A remarkable story of survival amid extraordinary changes.
Meticulously researched story of four sisters, teeming with ideas and characters like an intellectual marketplace as it draws on their lives to illustrate the cultural, social, and political history of 20th-century China.
At times, the biographical details are swamped by the more impersonal facts as Chin (History/Yale) examines subjects like Chinese philosophy, literature, and opera. All relevant, but they often overwhelm the story of the Chang sisters, born between 1907 and 1914 in Hofei, an ancient provincial city. The four were still alive at the time of writing and in their later years have been able to meet again after years of separation following the communist revolution. Chin first introduces their parents, Lu Ying and Wu-ling, both members of wealthy families: Lu Ying’s dowry procession stretched along ten streets; in later years Wu-ling endowed a school for girls. As she records the birth of each daughter, beginning in 1907 with Yuan-ho, the author also describes their grandmother, the school Wu-ling founded, and the various nurse-nannies who helped raise them. Then she details the young women’s lives as civil war broke out in the 1930s, the Japanese invaded, the communists took over, and the Cultural Revolution erupted. Yuan-ho, who was happiest when onstage, married a noted actor. The only sister to remain in Japanese-occupied China, she moved to Taiwan in 1949. Second sister Yun-ho, fierce and feisty like the heroes of the past she admired, married a classmate’s brother. Because of her affluent background, she was persecuted by early communists as well as by the Red Guards, but survived it all; now in her 90s, she still lives in China. Chao-ho married a famous writer whose career was ended by the communists and tried to commit suicide. Youngest sister Ch’ung-ho, a distinguished calligrapher and teacher of classic Chinese literature, in 1948 married an American scholar she met at Peking University. They both taught at Yale, and she still lives in New Haven.
A remarkable story of survival amid extraordinary changes.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2002
ISBN: 0-684-87377-X
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.
A delightful new translation of what is widely considered the first work of history and nonfiction.
Herodotus has a wonderful, gossipy style that makes reading these histories more fun than studying the rise of the Persian Empire and its clash with Greece—however, that’s exactly what readers will do in this engaging history, which is full of interesting digressions and asides. Holland (In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, 2012, etc.), whose lifelong devotion to Herodotus, Thucydides and other classical writers is unquestionable, provides an engaging modern translation. As Holland writes, Herodotus’ “great work is many things—the first example of nonfiction, the text that underlies the entire discipline of history, the most important source of information we have for a vital episode in human affairs—but it is above all a treasure-trove of wonders.” Those just being introduced to the Father of History will agree with the translator’s note that this is “the greatest shaggy-dog story ever written.” Herodotus set out to explore the causes of the Greco-Persian Wars and to explore the inability of East and West to live together. This is as much a world geography and ethnic history as anything else, and Herodotus enumerates social, religious and cultural habits of the vast (known) world, right down to the three mummification options available to Egyptians. This ancient Greek historian could easily be called the father of humor, as well; he irreverently describes events, players and their countless harebrained schemes. Especially enjoyable are his descriptions of the Persians making significant decisions under the influence and then waiting to vote again when sober. The gifts Herodotus gave history are the importance of identifying multiple sources and examining differing views.
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.Pub Date: May 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02489-6
Page Count: 840
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
“Ideology is fairy tales for adults.” Thus writes economist and conservative maven Sowell in a best-of volume shot through with…ideology.
Though he resists easy categorization, the author has been associated with hard-libertarian organizations and think tanks such as the Hoover Institution for most of his long working life. Here he picks from his numerous writings, which have the consistency of an ideologue—e.g., affirmative action is bad, period. It’s up to parents, not society or the schools, to be sure that children are educated. Ethnic studies and the “mania for ‘diversity’ ” produce delusions. Colleges teach impressionable Americans to “despise American society.” Minimum-wage laws are a drag on the economy. And so on. Sowell is generally fair-minded, reasonable and logical, but his readers will likely already be converts to his cause, for which reason he does not need to examine all the angles of a problem. (If it is true that most gun violence is committed in households where domestic abuse has taken place, then why not take away the abusers’ guns as part of the legal sentencing?) Often his arguments are very smart, as when he examines the career of Booker T. Washington, who was adept in using white people’s money to advance his causes while harboring no illusions that his benefactors were saints. Sometimes, though, Sowell’s sentiments emerge as pabulum, as when he writes, in would-be apothegms: “Government bailouts are like potato chips: You can’t stop with just one”; “I can understand why some people like to drive slowly. What I cannot understand is why they get in the fast lane to do it.” The answer to the second question, following Sowell, might go thus: because they’re liberals and the state tells them to do it, just to get in the way of hard-working real Americans. A solid, representative collection by a writer and thinker whom one either agrees with or not—and there’s not much middle ground on which to stand.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-465-02250-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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