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
James M. Zimmerman, "The Peking Express: The Bandits Who Stole a Train, Stunned the West, and Broke the Republic of China" (PublicAffairs, 2023)
Lucy Aldrich, sister-in-law to John D. Rockefeller Jr. and daughter of Rhode Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, joked in a letter to her sister that she had an…
- Asian Review of Books
Amitav Acharya, "Tragic Nation: Burma--Why and How Democracy Failed" (Penguin Random House, 2023)
In mid-April, Myanmar’s military bombed a village in the country’s northwest, killing over a hundred people in what’s been considered the deadliest attack in…
- Asian Review of Books
Kaamil Ahmed, "I Feel No Peace: Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas and Rivers" (Hurst, 2023)
The Rohingya population, from Myanmar’s Rakhine State, are a community almost living entirely in exile, whether in refugee camps in Bangladesh, or working on…
- Asian Review of Books
Mai Nardone, "Welcome Me to the Kingdom: Stories" (Random House, 2023)
Mai Nardone’s Welcome Me to the Kingdom (Random House, 2023) opens with two migrants from Thailand’s northeast who travel to Bangkok to make a new life for…
- Asian Review of Books
Nikhil Menon, "Planning Democracy: Modern India’s Quest for Development" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
In 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi closed the Planning Commission, which he accused of stifling the country’s growth and being a holdover from the…
- Asian Review of Books
Oliver Slow, "Return of the Junta: Why Myanmar’s Military Must Go Back to the Barracks" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
The Myanmar coup on February 1, 2021 shocked the world, and ended an opening that had fostered hopes for democratization and economic development. The…
- Asian Review of Books
Zeno Sworder, "My Strange Shrinking Parents" (Thames & Hudson, 2023)
When the two immigrant parents in Zeno Sworder’s latest illustrated book go to the baker asking for a cake for their son, the baker asks for something…
- Asian Review of Books
Weijian Shan, "Money Machine: A Trailblazing American Venture in China" (Wiley, 2023)
In 2010, Ping An took over Shenzhen Development Bank, ending an experiment that had never been tried before, and not been tried since: a foreign company owning…
- Asian Review of Books
Lawrence Osborne, "On Java Road: A Novel" (Hogarth Press, 2022)
The star of On Java Road (Hogarth: 2022), the latest novel from Lawrence Osborne, is Adrian Gyle, a down-on-his-luck correspondent in Hong Kong, in the midst…
- Asian Review of Books
Xin Wen, "The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Many of us–who maybe aren’t historians–have an image of the Silk Road: merchants who carried silk from China to as far as ancient Rome, in one of the first…
- Asian Review of Books
Steve Kemper, "Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor" (Mariner Books, 2022)
In the years leading up to the Second World War, the U.S. was represented in Japan by Ambassador Joseph Grew: born from a patrician family, Harvard-educated…
- Asian Review of Books
Kyla Zhao, "The Fraud Squad" (Berkley Books, 2023)
Can anyone break into high society? From Cinderella, Eliza Doolittle and Jay Gatsby to Don Draper and Anna Sorokin, characters that can fool their way into the…
- Asian Review of Books
John D. Hosler, "Jerusalem Falls: Seven Centuries of War and Peace" (Yale UP, 2022)
When the armies of the Rashidun Caliphate entered Jerusalem in 638, the city was quite different from what it is today–one of the most important cities for…
- Asian Review of Books
Mark Eveleigh, "Kopi Dulu: Caffeine-Fuelled Island-Hopping Through Indonesia" (Penguin Southeast Asia, 2022)
“Kopi Dulu,” means “coffee first” in Indonesian–a common phrase from Indonesians who are happy to have coffee anywhere, anytime and with anyone. At least, that…
- Asian Review of Books
Angela Hui, "Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter" (Trapeze, 2022)
Food journalist Angela Hui grew up in rural Wales, as daughter to the owners of the Lucky Star Chinese takeaway. Angela grew up behind the counter, helping…
- Asian Review of Books
