Episodes

  • Tahir Kamran, "Chequered Past, Uncertain Future: The History of Pakistan" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

    Tahir Kamran, "Chequered Past, Uncertain Future: The History of Pakistan" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
    Feb 20 2025
    Pakistan’s history since independence is…complicated. Partition wrecked the economy, leaving all the economic infrastructure in India. Democracy was weak, as the military launched multiple coups to overthrow the civilian government. The country was split into an unsustainable two halves–with one declaring independence as Bangladesh by the Seventies. Professor Tahir Kamran covers Pakistan’s history–starting in pre-history and traveling all the way to the present day–in his book Chequered Past, Uncertain Future: The History of Pakistan (Reaktion, 2024) Tahir Kamran is Head of the Department of the Liberal Arts at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, Director of the Khaldunia Centre for Historical Research and the editor of the Pakistan Journal of Historical Studies. His books include Colonial Lahore: A History of the City and Beyond (Oxford University Press: 2017). You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Chequered Past, Uncertain Future. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Bertil Lintner, "The Golden Land Ablaze: Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    Bertil Lintner, "The Golden Land Ablaze: Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar" (Oxford UP, 2024)
    Feb 13 2025
    Four years ago, on Feb. 1 2021, the Burmese military overthrew the fledgling democratic government in the Southeast Asian country of Burma, officially known as Myanmar. That sparked a civil war that continues today–with neither the military junta nor the various rebel groups coming closer to victory. How did the country get here? Veteran Asia journalist Bertil Lintner tackles the country’s history since independence, including the military’s long involvement in the country’s politics, in his book The Golden Land Ablaze: Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar (Hurst: 2024). He joins today to talk about Burma’s history, the role of the military, China’s involvement in the country, and prospects for the civil war going forward. Bertil Lintner is an acclaimed journalist and expert on contemporary Southeast Asia, especially Myanmar. Formerly the Far Eastern Economic Review’s Burma correspondent, he is now a full-time correspondent with the Asia Pacific Media Services and writes regularly for Asia Times, The Irrawaddy and other regional and international websites and publications. Lintner has written 25 books on Asian politics and history, including Outrage: Burma's Struggle for Democracy (Review Publishing: 1989); Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier (Yale University Press: 2015); and The Costliest Pearl: China’s Struggle for India’s Ocean (Hurst: 2019). You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Golden Land Ablaze. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review
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    48 mins
  • Rosemary Wakeman, "The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918–1941" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

    Rosemary Wakeman, "The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918–1941" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
    Feb 6 2025
    The 1920s and 1930s were a period of cosmopolitan globalization–and no one, perhaps, exemplified it more than Victor Sassoon, business tycoon, trader and industrialist. He’s the subject of Rosemary Wakeman’s latest book The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918–1941 (U Chicago Press, 2024) which traces Victor’s journey through these three cities—and explores how the world economy changes as he travels. After all, it’s a period where the world trading system is beginning to unravel, as British dominance in manufacturing is starting to be challenged by cheaper rivals in Germany and Japan, with arguments for economic policies that seem very familiar to us today. Rosemary Wakeman is professor of history at Fordham University. She is the author of A Modern History of European Cities: 1815 to the Present (Bloomsbury: 2020) as well as The Heroic City: Paris, 1945–1958 (The University of Chicago Press: 2009) and Practicing Utopia: An Intellectual History of the New Town Movement (The University of Chicago Press: 2016). You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Worlds of Victor Sassoon. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review
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    49 mins
  • Jorge Flores, "Empire of Contingency: How Portugal Entered the Indo-Persian World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

