Eastern University Books

This book is not for every one, but it has plenty to offer those who think they might be interested in the history of urban reform in a Chinese provincial capital. Chengdu lies in western Sichuan province, a remote but populous part of China. Nestled at the feet of mountains that rise in the west to the Tibetan plateau, Chengdu is a beautiful and fascinating city with a long and rich history. This book was written for and should prove to be of primary interest to scholars, but it should also appeal to serious travelers who plan to visit Chengdu (or have already visited) this rewarding spot off of the usual tourist itinerary. Civilizing Chengdu focuses on efforts to administer and reform the city in the half century prior to the founding of the People's Republic of China. It is scrupulously researched but written in an accessible style. Scholars interested in modern Chinese history have recently begun to focus on developments in urban areas, and there have been a number of excellent works published over the last few years that have dealt with different urban historical topics. Most of these books have concentrated on the major cities of eastern China, such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing. This book begins to address the need for work on the many smaller cities scattered across the country.

In "Civilizing Chengdu", Kristin Stapleton discusses the reforms that took place between 1895-1937 in the capital city of Sichuan province. During this time Sichuan aided in the downfall of a two thousand year old dynastic system and witnessed the rise of warlordism.

Throughout much of Chinese history the management of cities took a backseat to the much more populated rural areas. However, by the late 1800's the increase in urban inhabitants, the influence of European ideas, and the numerous colonial cities scattered throughout East and Southeast Asia at this time gave rise to a new appreciation for urban management.

The book examines two urban reform programs: The first was based on the 'New Policies' of the late Qing period and the second was the city administration movement of the 1920's and early 1930's.

Before discussing these two reform eras, Stapleton gives a description of Chengdu's physical layout, social organization, status as a provincial capital, and methods of administrative rule in the late Qing period.

The book then moves on to discuss the reforms, especially police reform. Traditionally in China soldiers carried out police functions such as the guarding of important buildings and other structures and maintaining the peace at the local level. But since it was felt that these duties obstructed the modernization of the army, many believed that a modern police system was needed.

At the forefront of this movement was Zhou Shanpei. In 1899, Zhou had visited Tokyo for the first time and had become an admirer of its orderly and productive nature. Between 1902 and 1912 Zhou served six Sichuan governor-generals in Chengdu. During 1902 he had helped to establish a police administration. Zhou became head of the police bureau in 1906. Besides keeping order in the city, the police, under Zhou set out to transform social habits and customs. Theaters and brothels were brought under tighter control and workhouses for unemployed vagrants, beggars and lawbreakers were founded (p.99). Also vocational training for orphans were established. (For these and other social programs carried out under Zhou Shanpei's tenure as head of the police bureau see pp. 125-38). In 1907 Zhou Shanpei was appointed the superintendent of economic development in Sichuan province. Through this role he continued to have influence on urban reforms until 1911.

Sichuan, in 1911, saw the escalation of tensions over the central government's decision to nationalize the building of railroads. Originally, each province had control over railroad construction and it was considered a matter of local autonomy. However, local corruption and unwise investments (realized during the Shanghai stock market crisis of 1910)caused the central authorities to usurp local control. This was the catalyst that set in motion the downfall of the Qing dynasty and with it came the end of the first set of urban reform in Chengdu.

The immediate post- revolutionary period brought a different political atmosphere to Chengdu. No effective government replaced the fallen Qing bureaucracy. In this vacuum of authority, secret societies, such as the Gelaohui (Society of Elders and Brothers)came to the fore along with a group of prominent reform minded scholars called the 'Five Elders and Seven Sages' (Wu lao qi xian) and activists associated with the foreign community. Secret societies had been marginalized and suppressed during imperial rule, but during the early 1900's they witnessed substantial growth in membership and popularity (also see Stapleton, "Urban Politics in an Age of 'Secret Societies': The Cases of Shanghai and Chengdu", in Republican China, vol. 22, no. 1 (Nov.), pp. 23-63). The police force continued to exist but their control over community affairs was greatly negated by these new social forces.

It was in this strained and fragmented political atmosphere that warlordism was able to develop. "Between 1917 and 1935 Sichuan's regional armies engaged in hundreds of small and large scale wars, breaking the province up into occupation zones that grew and shrank and changed hands frequently"(p. 184). Stapleton shows how in this environment the second wave of urban reform in Chengdu attempted to take place.

