Wang Books

Powerful, Extremely easy to read. I wish I could see it done as a play.

This play captures the intense racial and ethnic survival networks that develop in a prison. Men must join with other men of the same race or ethnicity or risk being victimized. Blacks bond with Blacks, white with whites, Latinos with Latinos. Conflict, competition, and smoldering violence characterize the relationship between these groups. Pinero captures this prison sub-culture very well in his play Short Eyes.

Yet within each group are individual characters with their own motives and desires and manipulations. Again Pinero captures these characters very well, especially the White gang leader, Longshoe, and the Black Muslim gang leader.

Into this mix comes a white fellow, who is initially recruited by the white gang until it is revealed that he is charged with child molestation, a crime called 'short eyes' by prisoners. This man is brutally tortured and killed in the jail setting, only to find out later that he was misidentified. Yet he demonstrates clearly what happens to the scapegoat, the outsider, even in a world of outsiders.

The language is rough and realistic. The tension between prisoners remains taunt, never letting up, and thus revealing the terrible existance that life behind bars presents.

In 1975 this play was highly controversial with its display of racial tension, homosexuality, and murder within a prison. However such TV shows as OZ have introduced US audiences to the racial dynamics and the sexual relationships behind bars. Thus this play was ground-breaking in its time, even though today's audiences may not find it as shocking as viewers/readers in the 1970s.

It is still highly recommended.

Miguel Pinero's play "Short Eyes" opened as part of the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1975. This play deals with life in prison; its flavor of authenticity probably comes from the fact that the author himself had spent time in prison.

"Short Eyes" involves a multiethnic group of inmates whose lives are affected by the incarceration of a mild-mannered white man charged with a particularly shocking crime. Pinero creates a fascinating portrayal of a racially fractured subculture in which whites are the minority. His prison is populated with many memorable characters: the African-American inmate El Raheem, whose "Black Muslim"-inspired dialogue is marked by quick wordplay and messianic fury; Longshoe, the tough white inmate; Cupcakes, the pretty-boy who is the object of another inmate's lust, and more.

Pinero's claustrophobic world of Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and whites could be seen as a frightening microcosm of the larger American society: a world of destructive compulsions and violence. Pinero's dialogue is often penetrating and shocking; his characters are alive with raw pain and rage. "Short Eyes" may be too much for some readers to handle, but those with a serious interest in American drama or Puerto Rican literature, this is a remarkable work of art.

The play "Short Eyes" is a powerfully told truth about prison life. The setting takes place in the day room of a House of Detention. The cast of actors are mostly made up of Blacks, Puerto Ricans and a few Whites. They are young convicts. They exchange taunts, fighting & insults just to keep their sanity intact, and some sense of a community. An accused child molester is brought into the cellblock. He is called a degenerate by a guard. A child molester (or in prison slang a "short eyes") is considered the most despicable of people. Mr. Pinero, while serving a five year sentence for armed robbery in Sing Sing Prison, started writing the play. Marvin Felix Camillo read some of Miguel's work and asked him to sign up in his drama workshop in the prison. This was a workshop for convicts interested in writing and acting. Miguel was encouraged to write plays. The drama work shop evolved into an acting company called The Family. Joseph Papp produced the play "Short Eyes" at the Lincoln Center in New York City. Short Eyes won the best American play of 1973 & 74 by the New York drama critics circle award. Miguel Pinero's play "Short Eyes" is straight on! It doesn't pull any punches. It holds back absolutely nothing on life in jail.

An insider's view of life in the notorious Tombs on Rikers Island, where New York City used to house prisoners awaiting trial. Pinero was an important poet and playright, and co-founder of The Nuyorican Poet's Cafe. This drama tells the story of a middle class white man arrested for child molestion, a "short eyes" in prison slang. These prisoners are held in special contempt by the rest of prison society, and this man is a particularly easy target. Pinero has the voice of authority, making this a rare prison drama with the ring of truth. The play was was also made into a brilliant movie.

I greatly enjoyed and appreciated Ms. Lemov's review of the evolution of behavioral psychology and the analysis of its weaknesses. As a student of B.F. Skinner at Harvard in the 1950s, I have had a lifelong interest in this subject.
First, Ms. Lemov exposes the basic risks and dangers of "behavioral engineering" and "control" in democratic societies. She also reveals the inadequate appreciation by behaviorists of the distinctions between the nature of humans and that of other animals. This failure was a fatal flaw in the behavioral concepts. Most significantly, if one accepts the concept of the need for "social engineering," the behaviorists never provided a persuasive set of social goals that should be attained by such methods. What is the point of social engineering and control with no clearcut ends in mind?
For anyone interested in the history of psychology, this book is a "must read."
James M Gregg,
Potomac, Maryland

This book tells the fascinating history of experiments to control human behavior and follows the careers of the brilliant and often idiosyncratic scientists who ran the labs and the experiments, beginning at the turn of the 20th Century with the Milgram experiments. These demonstrated that ordinary, normal people could be successfully ordered to shock and torture others on command. She also describes the CIA programs of interrogation and brainwashing that led inexorably to Abu Ghraib. This is compelling--and troubling--stuff, and it raises a lot of questions.
While the human engineers never quite managed to program their human subjects totally, they were at least partially successful. Now we have evolved to massive advertising campaigns that drive our economy, focus groups that help produce political spin, and manufactured divisive wedge issues that manipulate our voting patterns.
All of this suggests that we are susceptible to the kinds of human engineering Lemov so aptly describes. Indeed, the book made me wonder whether some of this human engineering has embedded itself in those corporate cultures where a zealous pursuit of profit makes it ok to market products that needlessly injure, sicken and kill (think unsafe cars and drugs), or to lie, cheat and steal (think Enron). This is one of the many crucial issues that Lemov illuminates.

Considering the incendiary nature of the topic (social control, brainwashing, forcible interrogations, chemical coercion) the euphemistic title of this book says much about how the content is treated. Mice, mazes and men - sounds harmless, no outrage there. Yet the history of how American behaviorists extrapolating from the techniques of B.F. Skinner (who oddly receives little mention) & Joseph Mengele (whose failed sleep-coma experiments were copied in the CIA's MK-ULTRA program) receives no mention at all.

Reading along through all the chapters, the actual "what can I take with me" information is very light, although the lengthy descriptions of many of the behaviorists' personal histories are more than sufficient. For all the talk about rat maze experiments and their importance, few are actually discussed in detail and fewer still are the facts actually learned from these.

In Part Three, "Files: Out Of The Laboratory" much is made of how -large- the files on human cultures collected at Yale were, and how -exhaustively- they were cataloged - but few examples are given of the data itself, who the data-gatherers were, and what protocols these data gatherers followed in their world travels, if anything.

And what practical techniques, exactly, did the modern beneficiaries of all this Cold-War experimenting (public relations, advertising, pollsters, marketing, government, the State Department) get out all of this? Entire books have been written on the techniques of persuasion used by each of these groups yet in "World As Laboratory" the reader walks away with very little in terms of concrete, practical modern-day examples.

The "thriller" part of the book, of course is Chapter 10's "The Impossible Experiment" documenting the CIA's brainwashing and drug experiments which rank among the most putrid of shames ever perpitrated upon American citizens by their own government. Yet, while related subjects such as Stanley Milgram's experiments are given great coverage, the equally important (and horrifying) Stanford Prison experiments are glossed over in just a couple paragraphs.

If you're wondering how Rebecca wraps this all up in her Conclusions, one need only refer to title of the book again - ultimately, the author is sympathetic, and even slightly admiring, of the scientific amoralists portrayed in the book. And although she tries to reassure the reader that attempts to create a Manchurian Candidate were unreliable and inconsistent at best, one can't help but feel that Rebecca is (mildly) rooting for the wrong team.

You want people to do your bidding; it's only natural. And governments, of course, would like other governments to do their bidding, but they'd like to have their own people do their bidding, too. How can this sort of influence best be strengthened? Well, perhaps it would be best to go to the people who study stimuli, responses, drives, and so on, to see what makes people tick. And if the researchers have a good idea of what influences people, then surely they are the ones to consult about actually doing the influencing. It has already been done, of course, and historian and anthropologist Rebecca Lemov has documented the history of such research and attempts at control in World as Laboratory: Mice, Mazes, and Men (Hill and Wang). It is an extraordinary story about very smart guys doing experiments, some of which were quite stupid and some which caused a great deal of suffering (to both animals and humans) to see how subjects could be made to learn the right way to behave. Lemov demonstrates that this was not some ivory tower effort at great remove, but a movement whose results are still with us.

