14856. (Robert Smith Thomp­son) Empires On the Pacif­ic ― World War II and the Strug­gle for
. . . . . the Mas­tery of Asia
14857. (F. Kaid Ben­field, Matthew D. Rai­mi & Don­ald D. T. Chen) Once There Were Greenfields
. . . . . ― How Urban Sprawl Is Under­min­ing America’s Envi­ron­ment, Econ­o­my and Social Fabric
14858. (Andre Dubus III) House of Sand and Fog
14859. (Mary Frances Cusack) An Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Ire­land From AD 400 to !800
14860. (Nicholas Mey­er) The Sev­en-Per­cent Solution
14861. (Ian Fin­lay) Columba
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This out­line of the mil­i­tary and diplo­matic his­tory of the Pacif­ic the­atre of WWII is of mixed val­ue. In describ­ing the oper­a­tions of Amer­i­can forces, it is quite good. Thomp­son describes the main bat­tles in lit­tle vignettes, which are well-cho­sen and well-writ­ten. But some of the book touch­es on Chi­na, and in these parts, he depends heav­ily on the dis­cred­ited and gen­er­ally worth­less reportage of Edgar Snow, per­pet­u­at­ing myths man­u­fac­tured by the Com­mu­nist Par­ty. Thomp­son believes, like many peo­ple once did, that if only Wash­ing­ton had struck a deal with Mao, they would have built a fruit­ful rela­tion­ship with him. This is non­sense. Thomp­son is quite right that Gen­eral Stillwell’s eval­u­a­tion of Chi­ang Kaishek was basi­cally cor­rect. Chi­ang was insuf­fer­ably cor­rupt, and made lit­tle seri­ous effort to resist the Japan­ese, doing only the bare min­i­mum that would ensure the flow of aid. How­ever, if the Nation­al­ists under Chi­ang did lit­tle to fight the Japan­ese, the Com­mu­nists under Mao did absolute­ly noth­ing. Mao not only had no inter­est in fight­ing the Japan­ese, he had been hop­ing the Japan­ese would destroy Chi­ang and occu­py a large part of the coun­try, which would leave the rest of the coun­try in his hands and force Stal­in to acknowl­edge his per­ma­nent pow­er. In fact, the Com­mu­nists’ only known armed exchange with the Japan­ese was an acci­den­tal skir­mish, which aroused Mao’s fury. He would have entered into a pact with the Japan­ese the sec­ond it was possible.

14835. (Ken­neth Hsien-yung Pai [Bái Xiānyǒng] ) Crys­tal Boys
14836. (Alfred J. Andrea) The Cru­sades in the Con­text of World His­to­ry [arti­cle]
14837. (Iota Syk­ka) Unique Myce­naean Suit of Armor Due for Con­ser­va­tion [arti­cle]
14838. (Cesare, march­ese di Bec­ca­ria-Bone­sana) Des dél­its et des peines, tra­duc­tion nouvelle
. . . . . et seule com­plète, accom­pa­g­née de notes his­toriques et cri­tiques sur la législation
. . . . . crim­inelle anci­enne et mod­erne, le secret, les agens provo­ca­teurs, etc.
14839. (François-Marie Arou­et, dit Voltaire) Com­men­taire sur le livre Des dél­its et des
. . . . . peines de César de Beccaria
14840. (Joseph Michel Antoine Ser­van) Dis­cours sur La jus­tice crim­inelle, 1766, avec des notes
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The title of this book is a lit­tle mis­lead­ing. Only a few of the world’s thou­sands of lan­guages are even men­tioned in it. What the book is real­ly about is the suc­cess­ful Lin­gua fran­cas, the lan­guages that achieved wide­spread usage through con­quest, trade, or cul­tural pres­tige. So his atten­tion focus­es on Akka­dian, Ara­maic, Greek, San­skrit, Chi­nese, Malay, Latin, Por­tuguese, Span­ish, French, Russ­ian, and Eng­lish, each of which expand­ed far beyond their eth­nic pud­dles. On this top­ic, it is a fine intro­duc­tion to the gen­eral read­er. Any­one who stud­ies world his­tory should read it. Ostler is at his best when talk­ing about San­skrit, which he obvi­ously is par­tic­u­larly attract­ed to. His expla­na­tion of why San­skrit is so rich in puns, for exam­ple, is very inter­est­ing. Else­where, I’ve writ­ten about the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the San­skrit gram­mar­ian Pani­ni. Ostler gives a clear expla­na­tion of why his work is so remark­able. Ostler is not, like many peo­ple who have writ­ten on the top­ic, unthink­ingly tri­umphant about the future dom­i­nance of Eng­lish as a world lan­guage. In the book, he shows exact­ly how a “uni­ver­sal” lan­guage can evap­o­rate its own util­ity and pop­u­lar­ity. Per­son­ally, I sus­pect that Eng­lish will retain its role as the “Latin” of this cen­tury, and that this will in no way inhib­it the renais­sance of local ver­nac­u­lars and new region­al play­ers. We are enter­ing a new age of lin­guis­tic wealth.

