An offbeat, erudite work of China-centered literary criticism.
This collection of cultural and literary criticism examines the ways the West and China have viewed each other over the centuries.
China has always had a complex relationship with the West, shaping foreign visitors even as it has been molded by them. Cook takes this exchange as his subject, particularly the books that have dealt with it (largely from a Western perspective). In the eponymous first essay, the author appraises the evidence of whether or not opium was in use in Confucius’ time before launching into a larger investigation of the possible influence that imported entheogens—naturally occurring psychedelics—had on the development of Chinese philosophy. In “Living the Taiping,” he evaluates a little-known 19th-century rebellion that was one of the deadliest conflicts in world history and yet one that is largely ignored in Chinese textbooks. Other essays deal with topics such as the demolition of Shanghai’s city wall, 19th-century Western travel narratives, historical true crime set in China, and evaluations of modern Chinese literature and Western novels with Chinese backdrops. Cook, an American expatriate who has lived in China for 26 years, is in some ways a living participant in the sorts of exchanges he examines. He’s a Westerner writing about China and the other Westerners who have portrayed the country in books. The texts he describes include historical novels, travelogues, popular histories, and more. His reviews move from one volume and subject to the next, adeptly drawing out common themes or compelling threads that hint at larger trends in Chinese history. The author himself is a peculiar personality, and his idiosyncratic (and occasionally off-putting) views sometimes bleed into the work. “For the right concubine,” he admits during a discussion of the historical practice, “I would pay. I think you would too. Say you encounter the woman of your dreams—one with your ideal ‘10’ body. I mean the kind of body that would make you cheat on your wife or girlfriend (or husband or boyfriend) for the very first time.” Such moments aside, readers will learn much about Chinese history and will walk away with quite a long reading list of books to explore.
An offbeat, erudite work of China-centered literary criticism.Pub Date: March 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73227-742-7
Page Count: 265
Publisher: Magic Theater Books
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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