These reforms began with General Yang Sen's arrival in Chengdu in 1924. Yang controlled Chengdu for only sixteen months before being chased out of the city by his rivals in the summer of 1925. Stapleton describes how Yang Sen's policies during this time did not take into consideration "local politics" (p. 219). Yang and his colleaques knew about the reform that had transformed coastal cities like Shanghai, and were eager to bring these techniques to Sichuan. However, through his attempt to remake Chengdu, Yang's authoritarian style isolated a large segment of the city's population (see chapter 7).

The post-Yang Sen city administration attempted a more conciliatory policy, bringing the city's more conservative elites back into the fold. This period (late 1920's- early 1930's) saw "the revival of many of the administrative institutions and techniques established by Zhou Shanpei during the New Policies era" (pp. 246- 47).

The second attempt at urban reform reached its apex in 1934. During this time General Liu Xiang reorganized Chengdu's police force, also taking many ideas for its administration from Zhou Shanpei's reform efforts. Stapleton, like Frederic Wakeman in "Policing Shanghai, 1927- 1937"(1995) and Stephen MacKinnon in "Police Reform in Late Ch'ing Chihli" (Ch'ing-shih Wen-t'i, vol.3, no. 4 1975) believes that the police reforms during the 'New Policies' era was "one of the most significant political events in twentieth- century Chinese history" (p. 247).

It is refreshing to see such a thorough study of a city in China's hinterland during the late Qing and early Republican era (add to this Wang Di's, "Street Culture in Chengdu", 2003) after so many studies have been done on coastal cities of this period. Because of the dearth of secondary sources in English, research on inland provinces and cities make for an exciting new path in the study of late Qing and early Republican history.

If not one of the most popular works, then certainly one of the most elegantly written on the subject of the congruencies, or lack there of, between traditional (Confucian) and "modern" China is Joseph Levenson's trilogy 'Confucian China and Its Modern Fate'. Although for the past twenty years or more this has been an often refuted work (see Paul A. Cohen, 'Discovering History in China', 1984), because it was written during an era when many scholars believed that China only made advances toward modernity in a response to the Western onslaught, it is nonetheless a classic in the field of Sinology. Therefore I felt it needed a more thorough review.

According to Levenson's analysis, the China that had existed for thousands of years, the Confucian China, had become stagnant and unable to deal with the modernity that accompanied the second coming of the West to China in the middle and late 1800's. The West, he argued, was the prelude to China's modern transformation, one that had no room for Confucian precepts.

The most refuted sections of the book concerns his discussion on substance (ti) and function (yong), which is taken from Zhang Zidong's (1837-1909) catchphrase, "Chinese learning as substance and Western learning as function", Levenson states that the more the Chinese used the Western model as the 'yong' the more 'ti' (Confucian learning) became irrelevant to Chinese reality.

"Chinese learning, which was to be the 'ti' in the new syncretic culture, was the learning of a society which had always used it for 'yong', as the necessary passport to the best of all careers. Western learning, when sought as 'yong' did not supplement Chinese learning- as the neat formula would have it do- but began to supplant it. For in reality, Chinese learning had come to be prized as substance because of its function and when its function was usurped, the learing withered. The more Western learning came to be accepted as the practical instrument of life and power, the more Confucianism ceased to be 'ti', essence, the naturally believed-in value of a civilization without rival, and became instead an historical inheritance, preserved, if at all, as a romantic token of no surrender to a foreign rival which had changed the essence of Chinese life." (vol. I, p.61)

This view is a continuation and elaboration of his argument in an earlier work, "Liang Qichao and the Mind of Modern China" (1953). In this work he states; "Confucianism, after so many centuries, had at last been drained of any relevance to Chinese reality" (pp. 84-85). In both works Levenson questioned if there could be true deliverance from the past while holding on holistically to culture. In volume three of "Confucian China and its Modern Fate", he seems to give us his answer by implying that the Communist had been able to take Confucianism, once an ideology in action, and place it in the museum of history.

While Levenson is a product of the time when scholars mostly viewed China as being forced to modernize in response to the Western threat, his analysis does not fall into the trap of considering the West as being superior.

Learning + insight + genius = Joseph Levenso

A great collection of essays. I learned a lot. My favorite essays were: (2) Naturalness revisited: why westerners should study Confucius, (3) Ren and Li in the Analects, (4) "What does Heaven Say?", (6) Whose Confucious? Which Analects? (7) Confucius and the Analects in the Han, (9) Unweaving the "one thread" of the Analects 4:15, and (10) An existentialist reading of book 4 of the Analects. I highly recommend it.

