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ON THE TEA ROAD

Name: ON THE TEA ROAD
Author: Gaby Bamana
ISBN: 978-1461009580

A JOURNEY INTO MONGOLIAN LIFE AND CULTURE

by Gaby Bamana ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 2011

An outsider’s infusion of significance and structure into a world that would be beautiful, if only he allowed it to speak...

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Bamana’s travel book explores the nomadic pastoralism of Mongolia through its residents’ relationship with tea.

In his debut, Bamana sets out on a journey with the single-minded purpose of seeking out the Tea Road—the trade route between China and Western Russia that passed through Mongolia beginning in the 17th century—and visiting locals along the way, thereby soaking up traditional Mongolian culture through the lens of its tea practices. The book bumps along with him, dusted with some sketchy, impressionistic Mongolian history and sociology and musings on the country’s globalization. He presents some compelling insights into the nomadic culture of Mongolia, and, of course, tea. For instance, the matron of the family typically starts each morning in the ger, or yurt, by boiling milk tea for her family and offering a delicate libation to honor the deities of nature by sprinkling tea in the four cardinal directions. It’s an elegant concept, but Bamana’s lens overexposes what he sees, and readers are left longing for a more grounded experience. The guiding principle of the book is metaphor—tea is catalyst, symbol and vehicle—but the abstraction leaves readers never feeling quite anchored, never fully present, which is crucial for a travel narrative. There’s an adventure in there somewhere, but the author mostly glosses over it to get to the parts about tea. It’s also difficult to get over Bamana’s tendency, in certain instances, to present his observations or casual interviews as hard fact. There are some moments of inspiration when he loses himself in the sublimity of his surroundings—an enchanting description of the unique bounding of time and seemingly endless space on the steppes; a reflection on Mongolian spirituality, of nature as a portal to the sacred. He should allow himself to become distracted more often. In general, Bamana’s devotion to his theme takes him on a roundabout path that ends by describing the prosaic with unnecessary complexity.

An outsider’s infusion of significance and structure into a world that would be beautiful, if only he allowed it to speak for itself.

Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2011

ISBN: 978-1461009580

Page Count: 218

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2011

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

EDUCATION

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THE ABOLITION OF MAN

by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1947

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The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.

Pub Date: April 8, 1947

ISBN: 1609421477

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947

Categories:

EDUCATION

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL MY ROAD BEFORE ME
by C.S. Lewis

- BOOK REVIEW
PRESENT CONCERNS
by C.S. Lewis

- BOOK REVIEW
BOXEN
by C.S. Lewis

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INSIDE AMERICAN EDUCATION

THE DECLINE, THE DECEPTION, THE DOGMAS

by Thomas Sowell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 1993

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American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.