The book starts with rat experiments. Regardless of how you feel about putting rats through such trials, the astonishing fact is that rats were so wonderfully controllable that the researchers assumed that if they just knew the right conditions to administer to humans, they could, as Lemov writes, "... explain the full range of human behavior and make it predictable and therefore controllable." Scientists were sure that if they could make rats do something, they could make humans do it, too. Then they could explain such phenomena as love and union organizing, looking at internal states in an objective, perhaps mathematical way. Some of the most benign experiments on humans were the Hawthorne experiments, which found that just paying experimental attention to humans helped their morale. Other experiments were less benign. Psychiatric patients got LSD or induced comas, without their permission or knowledge. Some got a recorded message like "You killed your mother" piped into their ears thousands of times. However, turning people into ciphers might be easy, but it also isn't very useful. Despite the interest and funding of such organizations as the CIA, researchers kept coming up against a very real problem in getting people to do what the researchers (or government) wanted them to do, or reveal what they wanted them to reveal: a real change in behavior does not happen without full and willing cooperation. There is one mention in the book of Abu Ghraib, but no reader will be able to avoid thinking of it frequently.

The bizarre experiments thus had a hopeful lesson. Brainwashing can be simply done, but it is useless simply to brainwash a person if you expect to control that person. You could create a vegetable, but that was useless; when researchers tried to instill, rather than erase, behavior, as one veteran of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program wrote, they failed eventually because "...the subject jerked himself back for some reason or the subject got amnesiac or catatonic." In all these grand plans for controlling people for society's good, no one could overcome the great obstacle that not only are people not rats, they are individuals, and no one plan is going to accomplish change for them all. Lemov shows that besides this failure, there is a legacy of such scientific effort: focus groups, consumer research, political polling. It isn't nearly as close to control as the scientists described here wanted to get, and let's be glad of that.

Although I have no exerptise in the history of "human engineering" or the evolution of American psychological thought, I was intrigued by the cover (I admit it!) and the subtitle "Experiments with Mice, Mazes, and Men."

"World as Laboratory" turned out to be a fascinating look into how scientists have tried, over the last several decades, to categorize and shape human behavior. It's a substantial book, but not so technical that it makes no sense to the layman.

"The Bridge in the Jungle" is one of those strange books you don't know how to respond to at first. On one hand it's absolutely tragic and, on the other, it's filled with some of the funniest passages imaginable. More or less condensed into a twenty-four hour period, Traven describes how an Indian community bands together, sometimes with folly but often with strength, when a young boy disappears into the bush.

Throughout the story Traven gives an intimate account of peasant life in southern Mexico, nevering missing a detail of how the campesinos live, think and act. In fact the narrative is filled with so many astute observations that you feel, at times, Traven works better as an anthropologist than as a novelist.

But, unfortunately, some of these observations sound a little sentimental. It's the only work by Traven that seems to run in circles, at times even becoming boring. He praises the spiritualism of Indians one too many times and focusses on their diet rather than moving on with the plot.

He does, however, redeem himself with the character of Sleigh, an expat who's made the jungle his home. He's like a good-natured version of Kurtz -- wise, crazy, but harmless.

On top of all this, Traven makes his usual attacks against the oil industry and organized religion.

If you enjoyed any of his "jungle books," then gives this one a read.

I confess that I am a major afficionado of B. Traven. My politics have mellowed over the years but I enjoy Traven's political perspective. I believe B. Traven was an ararchist at heart. He attacked big government and big business as evil but saw the uncorrupted individual as nobel and good. In the rural Mexican Indian community he found, for himself, the most ideal form of government he had ever encountered. His Jungle Books were a tale of conflict between good and evil; peasant and capitalism. His book, The Bridge in the Jungle, is his ode to the Indian peasant community. He brings us into their midst throught his vagabond American who stumbles upon a small village at the time a tragedy is unfolding. A young boy has drowned and we witness their suffering and their coming together. We see the corruption of their society by misunderstood influences from the outside world. The example I remember best is the musician who, when asked to play something during the funeral march, comes up with "Yes We have no Bananas". Neither the musician nor anyone else except our American narrator comprehends the total inappropriateness of the song. All in all, a beautiful story of a disappearing society.

By chance I came upon Traven at the library when I noted that he had authored "Treasure of Sierra Madre," a film classic that I automatically associate with Hollywood's old Bogey.

Not knowing anything more than that I picked-up "The Bridge in the Jungle," and what I found most fascinating was finding a story that so honestly stripped away cultural biases and opened a window to another universe. It revealed the dignity of a community dealing with death of a young boy in an obscure jungle town in early nineteenth century Mexico, and it also provided a vivid account of a proud Aztec culture on the threshold of extinction.

I wish I could see more modern American writers, who, like Traven, would more readily examine how cultural biases skew our understanding and appreciation of the quiltwork of cultures that inhabit our amazing World.

This book was dedicated by Traven to the mothers of the world. It is a cold, crude and, at the same time, compasionate and tender view on a child's death and the terrible, extreme pain it produces on his mother. It also describes the quite particular, "uncontaminated" and honest reaction the event creates among a small Indian community in Chiapas. All this is told by Gales, the main character, an American adventurer that hardly tries to undertand what is actually going on and how he feels about it.

Although the plot is very simple, this novel has some passages of an extraordinary literary intensity. It is also full of irony and sometimes sarcasm too.

Well, it can be said The Bridge in the Jungle is a sad, tragic novel but it is beautifully written and that is what matters.

What I like about Burn This is it's mystery. There were many instances when I wasn't clear what people were talking about or why they were saying it. That ambiguity fuels the whirlwind nature of what ends up being a kind of hard luck love story.

Anna is a dancer, and the focal point of the story. She is surrounded by three men, Burton, a born-wealthy and successful writer, who may or may not be her boyfriend, Larry, her gay roommate and confidant, and Pale, the volatile brother of Robbie, whose death inspires the action.

As Anna struggles with the death of her best friend and dancing partner, all three men, who were also connected to Robbie must deal too with where they are in life, and why.

Eventually though, it comes to Anna and Pale....

And there the heart of Burn This lies. In the mystery of attraction.

Good play. Good characters. It goes into the ether areas, and made me wonder about passion, life's work, the force of personality, and tactics to winning and overwhelming hearts.

This was the first Lanford Wilson play I had read, so I didn't quite know what to expect. Though in the end I certainly wasn't disappointed. Without over-simplifying, "Burn This" is the story of the emotional turmoil associated with the death of a friend and an unlikely romantic pairing.

"Burn This" is a well-written play with both fleshed-out and believable characters. Wilson is able to convey meaning in subtle ways and does not bog-down the play with overly-verbose dialogue or obvious statements. He wonderfully weaves a story centered around a character we never even meet.

Moreover, Wilson deals with the issues and themes in the play appropriately -- not over- or under-playing their importance. For example, the entire focus of the play is not on homosexuality, nor should it be. But it is still a key part of the play, and receives the attention and focus it deserves without becoming overly-inflated.

I was lucky enough to see a production of this in New York in the fall of 2002, which was absolutely phenomenal. There was even a post-performance Q&A session with Lanford Wilson and the cast, which while brief, was very interesting. Nonetheless, seeing a live performance made the play even more powerful. (Of course, this was helped by having an excellent cast.) Even so, if you get the chance to see a production of "Burn This", don't hesitate to.

Every play Lanford Wilson writes is intelligent as well as passionate and dramatic. It is almost beyond belief how hard it is to combine all of these qualities in the same play. In "Burn This", Wilson is in top form. Pale (the male lead) is such a clearly written and deeply felt part that an actor does not have to fill in any gaps; if an actor can read well, he is assured of at least an above average performance. The dialogue is spicy, funny, sad, bitter and more. In movie terms, it is a Nicholas Cage part (although Malkovich originated it).

Pale's love interest and foil (the Joan Allen part) is not secondary to Pale because she has the power to heal him. A magnificent love story.

This play is a meaningful, and yet almost simple, masterpiece. The story unfolds with the death of a gay man, which ultimately brings an unlikely match closer together. Wilson's use of homosexual issues is the perfect sprinkling: it is not the main focus of the play, but gives it just the extra touch. This is how homosexuality should be written about in the theatre (or any form of entertainment). It isn't over-played or under-played, but just right.

This dictionary is extremely useful because it makes use of many real-life examples. It is the only dictionary that I know that uses in its examples (1) Simplified Mandarin, (2) Pinyin, and (3) English all at once. With other dictionaries, you have to spend time looking up characters offered in the definition. Not the case here. Must bear in mind that this is a dictionary for the Mainland. Having said that, there are some great "colloquial" entries, and these entries are really fun for getting to learn the Chinese that is really spoken on the Mainland. Really recommend this dictionary.

