Oct 22 2022
“How would the history of international relations in ‘the East’ be written,” asks Ayşe Zarakol, “if we did not always read the ending — the rise of the West and the decline of the East — into the past?” (frontispiece) Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders is her effort to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/10/22/before-the-west-by-ayse-zarakol/
Sep 25 2022
Considering a book of scholarly articles about the history Chinese international relations, I wrote that it was “chock full of implied stories” and looked forward to the day that I could read some of them. Shelley Parker-Chan chose a later inflection point from Chinese history to tell the story of She Who Became the Sun, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/09/25/she-who-became-the-sun-by-shelley-parker-chan/
Nov 14 2021
I read Invisible Cities ages ago when I worked for a bookstore in Atlanta and was reading more consciously literary things. I picked it up again recently thanks to a Twitter thread. Jo Walton had been doing a series of 50 manipulated images of Venice. As she wrote, “In honour of Italo Calvino’s Le Citta …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/14/invisible-cities-by-italo-calvino/
Apr 14 2021
I’m glad that Leo de Hartog did not title this biography A Life of Genghis Khan because there is astonishingly little life between its covers. I would have thought the biography of someone who rose from a tribal noble to rule the largest land empire this world has ever known would be positively gripping, but …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/14/genghis-khan-by-leo-de-hartog/
Jul 02 2017
“Of interest mainly to specialists” is one of those phrases that reviewers often use to suggest, however gently, that a book is terribly dull and that no one outside of a select audience should read it. With a subtitle that reads The Middle Kingdom and its Neighbors, 10th-14th Centuries, China Among Equals is clearly aimed …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/07/02/china-among-equals-edited-by-morris-rossabi/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire