Content tagged with “china”

“I didn’t love this book. Note that the author is claiming the 100 ‘most influential’ books, not the best (which is subjective anyway). I got annoyed with the arrogance of the author. He writes with a palpable disdain for anything he doesn’t like, particularly religion. (I mean, we get it – you’re…”

“ Solid thriller about the apparent cover-up of an inflight incident on trans-pacific flight. Lots of a super geeky airline industry information. If you like jets, this is your book. Fast-paced, page turner. I legitimately couldn’t put it down. ”

“ It may stem from a Turkish word to describe an ancient ruling dynasty. Marco Polo used the word quite often when describing his travels. ”

“This was a political movement in China in the late 1960s. Chairman Mao Zedong had lost power due to the failure of the The Great Leap Forward, and he was concerned that he was losing his grip on the Communist Party. He began the Cultural Revolution by stirring up fears that capitalists had…”

“No, it’s not a specific thing. According to Wikipedia : The Great Firewall is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People’s Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. So it’s not just software – it’s the combined effect of laws and implied threat of…”

“The best way to describe this is that it’s the ancient Chinese version of a tarot card deck. The I Ching is a divination tool which dates back to perhaps as early as 1,000 BC. It consists of a table of 64 ‘hexagrams,’ which correspond to an ordered combination of six lines which are either broken…”

“Like most countries in that region of the world, Taiwan is actually a chain of 168 islands. The biggest island – and the one most people think of when they think of ‘Taiwan’ – is called Formosa, and it comprises 99% of the total land area of the chain. The largest city, Taipei, is located here, as…”

“ A spectacular history of Asia. This is a book where I stopped tracking what page I was on, because I just wanted to keep reading it. Also a book that could have been boring, but the writing style is just effortless and wonderful. ”

“First, this is not a standalone novel. It’s part one of three, and it ends completely unfinished. Second, I bought this because of Barack Obama. Seriously – I saw it on the shelf of a book and gaming store in Stockholm, and it had a praise quote from Obama on the cover. I thought, ‘Has a president…”

“An in-depth look at the geopolitics and geo-economics of the world. The author goes around the globe and explains each country’s situation, historically, geographically, politically, and economically. What’s interesting is that a lot of the book is not actually about geography, but that’s the…”

“This was the depiction of East Asians as an existential threat to the Western World, mainly during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Asians were used as antagonists in movies, novels, and comic books, often portrayed as criminal masterminds bent on taking over the world. This was partially due to…”