No comments about The Turkish People, Their Social Life, Religious Beliefs and Institutions and Domestic Life.

4 comments about Shanghai.

1. This is a work of exceptional richness and observation. Beautifully constructed and written -the author draws from converations across the work, the most sensual yet critically insightful portrait of this strangely synthetic city. Having reviwed much of the literature of prewar Shanghai, Ms. Sergeant's work gives the most complete sense of life and death of the city and of the culture.



2. While living in Shanghai I made a point of buying memoirs or oral histories of the old China-Coast communities. This book was the least informative, most fatueous one of the lot. Ms. Sergeant obviously had impeccable connections through her husbands business contacts into the upper reachs of the old Hong families and managed to say nothing interesting. Not even gossip.



3. The most memorable part of this fine, absorbing account of pre-war Shanghai is the description of the horrific factory conditions in the Chinese- and Western- owned businesses there. Here are tales right out of Dickens! I realized, unfortunately, that the unsavoury reputation of modern China's horrible factories has a long and sad history. The description of girls from the chrome plating factories with "chromium holes eating into their arms" was particularly awful.

   The book is also full of interesting stories and anecdotes of all aspects of old Shanghai - the parties, social gatherings, etc, and carries on right up to the communist takeover (when newer and even more devestating things happened). Many interesting photographs. For anyone who's been to the city recently and seen how much of the pre-war architecture survives, this book will be a treat. The author gets a little lost at the end - perplexed (sarcastic?) at Europe's seeming abandonment of the place to the Japanese without a fight, though it seems obvious that London was more worth saving than a ruthless mercantile city like Shanghai - kind of a pre-war Hong Kong is what it was, and clearly from these pages not so much glamorous as crass. Well-worth the read, this book will give the reader much food for thought as to China's current direction and unhealthy work conditions. Must Peking try so hard to follow in the ways of its more ruthless ancestors?

   Another good description of Shanghai's interesting and horrible sides is W. H. Auden's and Christopher Isherwood's 1930's account, "Journey to a War."




4. Through her skillful narration interspersed with rich vignettes, Sergeant delved into the fate, suffering and individual triumphs of 4 representative strata of the pre-World War II Shanghai society ¨C the English (the snobbish old colonial master), the Japanese (nouveau rich old-colonial-slaves-turned-new-colonial-master), the White Russians (the royalist Russians abandoned by fate and humiliated by self-degradation), and the Chinese (downtrodden colonial slaves seemingly condemned to unending cycles of oppression from within and outside its own community) ¨C in so doing Sergeant succeeded in vividly recreating the eerily exciting pulse and ambience an extraordinary city unique to the social, economic and political climate of its time.

   As a modernized China re-engages the world confident of its destiny on one hand and betraying insecurity about its traumatic past on the other, Sargeant's work is an essential background reading for any foreigner with a serious interest in engaging China at a deeper level.

No comments about A Flower Lover's Guide to Tokyo: 40 Walks for All Seasons.

2 comments about Scaling the Dragon.

1. I loved this true adventure story, written by two impossibly inquisitive academics who encounter China during an extended sojourn as teachers there. Janice (Moulton) and Robin (Robinson) move through this adventure like a contemporary Mr. and Mrs.Marco Polo. They know how to tell a story, well-paced, richly detailed, weaving their characters in and out of the exciting narrative. And what characters! Golden Zhou, Little Lin, Adjective Boy, and an interesting supporting cast of Westerners trying to deal with China and each other. As a long-ago Peace Corps Volunteer, I can say that Moulton and Robinson really reveal the drama and adventure of a deep cross-cultural encounter. "Scaling The Dragon" should be on a short-list of books to be read by Peace Corps Volunteers and other Americans preparing for an extended stay in another culture. Better yet, this book could be made into a great movie!



2. Scaling the Dragon is a wonderful narrative about teaching and living in China. Moulton and Robinson have a colorful writing style that is fully of energy and personality. Their engaging story is informed with their astute observations. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking to go on a delightful literary journey with these two wonderful authors.

5 comments about Caucasus.

