th-century version of an American celebrity. Americans flocked to listen to his tales of being one of the first missionaries to enter…
- Asian Review of Books
Seema Alavi, "Sovereigns of the Sea: Omani Ambition in the Age of Empire" (India Allen Lane, 2023)
It’s one of the strange artifacts of history that Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania, was once controlled by the Sultanate of Oman. In 1832, then Sultan…
- Asian Review of Books
Kerry Brown, "China Incorporated: The Politics of a World Where China is Number One" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
How do we talk about China? It’s a question every analyst, academic, policymaker, and reporter probably needs to ask themselves. Is China, as some of the hawks…
- Asian Review of Books
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, "Ancient Persia and the Book of Esther: Achaemenid Court Culture in the Hebrew Bible" (I. B. Tauris, 2023)
The Book of Esther, one of the historical books in the Torah and the Old Testament, is known as a story of community, discrimination, and human ingenuity. It’s…
- Asian Review of Books
Maximillian Mørch, "Plains of Discontent: A Political History of Nepal’s Tarai (1743-2019)" (FinePrint, 2023)
When we think of Nepal, we think of its high Himalayan mountains, or maybe the highlands of Kathmandu. But somewhere between a quarter and a third of the…
- Asian Review of Books
Nishanth Injam, "The Best Possible Experience: Stories" (Pantheon, 2023)
The characters in Nishanth Injam’s The Best Possible Experience (Pantheon, 2023), his debut short story collection, are like many in India or in Indian…
- Asian Review of Books
Samrat Choudhury, "Northeast India: A Political History" (Oxford UP, 2023)
For much of the past three months, the northeastern Indian state of Manipur—nestled right up against the border with Myanmar—has been the site of a conflict…
- Asian Review of Books
Nicholas Hoover Wilson, "Modernity's Corruption: Empire and Morality in the Making of British India" (Columbia UP, 2023)
When Robert Clive, the man who established Company rule in India was hauled in front of Parliament to answer for crimes of corruption, he allegedly responded…
- Asian Review of Books
Vaudine England, "Fortune's Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong" (Scribner, 2023)
The legacy of the businessmen who built Hong Kong are all over the city. Bankers work in Chater House—named after Paul Chater, the Armenian businessman behind…
- Asian Review of Books
Rudi Matthee, "Angels Tapping at the Wine-Shop's Door: A History of Alcohol in the Islamic World" (Oxford UP, 2023)
When meeting an expatriate friend on my first trip to Dubai, the host at the restaurant where we were meeting quickly ushered me up to the second floor. For…
- Asian Review of Books
Michael J. Seth, "Korea at War: Conflicts That Shaped the World" (Tuttle Publishing, 2023)
The Korean War “ended” exactly fifty years ago at Panmunjom. On July 27, 1953, United States and United Nations commanders on one side, and the North Koreans…
- Asian Review of Books
Robert Hillenbrand, "The Great Mongol Shahnameh" (Hali Publications et al., 2022)
It’s amazing that art historians like Robert Hillenbrand got to study the “Great Mongol Shahnama” at all. 500 pages of Firahdosi’s epic poem, with 300…
- Asian Review of Books
Victor Cha and Ramon Pacheco Pardo, "Korea: A New History of South and North" (Yale UP, 2023)
As a member of the U.S. National Security Council, Victor Cha flew over the DMZ separating North and South Korea in 2007, following negotiations with…
- Asian Review of Books
Marco Caboara, "Regnum Chinae: The Printed Western Maps of China to 1735" (Brill, 2022)
Regnum Chinae: The Printed Western Maps of China to 1735 (Brill, 2022) does something that no one has ever done before: collect just about every Western…
- Asian Review of Books
Fiona Sze-Lorrain, "Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Stories" (Scribner, 2023)
Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Stories (Scribner: 2023) jumps from character to character, location to location, time period to time period. Two cooks working…
- Asian Review of Books
Sofia Samatar, "The White Mosque: A Memoir" (Catapult, 2022)
In the late 19th century, a group of Mennonites leave Russia for what is now Uzbekistan. Driven out by Russian demands that the pacifist group make themselves…
- Asian Review of Books
Tanvi Srivastava, trans., "The War Diary of Asha-san: From Tokyo to Netaji's Indian National Army" (Harper Collins, 2022)
On a trip many years ago to New Delhi, I was struck by an official memorial to Subhas Chandra Bose, the wartime leader of the Indian National Army, the…
- Asian Review of Books
Peter Thilly, "The Opium Business: A History of Crime and Capitalism in Maritime China" (Stanford UP, 2022)
Opium is an awkward commodity. For the West, it’s a reminder of some of the shadier and best forgotten parts of its history. For China (and a few other…
- Asian Review of Books
Monica Macias, "Black Girl from Pyongyang: In Search of My Identity" (Duckworth, 2023)
Monica Macias, the youngest daughter of Equatorial Guinea’s first president at just seven years old, lands in Pyongyang, North Korea in 1979. Her father had…
- Asian Review of Books
Baba Padmanji, "Yamuna's Journey" (Speaking Tiger Books, 2022)
In 1856, the East India Company imposed the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act, allowing widows to remarry after their husband’s death. The Act was controversial at…
- Asian Review of Books
Philip Snow, "China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord" (Yale UP, 2023)
If there’s a starting point to the relationship between Russia and China, it’s likely the 1650s—when Manchu and Cossack forces clash near Khabarovsk, and when…