Dan’s sick, so he’s asked me to put together three to five links … of doom! Unfortunately, I’ve been writing a lot recently and so I’ve missed out on great posts. So here’s what I found in a burst of searching; please suggest additional links in the comments.
- At Foreign Policy, Jack Carlson argues China is building replica European cities to prove its cultural superiority.
- Also at Foreign Policy, this Boeing advertising Web site was linked. I’m posting it because, especially for folks who live in DC, the advertising aspect of the imperium/military-industrial-congressional complex/America-f*ck-yeah complex becomes background noise. But this is definitely a cultural document that needs interrogating.
- One of the better parts of Foreign Affairs online is their annotated reading lists. Here’s Minxin Pei on China’s politics. The Li Zhisui book will make you feel dirty. And he misses Susan Shirk on China’s brittle interior politics and Taylor Fravel on domestic politics and territorial conflict.
- UN announces 2012 celebrities hottest on record
And finally:
- Secret society of Enlightenment opthalmologists. Note that traditional social science methodologies are poorly equipped to cope with a genuinely secret society.
Everything is better with “of doom” attached. Are you sure you don’t play Munchkin?
Thanks for putting these together.
Pei’s reading list on Chinese politics is interesting. I think he misses a lot of important works, but Tombstone is an extremely valuable inclusion. Besides Shirk and Fravel, I’d at least add Kang’s two books (China Rising and East Asia Before the West) as well as Breznitz and Murphree’s Run of the Red Queen. I’m curious about another new title, Yuri Pines’ The Everlasting Empire, but have yet to read that one myself.
Also, if we’re delving into the area of fiction, I would not hesitate to recommend one of Nobel laureate Mo Yan’s books (either Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out or The Garlic Ballads), not only because of their satirical and insightful takes on 20th century Chinese history, but also because they showcase exactly what and how much can be said by public intellectuals while still operating within the confines set out by the party apparatus.