Asian Review of Books

Globalization is possibly the most important economic phenomenon of the past several decades. Opening borders, increasing trade and deepening integration has transformed our economies, our societies and our politics. Globalization changed establishment politics; the reaction against it transformed those against the establishment.But there’s a world of difference between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders’ critiques of globalization. And those who have concerns about globalization due so for different reasons, building different alliances as they work to implement, reform or roll back globalization.Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp, authors of Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters (Harvard University Press: 2021) looks more closely at these debates, building out distinct narratives that classify how we should think about the politics of globalization, and how different political movements understand who wins from globalization: everyone, a few, or nobody.Those interested in learning more about the book and its arguments: “Who wins and who loses from globalization? There are (at least) six answers”, a book excerpt published on BigThink “Want to know what future battles over globalization will be about? Look to the chip shortage”, a commentary piece published on Fortune Paul Krugman and Branko Milanovic in conversation with Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp In this interview, Anthea, Nicolas and I talk about the politics of globalization: the arguments used to support it, and the stories used to criticize it. We explore some of the interesting intersections between these arguments … and where we think the politics of globalization might go from here.Anthea Roberts is professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at Australian National University and author of the prizewinning Is International Law International? (Oxford University Press: 2017).Nicolas Lamp is associate professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University, Ontario. Before joining Queen’s University, he worked as a dispute settlement lawyer at the World Trade Organization.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Six Faces of Globalization. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

As most of us are stuck at home, whether due to lockdowns or border closures, some of us have returned to the idea of travel writing: nonfiction that charts someone’s journey to a different land, a different people, and a different culture.Once a mainstay of bookstores in the eighties, travel writing has fallen behind a bit, both commercially and academically, as scholars critique some of the assumptions and perspectives that drove much of that writing.Tim Hannigan, author of The Travel Writing Tribe: Journeys in Search of a Genre (Hurst, 2021), tackles these questions head-on. In a series of interviews with some of the most famous and illustrious travel writers over the past few decades, Tim digs into these debates and hears--from the writers themselves--what drove them to write about what they saw and experienced.In this interview, Tim and I talk about what it means to be a travel writer, and why he decided to interview so many of the most prominent travel writers around today. We talk about some of the debates that have emerged on the subject, and what travel writing means in the age of COVID.Tim Hannigan is a writer and academic, and the author of several narrative history books, including A Brief History of Indonesia and the award-winning Raffles and the British Invasion of Java. He holds a PhD from the University of Leicester.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Travel Writing Tribe. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

We’re celebrating our one-year anniversary with this interview, and so I wanted to introduce a special guest for today: Nur Nasreen Ibrahim, talented writer, journalist and dear friend.We’re going to talk—mostly—about Nur’s latest work: an essay for the collection Horse Girls: Recovering, Aspiring, and Devoted Riders Redefine the Iconic Bond (Harper Perennial: 2021), edited by Halimah Marcus.Horse Girls confronts, investigates, and fleshes out the trope of the “horse girl”: the idea that all a young girl wants is to learn how to ride a horse, famous in from “Black Beauty” to “My Little Pony”. And Nur’s essay talks about her experiences riding horses growing up in Pakistan: bringing in themes of colonialism, the urban-rural divide, and growing up.But, also, we’ll talk about Nur’s experience as a writer, both in the United States and in Pakistan, and her path to literature.Nur is a journalist, writer, and producer based in New York City. Originally from Lahore, Pakistan, she writes speculative and literary fiction, as well as personal essays. Her fiction and nonfiction has been included in anthologies and collections from Harper Perennial, Catapult, Hachette India, Platypus Press, The Aleph Review, Salmagundi magazine, Barrelhouse, and more. She is a two-time finalist for The Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction. She is a 2021-2023 recipient of the Lighthouse Writers Book Project Teaching Fellowship.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