Uther Charlton-Stevens, "Anglo-India and the End of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022)
It can be easy to think of colonies as having two populations: colonial subjects, and colonial overlords from Europe. It’s an easy narrative: one has power…
- Asian Review of Books
Jeff Fearnside, "Ships in the Desert" (Santa Fe Writer's Project, 2022)
Many of us have likely seen photos of the Aral Sea, and the rusted Soviet-era ships, sitting in the desert with no water in sight. The Aral Sea is now just 10%…
- Asian Review of Books
Jayita Sarkar, "Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2022)
In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful nuclear…
- Asian Review of Books
Ronald H. Spector, "A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955" (Norton, 2023)
On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States, ending the Second World War. Yet the Japanese invasion had upended the old geopolitical…
- Asian Review of Books
Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi, "Making Meritocracy: Lessons from China and India, from Antiquity to the Present" (Oxford UP, 2022)
What does it mean to be a meritocracy? Ask an ordinary person, and they would likely say it means promoting the best and brightest in today’s society based on…
- Asian Review of Books
John D. Wong, "Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub, 1930s-1998" (Harvard UP, 2022)
On July 6, 1998, the last flight took off from Kai Tak International Airport, marking the end of an era for Hong Kong aviation. For decades, international…
- Asian Review of Books
Michael X. Wang, "Lost in the Long March" (Overlook Press, 2022)
In 1934, tens of thousands of Communist guerillas fled Jiangxi, in an extended retreat through hazardous terrain to Shaanxi in the north, while under fire from…
- Asian Review of Books
Jamil Jan Kochai, "The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories" (Viking, 2022)
The first story in Jamil Jan Kochai’s newest collection has an interesting title and premise. “Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” leads The Haunting…
- Asian Review of Books
Joseph Sassoon, "The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire" (Pantheon Books, 2022)
The Sassoons were one of the great merchant families of the nineteenth century, alongside such names as the Jardines, the Mathesons, and the Swires. They…
- Asian Review of Books
John Keay, "Himalaya: Exploring the Roof of the World" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
“History has not been kind to Himalaya,” writes historian and travel writer John Keay in his latest book Himalaya: Exploring the Roof of the World (Bloomsbury…
- Asian Review of Books
Eric Tagliocozzo, "In Asian Waters: Oceanic Worlds from Yemen to Yokohama" (Princeton UP, 2022)
In the nineteenth century, one group of American merchants reported an odd request from the Vietnamese emperor. An envoy asked if the traders could help…
- Asian Review of Books
Hua Hsu, "Stay True: A Memoir" (Doubleday, 2022)
Stay True (Doubleday: 2022), the new memoir from Hua Hsu, is a coming-of-age story about the writer’s time in the University of California in Berkeley, where…
- Asian Review of Books
Mark Vanhoenacker, "Imagine a City: A Pilot's Journey Across the Urban World" (Knopf, 2022)
How does a pilot see the cities of the world? Unlike residents, who live there full-time, or tourists, who travel once and perhaps never again, pilots are…
- Asian Review of Books
Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, "The Many Lives of the First Emperor of China" (U Washington Press, 2022)
In the strategy game Civilization VI, where players choose world leaders to be their avatar, Qin Shihuang, the First Emperor of China, has one goal in mind…
- Asian Review of Books
Mansi Choksi, "The Newlyweds: Rearranging Marriage in Modern India" (Atria Books, 2022)
Two neighbors from the same village fall in love and elope to a shelter for couples that break caste norms. A Hindu woman falls in love with a Muslim man…
- Asian Review of Books
Scott Moore, "China's Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology Are Reshaping China's Rise and the World's Future" (Oxford UP, 2022)