The other book reviewer asked rhetorically, "why does Confucius continute to be a source of fascination?" Confucius had a penetrating view of humanity. The book under review is a stimulating academic book, but it does not bring you in touch with the transforming power of Confucius's lessons. To appreciate the power of Confucian lessons to change lives I recommend the book by Robert Canright: "Achieve Lasting Happiness, Times Secrets to Transform Your Life."

Confucius and the Analects is an important collect of studies on a pivotal figure in world civilization.
Editor excerpt: Imagine a person who has an influenence on his native tradition comparable to the combined influence of Jesus and Socrates on the Western tradition. Such a person was Confucius.
The similarities continue. Although all three were literate, perhaps all highly so, neither Confucius, nor Jesus, nor Socrates left behind any of his own writings. We know each only through the later writings of his admirers and detractors. In addition, each had a distinctive, charismatic, and complex personality. These three common features have made each the object of love, hatred, admiration, denigration, and debate for over two millennia.
Though Confucius is referred to in a variety of early Chinese texts, one of our most important sources of information about him is the Analects, a collection of sayings, brief discussions, and observations by and about Confucius, his disciples, and his contemporaries. Despite its great importance, prior to this volume there has never been a collection of secondary essays in English on the Analects. This volume is a collection of essays on the Analects, and on Confucius as seen (primarily) in that classic.
For the last two millennia, most scholars (whether Eastern or Western) have taken all twenty "books" of the Analects as an accurate record of what Confucius and his disciples have said. But scholarship in recent centuries has become more suspicious, investigating such issues as the historical composition of the text of the Analects and the sectarian motives behind various conceptions of Confucius. Consequently, the essays in this anthology are loosely grouped into two sections (based on an aphorism from Analects 2:11: "One who can keep warm the old, yet appreciate the new, is fit to be a teacher"). "Keeping Warm the Old" consists of essays that do not call into question the view that the received text of the Analects represents a coherent worldview. In contrast, the essays in "Appreciating the New" either call into question the integrity of the received text of the Analeces, or explore aspects of the image of Confucius that have been neglected by some of the dominant interpretive traditions.
Why has Confucius been, and why does he continue to be, such a source of fascination? One easy answer is that he has been a symbol for a variety of different (and often contrasting) things: meritocracy, aristocracy, traditionalism, rationalism, aestheticism, "feudalism," secularism, wisdom, ignorance, Chinese culture, virtue, hypocrisy, and "the Orient." On this explanation, Confucius is almost a cipher that functions to mediate our interest in other ideas and institutions. This explanation is not completely inadequate. All of us, at our worst, reduce Confucius to the father figure we either love or love to hate. However, I am enough of a traditionalist to believe that there is something about genuine classics that draws us to them, again and again, independently of accidents of historical association or privileging. Some texts and thinkers touch on central aspects of human life in a way that is elusive, yet unendingly evocative. Confucius was such a thinker, and the Analects is such a text.

Too often our discussion of rule of law and democracy have equated constitutionalism with a respect for rights. In this book, Brown suggests we distinguish between constitutional text and liberal constitutionalist ideals. For example, Brown makes the argument that often rulers are able to get away with authoritarian practices not in violation of their country's constitution, but because that constitution is already weak and illiberal. In many Arab constitutions, executive leaders and kings retained significant power, while legislatures were reduced to mere advisory boards. Furthermore, the executives creatively used ambiguity to further their power (for example, in an early Tunisian constitution, the sultan claimed the power to issue decrees with force of law since the Constitution did not address this issue).

Brown's framework is useful beyond the Middle East. I hope Brown, or somebody following him, applies his framework to China, which is also increasingly trying to institutionalize an authoritarian order based upon an authoritarian constitution.

Brown's argument is impressively supported: although most Arab countries have constitutions, the constitutions themselves do not function as Americans would expect. However, the cynical rejection of these documents as cosmetic devices is flawed, as Arab governments do use these constitutions and they have real meaning, with some prospects for further development.

With all the recent talk of 'democratization' in the Middle East, one would do well to read Nathan Brown and revisit the agenda. What is needed may not be democratization (as elections) but constitutionalism (as in legal restraints on power).

