An excellent resource for those who live and work at a place where Chinese and Western viewpoints coincide.
A fresh view of China's emergence as a global economic force from two writers with extensive personal background in the East and West, who take a careful historical approach to claims as to how the interaction among Chinese and Western cultures will bring a new dynamic approach to world trade.
Like many who have studied China’s growing influence in the West, these authors assert that the nation’s economic growth will change the world dramatically. This ambitious survey shows how distinct definitions of self, nation and empire have emerged and changed in the East and West throughout the centuries, drawing upon an extensive body of scholarship. Although Tai P. Ng holds a doctorate in geophysics, neither author specializes in academic China studies. However, each has an extensive background in both parts of the world. This may be why their refreshing approach eschews headline-grabbing predictions about inevitable conflict between China and Western nations, while also avoiding claims that either culture holds superior values. Neither China nor the West is portrayed as exotic or dangerous. Instead, this is a fascinating account of how past similarities and differences between the East and West provide the groundwork for a new culture that will reshape our lives in the future. The authors reveal that business and world trade are hardly new to the Chinese tradition even while contemporary interaction with the West brings a new dynamic to conventional trade. Academic readers may find this survey lacking in theoretical context and overly broad in summarizing significant historical events. But the authors’ careful research and personal experiences lend authority to their claims, providing an excellent introduction to China’s past and present that breaks down many common preconceptions. The sometimes pedantic tone could put off a novice reader, but the careful explication of central values in the East and West will reward those who want to understand why basic Western assumptions about the world differ from those in China and how global economics may evolve in the future. Moreover, a non-judgmental approach to both cultures makes this an important contribution to the body of literature about China written for the layperson.
An excellent resource for those who live and work at a place where Chinese and Western viewpoints coincide.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-595-41846-6
Page Count: 376
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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