“We’ll compete with confidence; we’ll cooperate wherever we can; we’ll contest where we must.” That’s the new China strategy as outlined by U.S. Secretary of…
- Asian Review of Books
John Saeki, "The Last Tigers of Hong Kong: True Stories of Big Cats That Stalked the Hills Beyond the City" (Blacksmith Books, 2021)
Most Hong Kong residents nowadays only have to worry about a wandering boar or an aggressive monkey in their day-to-day lives. But for much of its history…
- Asian Review of Books
Rahul Sagar, "To Raise a Fallen People: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Indian Views on International Politics" (Columbia UP, 2022)
Most people tend to mark the beginning of Indian international relations thought to Nehru, and his self-proclaimed attempt to build a true non-aligned movement…
- Asian Review of Books
Hannah Kirshner, "Water, Wood, and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town" (Penguin, 2022)
A young sake bar owner, Yusuke Shimoki, arrives on the doorstep of Hannah Kirshner’s Brooklyn apartment “with a suitcase full of Ishikawa sake,” in Hannah’s…
- Asian Review of Books
Manoj Joshi, "Understanding the India-China Border: The Enduring Threat of War in High Himalaya" (Hurst, 2022)
On June 16 2020, Indian and Chinese forces clashed high in the Himalayan mountains in Aksai Chin. Beijing and New Delhi both claim control over this remote…
- Asian Review of Books
William C. Kirby, "Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China" (Harvard UP, 2022)
Earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, a bill purportedly meant to revive U.S. dominance in research and development…
- Asian Review of Books
Matthew Teller, "Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City" (Other Press, 2022)
Jerusalem’s Old City is normally understood to be split into four quarters: the Jewish Quarter, the Armenian Quarter, the Christian Quarter, and the Muslim…
- Asian Review of Books
Lan Samantha Chang, "The Family Chao: A Novel" (Norton, 2022)
The Fine Chao, a Chinese restaurant in the town of Haven, is known for its food and its boisterous owner, Big Leo Chao. Leo is loud, assertive and aggressive…
- Asian Review of Books
Annah Lake Zhu, "Rosewood: Endangered Species Conservation and the Rise of Global China" (Harvard UP, 2022)
Money does strange things to people, as Annah Lake Zhu notes in her latest book Rosewood: Endangered Species Conservation and the Rise of Global China (Harvard…
- Asian Review of Books
Helen Pfeifer, "Empire of Salons: Conquest and Community in Early Modern Ottoman Lands" (Princeton UP, 2022)
It’s the sixteenth century, and the Ottoman Empire has just defeated the Mamluk Sultanate, conquering Damascus and Cairo, important centers of Arab learning…
- Asian Review of Books
Ramon Pacheco Pardo, "Shrimp to Whale: South Korea from the Forgotten War to K-Pop" (Oxford UP, 2022)
If there’s a country that “punches above its weight”, it’s South Korea. It’s home to some of the world’s largest and most important companies, and the source…
- Asian Review of Books
Lachlan Fleetwood, "Science on the Roof of the World: Empire and the Remaking of the Himalaya" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Today, the idea that the Himalayas have the world’s tallest peaks—by a large margin—is entirely uncontroversial. Just about anyone can name Mount Everest and…
- Asian Review of Books
The Kushnameh: The Persian Epic of Kush the Tusked
The Kushnameh is unique, literally. Only one copy of the “Epic of Kush”exists, sitting in the British Library. Hardly anything is known about its author…
- Asian Review of Books
Jennifer Lin, "Beethoven in Beijing: Stories from the Philadelphia Orchestra's Historic Journey to China" (Temple UP, 2022)
In 1973, the Philadelphia Orchestra boarded a Pan Am 707 plane in Philadelphia for a once-in-a-lifetime journey: a multi-city tour of Maoist China, months…
- Asian Review of Books
Gish Jen, "Thank You, Mr. Nixon: Stories" (Knopf, 2022)
Fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon stepped off a plane in Beijing: a visit that changed the course of China, the U.S., the Cold war and the world. The…
- Asian Review of Books
Vauhini Vara, "The Immortal King Rao: A Novel" (W. W. Norton, 2022)