Highly recommended, particularly for those seeking a nontechnical introduction that goes well-beyond the redundant, think tank inspired cheerleading that passes for scholarship on democracy.

Salem's work is the first of its kind, and will be the one everybody is responding to for years. It is, quite simply, brilliant. How does the idea of Lebanon emerge in literary texts? What different concepts of Lebanon contest with each other in art and literature? What is Lebanon, and what is a "nation," anyway? The book treats literature, history, and politics together in one lucid, intelligent narrative. Salem's breadth of knowledge about the subject, and her ease and familiarity with the cultural landscape, are impressive. The argument contains a strong critique of power and of business interests that make capital out of war and suffering.

Many of the works of literature, drama, and music Salem discusses are analyzed here for the first time in English-an invaluable resource. Kahlil Gibran, something of a founding father of Lebanese culture, is treated unsentimentally and taken seriously, something that doesn't usually happen at the same time where he is concerned. The musical theater of the Rahbani brothers, the singing voice and iconic figure of Fayruz as well as the music of Marcel Khalife, Majida al-Roumi, Julia Boutros and others, Aql's poetry, the novels of Elias Khoury, Rachid al-Daif, Hanan al-Shaykh, Hoda Barakat, and many more, all get sophisticated critical attention here. Literature of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), of the Reconstruction period following the war, and right up to "the elusive present" are evaluated. Gender is always present as a thread of analysis. I am excited by the critique of Lebanese television programming in the satellite age and other aspects of mass media and pop culture-Salem is on the cutting edge of cultural studies.

_Constructing Lebanon_ is an ambitious, original, outstanding work. It is also an accessible, interesting book-not just for the specialist in literature or the Middle East, but for any intelligent reader.

Political histories of a nation usually ignore its literature or, at most, compress it into an ancillary chapter. For Elise Salem, however, the writings of Lebanese authors are inseparable from the origins of their country and the record of its recent turmoil. A Lebanese native now living in the United States, but frequently returning to the land of her origin, Salem possesses a unique perspective to write such an analysis. She knows the country's brief history and its political complexities intimately. A literary scholar, she demonstrates extensive and perceptive reading of a wide range of fiction, poetry, and drama, as well as awareness of musical theater productions. Her achievement in this book lies in her ability to demonstrate interrelationships, the ways in which literature has been a source of national identity and serves as an ongoing commentary on unsettling events.

Although the book's subject is Lebanon, Salem also hopes that it will be considered a representative study, with a methodology and a manner of understanding that can be applied to other nations. She notes that those who govern rarely consult their nation's body of writing, and she considers that a mistake: "Artists and intellectuals, often historically in a dubious relationship with the state, not only continue to imagine and hence extend the discourse of the nation but, in more palpable way, participate in remembering, recording, and transforming it."

Salem's eloquent Afterword reiterates, frames, and adds a rich dimension of commentary. It concludes with this possibility: "[These] provocative narratives suggest a new language, vocabulary, style, approach, and thematics that expand the possibilities for Lebanon. They are, after all, the nation's stories and, through fictions, the most telling." Literature was central to Lebanon's origin. Salem's hope is that it will be equally important in helping it face its present crises.

In "Containing Arab Nationalism," Salim Yaqub provides a remarkably in-depth look at U.S. policy in the Middle East during the mid to late 1950s and how it changed in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis. The main theme explored here deals with the increased level of U.S. influence in the context of the Cold War and how the U.S. reacted to Britain's changing role in the region. The narrative that Yaqub presents shows that the U.S. could not have been more serious about keeping Soviet influence out of the Middle East, but that the Eisenhower administration wasn't always confident in the methods employed to achieve this goal. In the end, the administration adapted its policies in such a way that the Soviets never gained the type of stronghold in the region that the U.S. feared, but Yaqub demonstrates that this was by no means an easy task.

The time period covered in the book is short, but Yaqub explores the crucial years of 1956-1960 with remarkable depth. The major events of these years, such as the interventions in Lebanon and Jordan, as well as the Iraqi revolution are all delicately woven into the overall narrative of how the Cold War affected Western policy towards the region. Yaqub's writing style is superb, and the book is extensively researched. This book should be at the top of the list of students and scholars alike that wish to achieve a greater understanding of recent Middle Eastern history and how those countries interacted with the United States.