To call the hundred years that straddle the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries as a radical period of change for China is an understatement, moving from the Imperial period, through the Republican era, and ending in the rise of the PRC.Dr. Elizabeth LaCouture’s Dwelling in the World: Family, House, and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860–1960, published by Columbia University Pres explores this history by looking at Tianjin: a city divided into nine foreign concessions, and perhaps, at the time, the world’s most cosmopolitan—and colonized—cities. With a focus on family and the home, Dr. Lacouture explores the interplay between these massive political changes and the lives of ordinary people.In this interview, Dr LaCouture.and I talk about Tianjin, changing Chinese politics, and how that affected views of gender, the family, and the home. We also investigate the thorny distinction between modernization and Westernization.Dr. Elizabeth LaCouture is the founding director of the Gender Studies Program at the University of Hong Kong, where she is an assistant professor of gender studies and history.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Dwelling in the World. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

An English mission to Japan arrives in 1613 with all the standard English commodities, including wool and cloth: which the English hope to trade for Japanese silver. But there’s a gift for the Shogun among them: a silver telescope.As Timon Screech explains in his latest book, The Shogun’s Silver Telescope: God, Art, and Money in the English Quest for Japan, 1600-1625 (Oxford University Press, 2020), there was a lot of meaning behind that telescope. It represented an English state trying to chart its own part as a Protestant country, denoting their support for science and a more open culture in the face of a more backward Catholic Europe. Screech’s book charts the background behind this simple gift and what it meant for both Japan and England.In this interview, Timon and I follow the English journeys to Japan, the reasons for these trips, and what the English encountered when they got there. And we’ll think about what we learn from this—ultimately failed—effort to start a trading relationship between these two islands.Professor Timon Screech is Professor at Nichibunken or the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, after thirty years at SOAS. He is the author of at least a dozen books on the visual culture of the Edo period, including perhaps his best-known work Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan, 1700-1820 (University of Hawaii Press, 1999). His other most recent book (and previous interview subject) is Tokyo Before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun’s City of Edo (Reaktion Books: 2020). In 2019, he was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Shogun’s Silver Telescope. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

Everyone looks to Singapore as a role model for what they want their country to be. Several countries from China to Rwanda hope to emulate its high administrative competence, standard of living, and “social harmony.” Post-Brexit Britain wants to copy the city-state’s assertive and independent position in the world economy and its aggressive support for international business. Housing policy advocates look to Singapore and its 90% home ownership rate.But these are all simplistic views of the city-state, that miss its history, its opportunities, and its challenges. Jeevan Vasagar’s Lion City: Singapore and the Invention of Modern Asia (Pegasus Books: 2022), delves into those more complicated details, giving a better portrayal of the city and the choices it’s made as it tries to navigate a more complicated global environment.In this interview, Jeevan and I talk about, well, Singapore: its history, its leadership, and its policies. We’ll talk about how its administration is trying to chart a future for the country—and whether that might be successful.Jeevan Vasagar is the Environment Editor for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and was formerly the Financial Times Correspondent for Singapore and Malaysia. He can be followed on Twitter at @jeevanvasagar.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Lion City. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

One would think that comparing civilizations as far removed in time and space as Ancient Egypt and Ancient China might not reveal much. Yet Professor Tony Barbieri’s Ancient Egypt and Early China: State, Society, and Culture (University of Washington Press: 2021) gleans much from a deeply-researched comparison of political structures, diplomatic relations, legal systems, ideas of the afterlife, and other aspects.In other words, despite being separated by thousands of years and thousands of kilometers, the proto-empires of Egypt and China have a surprising amount of things in common.A lecture detailing Professor Barbieri’s book can be found on YouTube here.In this interview, Professor Barbieri and I talk about the various similarities and differences between these two ancient civilizations, and what we can learn from engaging in such a comparative study.Anthony J. Barbieri-Low is professor of history at the University of California Santa Barbara. His book Artisans in Early Imperial China won top prizes from the Association for Asian Studies, American Historical Association, College Art Association, and International Convention of Asia Scholars. He can be followed on Twitter at @ABarbieriLowYou can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Ancient Egypt and Early China. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