1. There is no doubt whatever that this book is exceptionally written, bordering in parts on the poetic. Alas, Griffin's romanticization of the Murid wars which consumed the better part of 50 years, from the 1820s through the 1860s, leaves a great deal to be desired, mostly because Griffin did absolutely no work to place these wars into the historical context of the global Islamic jihad, which began with Mohammed's reign of terror in the Jewish and other non-Muslim communities of seventh century Arabia, and continued throughout Islamic history, wherever non-Muslim communities abutted Islamic ones.
   
   Griffin describes, for example, the particularly horrific capture of some princely wives and children from an idyllic estate in the southern Caucasus and their entrapment for many months with the wives of the leading jihadi of the era, including at least one Armenian woman, herself a victim of the historical Islamic tradition of entrapment and enslavement of non-Muslim women and children forced to submit to Islamic life and law.
   
   To Griffin, however, this episode, along with every other bloody exploit of the Islamic warriors was somehow justifiable, despite the fact that the so called victims began the wars when Islamic chieftains and their brigands encroached upon Russian communities along their borders to rape, pillage, thieve and otherwise harras their neighbors on the northern frontier.
   
   Griffin sets these wars into a text that spans his journey of several months through the region in the 1990s, before the Russian counter-terror operations in Grozny again reached a crescendo late in the decade. It is passingly interesting to learn of the various drunkards with whom he traversed the region, but wholly unimportant except as a window onto a way of life that continues in the tradition of Islamic jihad.
   
   Unfortunately, Griffin draws upon the equally false and romanticized musings of Leo Tolstoy, whose last novel eulogized a central figure in the Murid wars, Haji Murid, who despite his Islamisist attitudes and barbarities, occasionally demonstrated kindness, as when he won back Tolstoy's ruinous gambling losses and returned the promissory notes to the famed novelist the next morning.
   
   Certainly there have been many ugly eras in Russian history, but it is historical outrage to suggest that 19th century Russian treatment of Muslims (after all, resulting from ceaseless Muslim assaults on Russian communities near the Caucasus) in any way justified Muslim slaughters of Russians during those horrible decades.
   
   Worse, the account ignores massive historical evidence of 1,400 years of Islamic human rights abuses (of which the Murid wars were just a tiny microcosm). Griffin presents 19th century terrorists as somehow heroic and awesome, a pattern repeated in modern reporting on the continuing jihad.
   
   I am sorry, but I miss the romance in stealing other people's women and children, murdering the stragglers, tying naked nursemaids to trees and reigning death on legions of entrapped Russian soldiers whose sole purpose was in the first place to protect Russian communities from Islamic terror.
   
   Now, history repeats.
   
   --Alyssa A. Lappen



2. This is a relatively quick read about a film crews travels in the Caucasus Mountains. There are two stories here. The first is the story of the travels in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, and Chechnya. Then there is the story of Iman Shamil, a leader of the Avars and Chechens who led the revolt against the encroaching Russian Empire. Shamil led the revolt that took the Russians thirty years to suppress. This revolt was termed the Murid Wars. It cost the Russians dearly. In the end the revolt was quelled when the Russians cut down the trees that constituted the hiding places of the rebels. Both sides were vicious in dealing with the civilian population. This harks to the present conflict which is just as destructive and vicious as the one of old, if not worst. This book is interweaved with these two stories. The one distraction with this book is the exploits of Ilya, an Uzbek Jew who causes trouble with the other film crew members.
   This sheds light on a little known conflict. The book is an easy read, but I wish the author had concentrated on one story, rather than two.



3. The author falls into the usual mistake of Caucasus writers: he believes in the mythology of the noble mountain warrior. His search for the fantoms of Imam Shamil is pretty shallow and amateur. The reader would probably want to go for real fiction instead and buy Leslie Blanch's Sabres of Paradise. For those who want something serious (more than the boring ride of a young hype journalist in a decrepit Zhigouli across the Caucasus) go for Yo'av Karny's Highlanders.