    Jorge Flores, "Empire of Contingency: How Portugal Entered the Indo-Persian World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
    Jan 29 2025
    Portuguese India was tiny—a handful of trading posts and enclaves, centered on the colony of Goa. The Estado da Índia faced the Mughal Empire and the Deccan Sultanates, large Muslim and Persian-based societies that ruled the subcontinent. How did Portuguese India survive? Well, by spying. Jorge Flores in his book Empire of Contingency: How Portugal Entered the Indo-Persian World (University of Pennsylvania Press: 2024) explains how the Portuguese tried to learn more about their more powerful neighbors. Jorge Flores is Senior Researcher at the Interuniversity Centre for the History of Science and Technology and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Empire of Contingency. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review
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    56 mins
  • Avinash Paliwal, "India's Near East: A New History" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    Avinash Paliwal, "India's Near East: A New History" (Oxford UP, 2024)
    Jan 23 2025
    After student protests toppled Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina last year, New Delhi and Dhaka have been at odds. Indian politicians complain about Hindus being mistreated in the Muslim-majority country; Bangladesh’s interim government fears that Hasina may launch a bid to return to power from India. It’s the latest development in what’s become an extremely complicated environment in what Avinash Paliwal calls “India’s Near East”: India, Bangladesh (or East Pakistan before the 1970s), and Myanmar (or Burma before the 1980s). As Avinash explains his book India's Near East: A New History (Hurst: 2024), successive Indian leaders tried to get a handle on international tensions and ethnic conflict—and with a major external threat in China looming in the distance. Avinash Paliwal is Reader in International Relations at SOAS University of London, specialising in South Asian strategic affairs. A former journalist and foreign affairs analyst, he is also the author of My Enemy's Enemy: India in Afghanistan from the Soviet Invasion to the U.S. Withdrawal (Hurst: 2017) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of India’s Near East. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review
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    49 mins
  • Glenn Diaz, "Yñiga: A Novel" (Ateneo de Manila UP, 2022)

    Glenn Diaz, "Yñiga: A Novel" (Ateneo de Manila UP, 2022)
    Jan 16 2025
    Yniga, the main character of Glenn Diaz’s novel of the same name, returns to her unnamed fishing town after her urban neighborhood burns down in a fire–what many suspect is retaliation for the capture of a wanted army general near her house. What follows is a story about activist politics, state retaliation and returning home. Yñiga (Ateneo de Manila University Press: 2022) was the winner of the 2024 Philippine National Book Award for the Best Novel in English. It has also been picked up by Titled Axis for international publication. Glenn Diaz’s books also include The Quiet Ones (Ateneo de Manila University Press: 2017) which also won the Philippine National Book Award, and When the World Ended I Was Thinking about the Forest (Paper Trail Projects: 2022). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Rosa Mercedes, Liminal, The Johannesburg Review of Books, and others. He holds a PhD from the University of Adelaide and currently teaches with the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Yniga. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review
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    41 mins
  • Peter Hessler, "Other Rivers: A Chinese Education" (Penguin, 2024)

    Peter Hessler, "Other Rivers: A Chinese Education" (Penguin, 2024)
    Jan 9 2025
    In 2019, journalist and writer Peter Hessler traveled with his family to China. He’d gotten a gig as a teacher of writing—nonfiction writing in particular—in what he’d hoped would be a sequel to his 2001 book River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. But plans changed—radically. At the very end of 2019, the COVID-19 virus emerges in Wuhan, leading to chaos as officials frantically try to figure out how to control the new disease. Peter’s reporting first wins his criticism from Chinese nationalists angry about his frank discussions of China’s mistakes—then criticism from U.S. hawks angry that Hessler gives Beijing credit for what it managed to do right as COVID rapidly spreads around the world. Peter’s years in China are covered in his latest book Other Rivers: A Chinese Education (Penguin Press, 2024), published last year. Peter Hessler is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, Cairo correspondent from 2011 to 2016, and Chengdu correspondent from 2019 to 2021. He is the author of The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution; River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, which won the Kiriyama Book Prize; Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip; and Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, and he was named a MacArthur fellow in 2011. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Other Rivers. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review
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    52 mins
  • Victor D. Cha, "The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea" (Columbia UP, 2024)

    Victor D. Cha, "The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea" (Columbia UP, 2024)
    Jan 2 2025
    North Korea is, to this day, still one of the world’s most mysterious countries. What little we know about daily life in the country comes from defectors or foreigners who’ve spent time there–some of whom have been on this show. But both camps present narrow, if not slanted, views of what life is like in the country. Korea expert Victor Cha, along with several other researchers, have put together a collection that tries to tackle the topic of North Korea with a more rigorous approach, in The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea (Columbia University Press: 2024) What do we know about North Korea’s cyberwarfare capability? Do U.S.-South Korea military exercises really cause North Korean belligerence? What do ordinary North Koreans believe? And what do U.S. and South Korean experts think are their “known unknowns” when it comes to North Korea? Victor D. Cha is Distinguished University Professor, D.S. Song-KF Endowed Chair, and professor of government in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University. He serves in senior advisory positions for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Department of Defense Policy Board, and the National Endowment for Democracy. Cha previously served on the National Security Council as director for Asian affairs. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Black Box. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review
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    45 mins