King Rao–one of the protagonists from Vauhini Vara’s novel The Immortal King Rao (W. W. Norton & Company: 2022)—is like many of the tech founders we idolize…
- Asian Review of Books
Mick Conefrey, "Everest 1922: The Epic Story of the First Attempt on the World's Highest Mountain" (Pegasus Books, 2022)
It can be hard to think of Everest as unknown anymore. While it’s certainly a challenge to climb the world’s tallest mountain, someone–with enough time and…
- Asian Review of Books
James Uden, "Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing" (Ilex Foundation, 2022)
On February 1st, 1936, Begum Hasrat Mohani, famed Indian writer and independence activist, sends the first of several letters to her daughter. She’s traveling…
- Asian Review of Books
Shiv Kunal Verma, "1965: A Western Sunrise--India's War with Pakistan" (Aleph Book Company, 2021)
The history of India and Pakistan since Partition has been marked by countless skirmishes–and four major wars. The second conflict–the 1965 war between India…
- Asian Review of Books
Erin Murphy, "Burmese Haze: US Policy and Myanmar's Opening--And Closing" (Association for Asian Studies, 2022)
Myanmar—or Burma, if that’s the name you prefer—is one of a small set of countries: nations that, despite natural bounty and a vibrant population, remain…
- Asian Review of Books
Kerry Brown and Gemma Chenger Deng, "China Through European Eyes: 800 Years of Cultural and Intellectual Encounter" (World Scientific, 2022)
Europeans have been writing about China for centuries–ever since The Travels of Marco Polo described it as a faraway and mystical kingdom. European thinkers…
- Asian Review of Books
Glynne Walley, "Eight Dogs, or 'Hakkenden': Part One―An Ill-Considered Jest" (Cornell UP, 2021)
Hakkenden is a classic work of Japanese literature: the story of the eight warriors, born from Princess Fuse and the dog Yatsufusa, has been adapted to manga…
- Asian Review of Books
Abby Seiff, "Troubling the Water: A Dying Lake and a Vanishing World in Cambodia" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
Tonlé Sap is one of Southeast Asia’s, if not one of the world’s, natural wonders. Between the dry and wet seasons, the lake expands almost six times in size to…
- Asian Review of Books
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, "Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan" (U California Press, 2022)
2019 marked the five-hundred year anniversary of the launch of Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage around the world–a milestone marked by commemorative sailings…
- Asian Review of Books
Bede Scott, "Too Far from Antibes" (Penguin, 2022)
Jean-Luc Guéry is a man down on his luck. Middling journalist, gambling addict, alcoholic. Yet when news of his brother’s murder in Saigon reach him in France…
- Asian Review of Books
Harry Verhoeven and Anatol Lieven, "Beyond Liberal Order: States, Societies and Markets in the Global Indian Ocean" (Oxford UP, 2022)
We often neglect the Indian Ocean when we talk about our macro-level models of geopolitics, global economics or grand strategy—often in favor of the Atlantic…
- Asian Review of Books
Karen Cheung, "The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir" (Random House, 2022)
Hong Kong is almost impossible to explain to those not from the city. Too often, the city has had to struggle with shorthand used by those writing about the…
- Asian Review of Books
Manu Pillai, "False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma" (Juggernaut, 2021)
It can be easy to think of the recent history of India—especially for those who aren’t from there—as a straight line, from the Mughal Empire, through the…
- Asian Review of Books
Sherzod Muminov, "Eleven Winters of Discontent: The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan" (Harvard UP, 2022)
At the end of the Second World War, about 600,000 Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner after the Soviet Union swept through Manchuria in the very final days…
- Asian Review of Books
Jing Tsu, "Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern" (Riverhead Books, 2022)
Tens of thousands of characters. Countless homonyms. Mutually unintelligible dialects across an entire country. This is what faced the Chinese thinkers…