A treasure trove of information that will likely be useful to prospective tourists.
Brown, a business professor at Xiamen University, takes readers on a comprehensive tour of the Chinese city of Quanzhou in this guide.
Quanzhou is, as the author puts it, a “legendary city” and the largest metropolitan area in its Fujian province; it’s home to nearly 9 million residents and the home of a port with a thriving economy. The author became enchanted with Quanzhou when he first visited the city in 1989 but soon realized that it was virtually unknown outside of China, particularly among English speakers. In these pages, Brown sets out to correct that situation. This encyclopedically thorough account of its history and culture seems designed for the prospective tourist; for example, the author generally provides his insights in the form of lists—temples and architectural relics to view, areas to wander, cultural sites to visit, foods to sample, and much more, all delivered in a casually friendly style: “Let’s face it, eating is a big part of life, so we might as well enjoy it, and Chinese are masters of both cooking and eating.” Brown pauses here and there to dispense history lessons, furnishing a brief description of Confucianism, for example, and explaining that the tea defiantly thrown overboard at the Boston Tea Party in 1773 came from Fujian. The author also seems to aim for comprehensiveness; readers learn what particular beer to drink in Fujian, for instance, as well what puppet festivals to visit. However, he usefully points out that while Quanzhou is a vibrantly modern city that plays a leading role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative—an infrastructure-building program—it also has a notable ancient history; he notes, for example, that the famous Ashab Mosque was constructed more than 1,000 years ago.
The author’s approach combines painstaking meticulousness with a goofy lightsomeness. For instance, while complaining about the mu, an obscure Chinese unit of land measure, he writes, “I don’t want to have a cow over ‘mus’ but sometimes they’re enough to make me bleat.” Much of the information he provides is eccentric, as when he relates that girls in Quanzhou’s Hui’an County wear a belt that carries “not only a girl’s dowry but also her marital insurance.” As one wearer shares, “My husband doesn’t dare leave me because I have all his wealth around my waist.” The one notable failing of the book, though, is borne out of a kind of identity crisis: It seems to double as a tourist guidebook and as a book-length advertisement for Quanzhou, as Brown avoids conveying even a hint of criticism about the locale; unlike other travel guides, he never counsels readers on what to avoid. One gets the impression that Quanzhou is an urban utopia, bereft of any crime or inconvenience, and one can’t help but wonder what might be missing from the account. However, as an English-language guide to Quanzhou, it’s incredibly informative and well organized and a good resource for people making their first trip there.
Pub Date: Dec. 22, 2022
ISBN: 9789811980350
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Springer
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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