This the the best Mandarin dictionary for learners, BY FAR.

When you really start to get into the groove of learning Mandarin, you will suddenly discover that most other dictionaries totally suck: not telling you the counters for nouns, not telling you which verbs are splittable, not giving any examples at all, etc etc.

This one is great.. as an added bonus, it's been written by commies, and has some hilarious example sentences in it. ie: "They are always flaunting the flag of liberty" and "Those who oppress the people will eventually be overthrown"

It's a desk reference, not a pocket dictionary. I still haven't found a truely great pocket dictionary.

Although this dictionary has a limited number of words, nearly 35.000 words you can amass an amazing knowledge of chinese with help of thousands of examples. A good buying.

What makes this dictionary a very useful tool is its use of examples. Many, many examples provide many hints. Has become my favorite learning tool to date.

I just read this in one day while juggling housework and my 4 children. Couldn't put it down. The book added so many details to the knowledge I already had. I have such a love and respect for fellow Christians in China. Now if only Mr.s Lawrence and Wang had written a sequel in the last year or two...... I highly recommend this book for a glimpse at the work of God in China since the Cultural Revolution until the mid-nineties.

This is one of my favorite Christian books, and Carl Lawrence is a favorite author. The book repeats some of his earlier book, now out of print, "The Church in China." Even so, this does not detract. Lawrence details the movement of the Holy Spirit in China, while giving examples. Also, the book gives a history of Chinese missions, at least partly explaining this movement of Christianity in a hostile country. A great book!

This book renewed me more than anything I've read in ten years. God is moving in China!

Reading this book encouraged me greatly. The work of the Holy Spirit among Christians in China is phenomonal. The lesson of how God turns what to man seems evil into good is prominent throughout this book. I recommend this as reading for all Christians who believe that what we are about is to follow Jesus' command to go forth, make disciples, teaching what Jesus has taught us. I sincerely pray that this book will be printed again.

This edition of "Company K," by William March (a native of Mobile, graduate of The University of Alabama's law school, and WW I veteran), is one in a series called The Library of Alabama Classics, and it warrants its status as a classic. It's a beautiful little book, nicely typeset in a somewhat nostalgic manner, and deserves to be better known than it is--as does its author. Kudos to Alabama's UP for making this book available in paperback for a wide audience.

The book, first published in 1933, is a collection of short first-person narratives by the members of a company caught in the frontline in the first World War. Remarkable is March's ability to place himself (and the reader) in the positions of a great many very different characters--the company is a cross section of American society. This, his first novel, shows that March is an intelligent and sensitive storyteller.

More remarkable, perhaps, is how easily this book might be hypertexted--since all the narratives intersect, and various characters appear in various guises in other's narratives, it would lend itself easily to an HTML version in which a reader could click their way through the book without having to follow the book's order. Surely March must have seen this as a possible way of reading, since the chapter headings are the characters' names, allowing a reader of the book to easily flip from one character to another. The book, which seems to be suitable more for a spatial than a chronological way of reading, disrupts the boundaries of its printed format. I don't mean to call March a post-structuralist avant la lettre, but it is a feature that enhances, in my opinion, one of the themes of the book: the horror of war recognizes no hierarchy; war disrupts the human order.

As for horror, there is plenty of that. The point of view March has chosen is excellent in that it allows for multiple readings of the same event (for instance, the unnecessary and criminal shelling of a recon party); some of the voices come from beyond the grave and are particularly chilling.

One final note on the edition: it is introduced (not designed, as the Amazon heading states erroneously) by Phil Beidler, a professor of American lit at U of A. Beidler has shown a great interest in and loyalty to the literature of Alabama (see, for instance, his anthologies "The Art of Fiction in the Heart of Dixie" and "Many Voices, Many Rooms"), and his introduction to this book is insightful and touching. Beidler obviously knows his stuff; he knows both war and Alabama.

I believe that this book, as has been noted by others, is of the rank of Remarque's "All Quiet," and it is a wonderful and chilling read. Like most good war novels, it says "don't let this happen again," while realizing that it probably will, knowing human nature.

Slaughterhouse-five, and Catch-22 both borrowed from a powerful predecessor. Company-k is a simple read, short chapters each one a character of many narratives. Each one an insightful and heart-rending tale. It would be easy to ignore Company-K and most don't know it - except that it's written by a man who was there. Hemingway glorified war made it seem almost fun - March tells it as it was. Only Johnny Got His Gun, and All Quite On the Western Front come close to this passionate and shocking book.