4. OK, so Nicholas Griffin's got a knack for writing. You can't fault him on his skills: he vividly traces the life of the famous (to some) Caucasus mountain warrior leader, Shamil, who held off the Russians for over three decades in the nineteenth century. He weaves in the lives of various Russians and others (including a French woman captive) who knew him or had to deal with him, shows how the Russians consistently misjudged their ability to capture or kill him and bring the resistance of the Muslim mountaineers of the north Caucasus to a halt. In their misguided tactics, the Russians wasted the lives of thousands of their own men, and killed huge numbers of Chechen, Avar, and Lezgin villagers (not to mention a host of other, smaller peoples) to almost no avail. Shamil was able to unite the usually-fractured tribes of the region under the banner of Islam, though he was not above murdering dissenters. Griffin has brought the amazing, violent story of the long anti-Russian resistance to Western readers again, albeit with a fair measure of mythology and little background information for those "few readers" who aren't up on Caucasian ethnography.
   
   But that's not all. He set off with four companions on a very dazed, unorganized trip around the Caucasus region with minimal preparation and planning. His skillful writing contrasts almost hilariously with the group's utter inability to get along or even to know what to do next. The "interpreter" can hardly speak English and is plastered out of his mind most of the time. Nobody seems to know anything about the customs or languages of the people they meet (and need to survive). They drink vodka, bicker, and fight, and even take up using boxing gloves against each other to the great amusement of some lower-depths locals. Becoming drunken clowns hardly is the way to learn about history or culture, no matter how "untouristy" it may seem to the participants. And, though Shamil came from Dagestan, and many of his supporters came from Chechnya, and many famous battles occurred in those two places, the group failed to get across the border into Russia at all. They did spend a fair bit of time in Armenia, though, where nobody had even heard of Shamil. They didn't seem to be able to figure out why not. Nice going, boys.
   
   So, it's a grab bag. But, I do admit, a well-written grab bag which I enjoyed a lot. The parallels between Shamil the Imam's war against Russia and the two Chechen wars since 1994, the last of which is still sputtering on, are clear. Quite a few errors that I (a non-expert) could pick up. I wonder what the experts would say. On page 129, he's got Shamil at the wrong age. He says Armenian is the oldest alphabet. It's not---google Bishop Mashtots and see. He writes "Arzrum" instead of the international "Erzurum". On page 188, he talks of the railways carrying the Chechen exiles south from Grozny in 1944---uh, that would be east or north. On page 224---he mentions Basayev's attack on Chechnya in 1994. It was Dagestan, no? These may be pedantic quibbles, but they also may indicate that the editing, like the trip itself, was a bit chaotic and ill-considered. But if you get this book, you will enjoy it anyhow.



5. Griffin's account of his travels through the Caucusus Mountains succeeds on two levels: first, as an historical document on the life and times of the holy warrior, Shamil, who fought for more than 30 years against the Russian and Cossacks during the mid 19th century; second, as a fascinating and, at times, funny account of his travels in 1999 through a very dangerous region of our world: Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Chechen border. Griffin hits home the point of how difficult it is to truly "win" in this region, an area that is accustomed to fighting across the generations. As America is learning in Afghanistan, the fighting never truly stops. So, too, with the Caucusus. Fighting is, seemingly, within the DNA of many residents within this region. Griffin paints a fascinating portrait of Shamil who, throughout his life, miraculously escaped numerous near-captures by the Russians. The end of the book focuses on the "lion in winter," so to speak, as Shamil lives out his final years as a "guest" of the tsar. The historical chapters within this book are separated by Griffin's current-day travels with an interesting gang of characters, the most unusual -- and seemingly dangerous -- one being his translator Ilya. Ilya is not only dangerous with his drunken exploits, but with his poor translations, as well.

1 comments about Little Dog Moon.

1. This book is memorable, beautifully illustrated, well written and talks about another culture. Great choice for dog lovers, adult or child.

1 comments about China: A Travel Adventure (Travel).

1. China, A Travel Adventure
   
   I was so delighted to have come across this beautifully produced book written by Lorien Holland. I first met the author in 1993 while we were both living in Beijing. She was studying Chinese then. Upon her request, I introduced her to a Chinese family that she could stay with, an ordinary Beijing couple who lived in a very cramped two bed-room apartment with their newborn baby. How she managed to fit into this family and communicate with them in her beginner's Chinese, I didn't know exactly. I did know that she drastically improved her Chinese. Even as a stranger in a new land, I was very impressed with the way she had always managed to find unusual and interesting places to visit. For example, after hearing of a temple dedicated to the Goddess Nuwa in Henan, an obscure place few have heard of, she made a trip there and came back with some amazing pictures to prove so.
   
