Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

Fans of Japanese popular culture have filled university classrooms for a few decades by now. Instructors must face the challenge of rooms full of highly knowledgeable consumers deeply invested in the various Japanese objects of their affection. What to do? Historian Atkins (Northern Illinois Univ.) provides his answer, culled from years of teaching such a course. The result is certainly suitable for undergraduate teaching but in many ways goes so far beyond as to repay close reading by scholars, graduate students, and the public. What Atkins achieves is a dense, multilayered history, not simply of Japanese pop but of Japan itself as seen through the lens of its highly consumable cultural products. The author digs deep: this is not history "lite" (nor popular culture "lite") but a complex rendering of the sociopolitical conditions within which expressive culture finds a voice. Immensely readable, Atkins's prose is as full of humor and idiosyncratic character as his subject matter. The book's strength lies in the author's ability to capture the very vibrancy of popular culture in Japan while untangling its knotty threads (pun intended).Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.

Mahatma "Great Soul" Gandhi (1867-1948) was for many one of the great spiritual and political figures of his time, both during his 21-year sojourn in South Africa and in India from 1915 until 1948. Though India has fully embraced global capitalism in the new millennium, Gandhi and his message of personal, social, economic, and political reform remain important to many people. His autobiography and his 98-volume Collected Works are essential for understanding the man and his message. His autobiography has been presented anew with a foreword by Ashis Nandy. Originally penned in installments in Gujarati in his journal Hind Swaraj, the biography was translated into English by his secretary, Mahadev Desai (1892-1942), and published in book form in two volumes in 1927 and 1929. This edition, though not a new translation, offers an alternative translation to many phrases and words (to get, as Suhrud writes in the editor's introduction, "as close to the original as possible") along with explanatory notes. With its wide margins, this is an unnecessarily weighty tome and more akin to a coffee-table book than a volume to be carried by scholars and students. Nonetheless, it is now the definitive edition.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

This book is one of two recent releases on this subject (see also, The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania, ed. by Ethan Cochrane and Terry Hunt (CH, Nov'18, 56-1172). Carson (Univ. of Guam) is one of the few archaeologists with the range of experience, depth of knowledge, and broad comparative perspective to produce such a book, and the result is outstanding. He delivers a coherent chronological narrative of how and why the Pacific Islands--which span nearly a third of the globe--were settled, and how the inhabitants of the area overcame challenging natural and social circumstances to successfully adapt to this "sea of islands." Cross-regional analysis and careful attention to settlement chronology allow Carson to treat often-underrepresented areas such as Micronesia to good effect. Carson writes in chapter 1 that instead of an "elongated pause," the archaeological record actually suggests continuous incremental growth and movement of people into new parts of the Pacific. But local sequences differ, and a comprehensive synthesis cannot treat these in detail. For that the reader should turn to Cochrane and Hunt's book, which fills this gap but necessarily provides a less consistent overall narrative.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

Britain's violent campaign to force the Qing empire to open more fully to international trade and diplomacy receives expert treatment in this engaging history. In Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom (CH, Aug'12, 49-7048), Platt (Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst) chronicled in world historical perspective the Taiping war that devastated China in the 19th century. This book does the same for the Opium War (1839-42), ranging across Asia, Europe, and the US while recounting the actions of the traders, missionaries, diplomats, and soldiers who shaped the conflict. Synthesizing recent scholarship and his own research in first-hand accounts, Platt shows how the Qing-British relationship changed from the 1790s, when Britain's first official envoy to the Qing was given the cold shoulder in Beijing, to the fateful 1830s, when war broke out. British respect for the Chinese gradually turned to resentment; the British East India Company, a conservative force, was broken up; and fortunes made possible by the illicit opium trade fueled reckless adventures and undermined the Qing bureaucracy. Yet war was hardly inevitable, since trade benefited so many. Miscalculations abounded on all sides. This rich and compelling account takes one into the minds of the key actors, British, American, and Chinese.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

Like Jonathan Spence in The Gate of Heavenly Peace (CH, Feb'82), McGuire (California State Univ., East Bay) narrates 20th-century Chinese history through a series of linked biographies--in this case, people who crossed the Chinese-Russian border. McGuire argues that in the 1920s, young Chinese fell in love with Russia as the center of world revolution and with Russians as attractive and exotic comrades. The border crossers included Emi Siao, Mao Zedong's childhood friend; Qu Qiubai, briefly head of the Chinese Communist Party; and Chiang Ching-kuo, son of Nationalist Party leader Chiang Kai-shek. During the war-torn 1930s and 1940s, the USSR sheltered displaced Chinese revolutionaries, including Mao's sons and spurned second wife. Children of these sojourners grew up in special boarding schools. Using memoirs, interviews, and archives, McGuire tracked down fascinating details about their lives between the USSR and China. In the 1960s, families created during the years of Sino-Soviet romance suffered tremendously, she shows, and memories of the romance itself have faded. An excellent popular history that brilliantly illuminates a neglected aspect of the Chinese-Russian relationship, this simultaneously chatty and moving story deserves to be known. McGuire's account will appeal to anyone interested in the emotional side of 20th-century international relations. A great read.Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.