Do not take it from me, Graham Greene, one of the most respected names in Twentieth Century Fiction hails March's "Company K" as the greatest of all anti-war novels, while Hemingway thought it superior to almost all other WWI novels. This novel is not an almost-classic, it is a classic, borrowing the format made popular by Edgar Lee Masters, March expounds on the concept of individual soldier stories encompassing the full breath of the war. This novel is as appropriate now as it ever was in the post-WWI era. This novel is a must read for anyone remotely concerned with WWI and the impact war has on the survivors.

March makes a compelling case in this text that he should be well entrenched in the second tier of American authors, if not the first. His WWI recollections do a fine job of bringing out the terrors and guilts of a war long forgotton and little remembered, except for the short period of the Twenties. If there is any shortcoming in this fine work, it is that it draws far too much from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthologies. My guess is that March, who was trained as a lawyer like Masters (a former partner of the unethical (...) Clarence Darrow) grasped onto Masters' then-current work . It's not a heroic idea, but one that's occurred to me. In any event, Company K is a work that ought to be read far more than it is a century later. WWI [is] seldom remembered as the great trauma that it was in the US. Here's a book that tells how bad it was, and more importantly, why.

Beautifully illustrated with text for the younger child to understand and additionally each page includes a more detailed explanation with some history about each Chinese custom.

This is a beautiful book with a lot of good information. My daughter, even at 2 loves to look at it. It has large type for easy reading out loud, with more in-depth text on the side for when the child gets larger. A great book for those with adopted Chinese daughters.

I like the Sleeping Bear press alphabet series and this one is another good entry. China is covered by using dragons, Beijing, the forbidden city, acrobats and other familiar subjects. It is very nice. You can read the poetry to children and read more thorough information on side. It seems pretty accurate and the pictures are very engaging and beautiful.

I have about 3 or 4 of these Chinese Alphabet books and this book is a definately up there as an awesome book about China A through Z with lots of interesting facts that some books do not have. I actually learned several new facts that I had not know prior. The way this book was done allows for the book to grow with your child as they grow. There is a picture representing the letter which I believe is done in oil paint and a few sentences of information. Then if you look to the left hand side of the page there is much more detailed information.

Here is a break down of each letter. I hope this is helpful to you.

A - Acrobats ( showing Lion dancers)

B - Bejing ( shows the Forbidden City, Summer Palace)

C - Chopsticks

D - Dragon Dance

E - Ehru pronounced Ay-roo ( an old musical instrument that only has 2 strings) this page also talks about the Chinese instruments.

F- " Four Treasures of Study - brush, ink, paper and ink stone used for Calligraphy which is a must for every child to begin to learn since the Chinese language has no alphabet but characters that are for each word.

G - Great Wall

H - Himalayan Mountain range & Mount Everest

I- Inventions - paper printing, compass, abacus, wheelbarrow & fireworks

J - Jasmine Flower

K - Kites & dough

L - Lanterns ( also talks about the fifteenth day of the Spring festival marking the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations which is the Lantern Festival.

M - Mongolians

N - Chinese New Year

O - Opera & shadow puppets

P - Giant Pandas

Q - Qin Terra-Cotta Warriors

R - Rice Paddies and terraces

S - Silk Road

T - Transportation

U - Umbrella

V - Vegetables

W - Wok

X - Xie, Xie Mandarin for THANK YOU ( pronounced She-eh She-eh)

Y - Yangtze River

Z - Chinese Zodiac ( painted to look like paper cuts of the 12 animals)

The secret of writing a detective novel set in a totally unfamiliar place to most readers must lie in the strength of the central character and the feeling of sympathy and familiarity he can arouse in us. Christopher West's Inspector Wang wins hands down on both counts. How hard must it be to live within a harsh political system, where life is cheap and where your daily task is to look for justice, knowing that even your private thoughts are suspect? It's Wang's personal integrity that is striking, in a land where high-minded propaganda slogans follow you everywhere, and yet there is corruption at every turn. We're used to maverick detectives - is there any other kind? But here you feel that Wang does have something to rebel against, coupled with his touching pride in his country and his calling. This, together with the light authorial touch and a great line in ironic observations, makes Death of a Blue Lantern tremendously readable. England, for example is 'impossibly exotic' - well, it would be, wouldn't it, for Wang? It's a layered book, that wears its author's learning lightly. It's more than a detective novel, it's a picture of a world and a way of living totally alien to our own, yet it reminds us that we're all the same under the skin. I'm delighted it's been reissued - more Wang please!