The horse is an important symbol in India’s culture, as shown by the many stories and works we see of Indian royalty and adventurers on horseback. As noted by Mughal chronicler Abu Fazl, “The horse is a means of attaining personal excellence.” Yet the horse isn’t native to India, with thousands of horses imported from Central Asia and the Middle East to meet the demands of India’s ridersYashaswini Chandra’s The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback (Picador India: 2021) uses the horse as a way to discuss and frame India’s history. The book covers caravan trade routes, the Mughal empire, the Rajput horse warriors, and others to outline how India’s politics and economics changed throughout history.We’re joined again by David Chaffetz, who’s a regular contributor to the Asian Review of Books, and the author of Three Asian Divas: Women, Art and Culture In Shiraz, Delhi and Yangzhou.In this interview, the three of us talk about the central role the horse plays in Indian history, and how understanding the horse may help us to understand the power structures of the subcontinent.Yashaswini Chandra has a PhD in History of Art from SOAS University of London, where she was also a teaching fellow. She has been visiting faculty at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Ashoka University, Sonipat. She worked for Sahapedia, an open online resource on the arts, cultures and histories of India, for many years, managing the multi-volume documentation of the President’s House in New Delhi and an institutional collaboration with Rupayan Sansthan, Jodhpur. She previously co-edited Right of the Line: The President’s Bodyguard on the household cavalry of the Indian head of state. Yashaswini is an avid horsewoman. She can be followed on Twitter at @Yashaswini_Ch.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Tale of the Horse. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

The story of Alexander the Great has inspired conquerors and would-be conquerors throughout history. Alexander’s sweep through the Middle East and Central Asia left behind evidence of his mark on history--namely, in the several cities that he founded, and that sprung up to govern the kingdoms he left behind.One man looking for evidence of Alexander was Charles Masson: a deserter from the East India Company who reinvented himself as an archaeologist and scholar in Afghanistan. Academic, traveller, writer and unwilling spy, Masson’s story is told in Professor Edmund Richardson’s book Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City (Bloomsbury, 2021)We’re joined in this interview by David Chaffetz, who’s a regular contributor to the Asian Review of Books, and the author of Three Asian Divas: Women, Art and Culture In Shiraz, Delhi and Yangzhou.In this interview, the three of us talk about Charles Masson and his experiences in Afghanistan. We talk about what drove this man to embark on his archaeological calling, and how his story meshes with the story of the East India Company and Afghanistan. And we end on what Massey’s story and observations teach us about how to understand Afghanistan today.Edmund Richardson is Professor of Classics at Durham University. He has published Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels and Generals in Pursuit of Antiquity, and was named one of the BBC’s New Generation Thinkers in 2016.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Alexandria: The Quest For the Lost City. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

It’s a cliche to call North Korea the most isolated country in the world. Those of us living outside the country often have very little idea of what life there is like, often only seeing what its government would like us to see: military parades, missile launches, and joyous crowds.Yet Lindsey Miller, author of North Korea: Like Nowhere Else: Two Years of Living in the World's Most Secretive State (September Publishing: 2021) is a window into how ordinary North Koreans live. They are more than the stereotypes portrayed by their government or by those looking in from outside of the country, as revealed by the photos and stories Lindsey tells in her book.In this interview, Lindsey and I talk about what it was like to live in North Korea, some of the Koreans she met on her stay, and why some of the narratives about the country can be so hard to shift.Lindsey Miller is a musical director and award-winning composer. For the last ten years, she has worked in theatres across the UK, Europe, North America and Asia and has most recently worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company. During 2017–19, Lindsey lived in Pyongyang, North Korea, while accompanying her husband on a diplomatic posting. She can be followed on Twitter at @LindseyMiller87.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of North Korea: Like Nowhere Else. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review