Founders of the Ming (1368-1644) implemented a conscription system that was centered on the compulsory registration of selective civilian families as hereditary military households. Thousands of households thus recruited became obligated to supply manpower for guards and battalions along the empire's southeastern coast until the early Qing. Szonyi (Harvard) approaches this state-initiated process and its unintended effects from the perspectives of the ordinary people who decided to live with the hereditary burden. The author shows that the people who complied were not passive victims of tyranny. Rather, they engaged with official statuses and rulers to optimize their lot. As a result of their agency, the Ming military system, which tended to break up and uproot families, inadvertently stimulated the growth of the family and lineage as pivotal social and political institutions in Ming China and beyond. Szonyi's successful retrieval and interpretation of the subaltern voices is enabled by his firm grasp of big issues and big pictures, as well as by his superb command of local history and family archives. This theoretically ambitious microhistory is a must read for China specialists and non-specialists who study or teach the early modern world.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

These 36 superb chapters, written in a pithy and insightful question-and-answer format by a group of top-notch China scholars affiliated with Harvard in multiple disciplines, offer a creative and all-embracing evaluation of China's political system, international relations, economic advancement, environmental problems, social issues, historical continuity, and cultural changes. This elegantly composed, awe-inspiring, and wide-ranging book is full of sparkling, stimulating, and provocative ideas. Sample chapter titles include "Is the Chinese Communist Regime Legitimate?" "Can China and Japan Ever Get Along?" "Is There Environmental Awareness in China?" "Will There Be Another Dalai Lama?" and "Where Did the Silk Road Come From?" Readers can gain a deeper understanding of China and its history, present complexity, and future challenges. This work could been seen as a handbook for anyone wanting to acquire an across-the-board appreciation of contemporary China and engage with this rising power in a direct approach. Although it is difficult to find a central theme, this wide-ranging, comprehensive, extensive, and witty study enriches readers with numerous fascinating and far-reaching remarks.Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.

The collection of essays in this anthology represents an important moment in the study of the Korean War. First, the field of Korean War studies is no longer dominated by macroanalyses of Cold War geopolitics. The "view from above" will no doubt continue, as it should, but this volume's second contribution is how "forgotten" can be redefined. Typically, "forgotten" means the war's absence from US historical memory. Few Americans learn much about the war in high school history classes, and even fewer are aware of the war's role in establishing a permanent military industrial complex in the US. But these essays detail how Japan and Taiwan's participation in the world is forgotten or ignored, the effect of the war on the lives of individuals not from the peninsula, and the unexpected connections between the war and countries like Mongolia. For example, one essay describes the lone Japanese POW and how his life ties together several wars, countries, and armies into an integrated East Asian and micro-historical view of the war. A wonderful balance to the top-heavy studies of the Korean War, which students will appreciate.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All public and academic levels/libraries.

Levi (Ohio State) has written a much-needed history of Khoqand, a state that existed in the Ferghana Valley in present-day Uzbekistan from 1709 to 1876. Other scholarly studies of this part of Central Asia have usually approached it from the perspective of other larger states, especially Russia and China. Levi's approach is refreshing because it is centered in and from the perspective of Khoqand itself, thanks to his reliance on several rare contemporaneous chronicles and historical accounts. Because of the primary sources he relies on, this book will be of great interest as a bibliographical study of rare Central Asian sources as much as for the story of Khoqand and its role in larger regional and global histories. Indeed, Levi's "connected histories methodology" is a particular strength of the book. The chronologically based narrative is well written, easily accessible, and useful to readers of any level because of the rich glossary of the book's terms, footnotes, and exhaustive bibliography. Readers seeking additional work on Khoqand might consult S. Frederick Starr's Ferghana Valley: The Heart of Central Asia (CH, Nov'11, 49-1631) for comparison.Summing Up: Essential. Most levels/libraries.

Most Americans, when reading about Vietnam, only consider the US role in the conflict. Asselin (history and foreign relations, San Diego State Univ.) corrects the historical record with this book. Although US casualties exceeded 305,000 killed and wounded, the Vietnamese causalities were incalculable, demonstrating the cost that Hanoi was willing to endure to unite Vietnam. Consequently, when readers seek to understand the war, they receive a distorted interpretation of the US failure in Southeast Asia. Asselin rightly contends that US foreign policy experts never fully understood the national aspirations of the Vietnamese. In comparison, Le Duan, a southerner who had directed Hanoi's war effort since 1963, was determined to continue the struggle for national unification regardless of the cost, as evidenced in the Tet Offensive and the Easter Offensive. Negotiations, as Asselin describes, were simply a ploy to achieve their final victory. Washington never comprehended the determination of the Vietnamese to bear any burden and pay any price to achieve victory during the war. This book captures the tragedy of Vietnam better than any source to date.Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.