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- Third World Problems: Africa has never been a poor place. For ages it has been the source of fabulous wealth for others, yet seldom for its own peoples.
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- A year on the road, briefly recounted
- Libraries and piles of books, a 2014 reading list
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Featured Reading
China’s Second Continent in Notable Books of 2014 Lists
Posted December 4, 2014
Delighted to have received this year-end China’s Second Continent, from The New York Times, from The Economist and from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in The Guardian.
Other recent Readings
Book Review: ‘China’s Second Continent’ by Howard W. French: Africa’s New Imperial Power
All great powers have interests they wish to defend, and China is no different. The judgment that China is creating a new empire in Africa is fair if we bear in mind the great variety of forms an empire can take. Indeed, the migration of Chinese people to Africa, as Mr. French notes, “provides the most striking parallels with imperial patterns of the past.” But the Chinese government will doubtless discover, if they don’t know it already, that African politicians are particularly adept at leveraging great-power influence for their own purposes.
Posted June 7, 2014
What I read in 2012
I tried to get this ready in time for the end of the year, but was too busy with writing, reading, and family. It’s still far from complete, but I figure if I don’t put this out now, I’ll never do so. What follows is a very partial list of what I read (and almost uniformly enjoyed or profited from) last year. I’m listing them roughly in backwards order, starting from most recent: [I'd forgotten these, and will add others I've omitted as they occur to me: Chris Stringer: Lone Survivor: How We Came to be the Only Humans on Earth. Robert A Caro: Passage to Power] James C. Scott: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the …
Posted January 8, 2013
Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell
This was a fantastic, tasteful yet straightforwardly honest read about female desire that is unusual in its structure, composed as it is of a series of riffs, snippets of near poetic condensation and often beauty, and more essay-like argument. I’m including a link here to the review in The Economist, which put me on to the book, but doesn’t really go very far in telling what’s to be found between the covers. Perhaps that is because of some of the explicit nature of some of the writing: a smart, sensitive woman talking about what it is like to have sex, to want to have sex. I’m also including a link to an interview with the author here. The book was …
Posted September 25, 2012
Book Roundup
It’s been a very busy time in the semester, with two classes going – Foreign Reporting and Photography. I’m in the thick of my book writing project, as well, and I’ve been able so far to maintain a fairly good pace. The hope is to be finished by early spring. In lieu of even thumbnail impressions, here is a quick roundup of what I’ve been reading: What Price for Privatization: Cultural Encounter with Development Policy on the Zambian Copperbelt, by Elizabeth C. Parsons; The Rebel, by Albert Camus; A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway; Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, by Yan Xuetong; Delivering Delivering Development, by Edward R. Carr; La Silenciosa Conquista China: Una Investigacion por 25 Paises para …
Posted December 1, 2011
Summer Reading via the iPad
I’ve been on the road in Africa, save for a week’s detour to Hungary, since May 15, and the odyssey will finally wind down in a couple of more weeks. In the last few days I’ve given a bit of thought to my reading habits on the road and how they may or may not differ from earlier periods in my life as a correspondent and inveterate traveler. My iPad has been my sole source of book reading during these months away and mostly that’s been a very good thing, even if quite recently I’ve found myself longing for the pleasure of a physical book now and then. I seem to read faster on the iPad, and it’s also great …
Posted August 22, 2011
Books by E.O. Wilson
I’ve been reading a lot of Wilson lately, in preparation for a meeting with him – details to come. Other than in the general press, I haven’t done a lot of true science reading for a very long time, but what an extraordinary pleasure this has been. To be truthful, the books I’ve read have been written for the general public and bear no relationship to scholarly writing, but that takes nothing at all away from its value; quite the contrary. Two titles that I think are fantastic introductions to this man’s work are: The Future of Life, and especially, Biophilia (links below). I also enjoyed Anthill: A Novel, Wilson’s late-career foray into fiction. Amazon.com Widgets
Posted July 17, 2011
Spring Snow
Yukio Mishima
Posted September 3, 2010
The Imperfectionists
Tom Rachman
Posted August 3, 2010
The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China
Lu Xun
Posted August 2, 2010
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
James C. Scott
Posted June 24, 2010
Bangkok Days
Lawrence Osborne
Posted April 18, 2010
Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
Posted April 18, 2010
Doing Documentary Work
Robert Coles
Posted February 27, 2010
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Daniyal Mueenuddin
Posted January 17, 2010
The Odyssey
Homer
Posted January 3, 2010
When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World
Martin Jacques
Posted January 3, 2010
The Squeeze: Oil, Money, and Greed in the 21st Century
Tom Bower
Posted January 3, 2010
Jesus: A Life
A.N. Wilson
Posted January 3, 2010
Netherland
Joseph O’Neill
Posted October 31, 2009
The Pillow Book
Sei Shonagon
Posted October 2, 2009
Zen in the Art of Archery
Eugene Herrigel with an introduction by D.T. Suzuki
Posted October 2, 2009
Tristes Tropiques
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes and Bruce Chatwin
Posted September 27, 2009
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Steven Pinker
Posted September 27, 2009
The Great Crash – 1929
John Kenneth Galbraith
Posted April 27, 2009
Africa’s Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania
Jamie Monson
Posted January 11, 2009
Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China
Pallavi Aiyar
Posted January 11, 2009
The Rebels’ Hour
Lieve Joris
Posted January 11, 2009
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
Posted December 10, 2008
Beijing Coma
Ma Jian
Posted December 10, 2008
The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality
Thomas Turner
Posted October 19, 2008
More Readings
Red Lights
The Creative Digital Darkroom
What Does China Think?
The Corpse Walker
The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
The Writer and the World
Struggling Giant: China in the 21st Century
The View from the Ground
African Religions and Philosphy
Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City
Feeling and Form
The End of the Affair
China: Fragile Superpower: How China’s Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise
Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere
Tree of Smoke