Christopher West has written a gem of a series with Inspector Wang in China! Death of a Blue Lantern is a wonderful read and a review of recent history to boot. The characters are all well drawn...Wang is always in turmoil but a fellow you'd like to meet...not since VanDerWettering have I liked a policeman more! And you will want to see more of his colleagues in the police and his relatives too. Do yourself a real favor and read the whole series first to last...but good luck finding these books. Can we convince the publishers to reissue the full series so we don't have to hunt them down? As best I can determine that is: Death of a Blue Lantern, Death on Black Dragon River, Death of a red mandarin, and The Third Messiah.

I am always interested in reading novels set in a place I want to visit. That is what I got in Death of a Blue Lantern plus a lot more. In addition to the plot being set in Beijing, some action occurs in Canton, Shanghai and in the mountains in northern China.

The hero of this novel is Inspector Wang Anzhuang of the Beijing Central Investigations Division. While spending an evening at the opera, Wang finds a dead body in the theater and launches into a complex investigation of the murder, Chinese Triad mob and thefts of precious artifacts. As the investigation unfolds, we see the influence of the communist party on the police department including a mandatory "self-criticism" of each individual's thoughts and actions during the 1989 Tiananmen Square revolution/massacre. Wang is very conflicted about his government's decisions to fire weapons and its impact on the student protestors. His own actions are called into question, making him, in turn, question his commitment to the beliefs of his party versus the more open Western culture.

The ideology does not get in the way of a good police story and in fact some of the party leaders are suspects in certain crimes.

This is an easy read and was a nice follow-up to the Chinese story line in Jeffrey Deaver's Stone Monkey that I recently finished.

this book is so good I did not want to put it down. It was a chinese version of gorky park.

This is a wonderful story---and tragic. This is the story of a feisty, smart, indominable young woman, and she knows no false modesty. It's fun and sad and moving and inspiring, and it's all true. I believe this fine lady is now deceased, and that is a shame. We are all poorer for it. Read it and enjoy a first person account of what coming to America is like---If you can take the truth.

I just finished reading this book. As a person who was born outside of China, I have had experienced some of the prejudice that Lindsay come across at the academic world.
From my experience, a lot of Americans do not truly understand the Asian culture and they assumed all the same.
This is part of my daily occurance at work. Sometimes I'm so tired of explained to them.
Multi-culturalinasim do not work. We need to have a melting pot, so that all that want to become Americans can understand what this culture and languagge well.

Lei Wang was born to parents condemned as counter-revolutionaries during the time of Mao. She was raised by politically out-of-favor grandparents. She endured abuse from officials, teachers, Red Guards, and her peers, who called her "dog's daughter," lowest of the wretched.

Mao died and the political line changed. Lei distinguished herself as a student and teacher. She came to the United States for further study. She hoped that the United States was different. But what she experienced was a similar form of persecution from the liberal academic establishment.

Mostly this book is about courage. Lei has the courage to believe in reasonable, scientifically supported facts that contradict politically correct ones. She has the courage to express those ideas in hostile circumstances where a price is paid. And she has the courage to endure, believing in the value of even a lone voice of sanity.

I'm a retired teacher. I can attest to Lei's characterization of the educational establishment. But the book goes far beyond that, encompassing the heart of what promotes life and what corrupts it. "Dog's Daughter" is one of the most significant books I've read.

This book should appeal to anyone interested in China's history and the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. Moreover, it should appeal to anyone interested in the "culture wars" that have unfortunately become a part of higher education in the USA. The book chronicles the struggles of a Chinese woman who is persecuted by Red Guards and Communist authorities during that country's insanity in the 1960s. After "escaping" to study in the USA, she learns that she must conform and obey the politically correct authorities who control her university or suffer the consequences. It appears that China doesn't have a monopoly on political insanity! The book is interesting and provocative. When reading the text--particularly the portion of her experiences in the USA--a reader doesn't know whether he or she should laugh or cry (probably both). One thing is for sure, you won't put this volume down until you have completed reading it! I rate this book Five Stars out of Five Stars!