   Here in this book, she is once again making use of her talent for discovering unknown and unusual sights. She takes the reader through the wonderfully hidden and not so hidden corners of China, from Yangshuo down in the south with its poetic river and limestone pinnacles, up to Jiayuanguan in the north, marking the beginning of the famed Silk Road and the ending of the Great Wall; from the glittering grids of skyscrapers in Shanghai, to the layered fortress of the Forbidden City in Beijing. Interestingly, the book doesn't focus on the more `exotic' areas of China such as Tibet or Xinjiang, but rather, mainly on the Han areas where the majority of population resides. In the last chapter on travels off the beaten track, Holland suggests Wolong, hometown to China's giant pandas. I recently visited this region with an Austrian TV crew, chasing a panda that has been released back to the wild. I very much enjoyed its unspoiled scenery and the rustic charm of the Tibetan villages that dot the land. I doubt a writer without much China knowledge would have recommended a place like Wolong.
   
   The stunning photos and well-written captions complement each other like green leaves and red flowers. The essays explaining China's long history and rich culture are insightful and evocative. Again, I love the little personal touches Holland includes in the book. For instance, she describes the way locals stared at the tall blond girl upon her arrival in China, the first of many novel experiences she would collect over the years. Many westerners find such curiosities exhibited by Chinese people off-putting or annoying. Holland obviously looked beyond such annoyance and found the fascinating aspects of China. One that she now generously shares with us.
   
   This is a wonderful work, which has captured the spirit of China. It is a joy to read and a treat for your eyes. For those who have not been to the Middle Kingdom, it will wet your appetite; and for those who have been, it serves as a beautiful reminder of you China adventure.

2 comments about Succeed in Business: Vietnam (Culture Shock! Success Secrets to Maximize Business).

1. Who'd have thought some guy from Oklahoma would write this pithy discussion of business in Vietnam? Few books exist on this topic but Mr. Chambers has written the kind of honest, straightforward business book we need more of.



2. This is a well written and informative guide. It is much better written, and much more insightful, than most books of its kind. It is very useful for any person thinking of doing business in Vietnam...in fact, I would call it "essential".

4 comments about Staying Healthy in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

1. I found this book to be very informative. It showed the vaccines that you should get but not only that. It told about the bugs and "creepy crawlies" that you should stay away from in your particular country you are going to. It told of the plants that are poisonous and to stay away from there water unless you have a purifier. I recommend this book to anyone and everyone who is goind to a third world country!



2. I have travelled and lived all over the world and I always have this book with me. Not only does it cover how to protect yourself, but if you do get sick it helps you to get better. I love that it includes different drugs for you to take for different bugs, and it tells you the exact dosage. This comes in handy when you are living in the bush in Africa, no doctor for hundreds of miles, but a well stocked pharmacy near by. I HIGLY recomend this book or anyone planning to travel or live overseas.



3. I bought a book back in 1992. Used it for travels to Asia and Afrika. Handy size can always fit your backpack, no matter how light you must pack. I used it for rough trips, as well as for trips around Europe with kids. The book covers all essential aspects that you will need for your travel: (i) which vaccinations to take before you go and what to pack, (ii) what precautions to take to stay fit and healthy, (iii) what to do in case you get sick and (iv) what is the bottom line when you really need to stop being your own doctor and need to find a physician. The book is well structured and you find in a second the topic you are looking for. I strongly recomend the book to travelers who are serious about staying healthy.



4. this book is a must have, for a person who's traveling in a 3rd world country and even more so, if you are not a doctor or nurse.
   
   its easy to read, small and compact enough to bring along and has tons of great info.
   
   HIGHLY RECOMMEDED!

1 comments about A Year in Japan.

1. If you liked A Year in Japan (the book), you will love this, because it's reproductions of the best parts of the book, in postcard form. I may never actually send any of these postcards because they're almost too beautiful to send.