Bai Xiany­ong is said to be the best styl­ist among today’s Tai­wanese writ­ers, and among the best writ­ing in Chi­nese today. This is not some­thing I’m in a posi­tion to judge. This nov­el trans­lates well, part­ly because the sub­ject mat­ter, the sub­cul­ture of gay hus­tlers in Taipei, is eas­ily com­pared to sim­i­lar set­tings in Europe or North Amer­ica. Chi­nese soci­ety, for most of the thou­sands of years of its his­tory, was not infect­ed by the bar­baric homo­pho­bia that obsessed Chris­t­ian Europe. Unfor­tu­nately, Euro­pean cul­tural norms, and of course the vicious gay-hatred of Com­mu­nism on the main­land, have had their influ­ence, and today the gay sub­cul­ture of Tai­wan occu­pies much the same social posi­tion that it does in Amer­ica. Bai’s hus­tler char­ac­ters could as eas­ily be found in Toronto’s Church and Welles­ley vil­lage, or in West Hol­ly­wood. The per­fume of Chi­nese imagery, of jade and plum blos­soms and so on, makes it seem a bit dif­fer­ent. So do the numer­ous ref­er­ences to con­tem­po­rary Chi­nese pop cul­ture. Is it a good nov­el? Yes. The char­ac­ters seem real, and you care about what hap­pens to them. I rec­om­mend it.

14797. (Akdi Ros­tag­no, Julian Beck & Judith Mali­na) We, The Liv­ing Theatre
14798. (Will Bunch) The Media Is Help­ing Bush Scare the Pop­u­lace [arti­cle]
14798. (Lisa Finnegan) No Ques­tions Asked – News Cov­er­age Since 9/11 [intro­duc­tion and chapter
. . . . . out­lines of book to be pub­lished in Decem­ber, 2006]
14799. (Robert Bowring) Chi­na’s grow­ing might and the spir­it of Zheng He [arti­cle]
14800. (Jon George) Zoot­suit Black Read more »

Stephen Fry has the kind of effort­less tal­ent that makes me envi­ous. He is a bril­liant actor and come­dian (Black­ad­der; Jeeves and Woos­er; A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie), and fine writer of fic­tion, non-fic­tion, screen­plays and plays (I’m in the mid­dle of his nov­el Mak­ing His­tory). Nat­u­rally, such a per­son would be expect­ed to write an inter­est­ing biog­ra­phy. But I was unpre­pared for the extreme hon­esty and sparkling wit of this book. It’s devot­ed entire­ly to his child­hood and teenage years, always the most inter­est­ing parts of an auto­bi­og­ra­phy, if it is hon­est. His descrip­tion of his first expe­ri­ence of feel­ing love is among the finest I’ve read. His self-eval­u­a­tions strike me as spot-on, his con­fes­sions to mis­deeds are not twist­ed into self-glam­or­iz­ing. The book is absolute­ly engross­ing. For the aspects of human cul­ture that offend him, he reserves a spe­cial, elo­quent anger: Read more »

This is Jon George’s sec­ond nov­el, which I read eager­ly after being very pleased by Faces of Mist and Flame. This one is much more com­pli­cated, jug­gling sev­eral char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions. The plot involves a sud­den alter­ation in the fab­ric of real­ity, expe­ri­enced by the whole earth, a char­ac­ter try­ing to pin down the nature of psy­chic abil­i­ties, and char­ac­ters flash­ing on events in the past. Among those events is the assas­si­na­tion of SS–Ober­grup­pen­führer Rein­hard Hey­drich, who was per­haps the prin­ci­pal archi­tect of the Holo­caust. This fas­ci­nated me. I not only made a study of the Wansee Con­fer­ence, where Hey­drich con­sol­i­dated his plans, but a friend showed me the exact spot in the Prague sub­urb of Kobylisy where he was shot by Czech par­ti­sans. I will rec­om­mend this nov­el, espe­cially to any­one who has already read Faces of Mist and Flame, with the caveat that its nar­ra­tive com­plex­ity requires more atten­tive reading.