In this important work the Eisenhower doctrin of containment in the middle east is finally given a full length book and its place in cold war history is finally made. Eisenhower had a number of Middle Eastern hands around him and like Presidents before and after he cemented his middle east policy on one pillar: Sunni conservatism, which at the time meant Nuri-Al Said, King Hussien, the house of Saud and the Shah of Iran(not a sunni, a nominal shia Persian nationalist). The creation of Nasserism in the early 1950s led Eisenhower to reposition America in the middle East. Before the 1956 Suez crises the United States took a back seat in the Middle East. Nevertheless the idea of the Baghdad pact, a confederation opposing communist ifniltration of the region was essential to U.S policy. Already the U.S had supported Turkey and Greece against Communism and when it seemed that Nasser would accept Khrushchev money to build the Aswan High Dam, Ike saw the danger. After the neo-imperialism of the English and French invasion of Egypt in 1956, Eisenhower took the plunge. He cemented the policy by trying to ally with conservative regimes, not neccesarily democratic but what he and his CIA director Dulles and Kirmet Roosevelt saw as the lesser of two evils.

When Lebanon was threatened in 1958 U.S troops went ashore. When Jordan was threatened the UK sent paratroops. Syria was cemented for a short period. A revolution against the Shah was thwarted. Iraq was kept firmly in the orbit of the west. Saudi had no where to turn as Nasser invaded Yemen and bombed Saudi so that Saudi had to fund the royalists fighting in Yemen. In addition the U.S had to check nasserism in Libya and Algeria.

This was not a simple game. What one may notice is that Israel was not part and partial to this policy. Eisenhower advisors saw Israel as a leftist upstart, upsetting the Sunni elites they loved and not helpful against Communism. It wasn't until JFK that ISrael became a U.S ally. This will shock those who beleive the U.S created Israel and that Israel was an 'offshore military base' from the get go.

A wonderful contirbution.

Seth J. Frantzman

After studying music since I was 5 years old this is One of the BEST if not the BEST music book ever seen. It is very precious and rare. and the coptic Music is the same as the ancient egyptian Music

What a great, inspiring work of worship has been accomplished in this statement of faith by the ancient Christian church in impressive liturgical form. The original Coptic language is translated into harmony with both English and Arabic. The actions of the priest and the choir are described in both living languages. The musical notes and corresponding chant syllables are clearly printed. Music scholars, religious scholars, researchers in ancient languages will all find rich rewards in this volume. The "ordinary" person-in-the-pew who loves Biblical Scriptures will also find confirmation and awe in the deep worship that has survived since the first century. The reader of this work will find the introductory remarks instructive to his study and worship. And if the reader has Arabic as his primary language, he will be impressed to have this volume also readable from back-to-front and left-to-right, with the English and Coptic also accompanying.

It got to me on time and in good shape! It is a very well written book, great for anyone who is interested in Asiatic history, or borderland disputes.

"Crossed Histories" is a collection of articles written by competent scholars about cultural and subconscious meaning of the term 'Manchuria' in modern Asia. The multi-angled perspective of presenting japanese propaganda movies, utopian city planning, manchurian spy-turned princess and the fate of polish engineers and settlers - builders of the transsiberian railroad provides and interesting journey into the 1930s asian continent and serves as a starting point for anyone interested in that time period. The book hardly fills out the entire subject - rather is like a glimpse into the forgotten world of interwar Manchukuo and an array of cultural meanings it has for several eurasian nations. Becouse of being an inhabitant of Poland, I have my own specific understanding of that exotic realm, complaisant to images existing in my own national memory (the rule of Tsars over polish people, the career of polish intelligentsia on Siberia and our contribution in colonial exploration of Eurasia - which was completely accidental by the way) so it was great to see what 'Manchuria' means for Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and what feelings and memories it awakens in them. When I was in school, I had a friend who was born in a family repatriated from Mukden in 1949, and he posessed completely different mentality, than people that descended from families which have lived in Europe for centuries. In a way, Manchuria links many distant peoples of Eurasia - now they can just explore their interrelations and differences to try build real pan-asian understanding. To be frank, I seriously miss articles covering White Russians, jewish immigrants in Manchuria and indigenious Manchurians of course, they still existed in times of Manchukuo. I have a reason to think, howewer, that thanks to this book such articles will emerge in some time. Great as an intellectual stimulation for more complex studies of interwar Asia, which was undoubtly an ultimate goal of madam Mariko Tamanoi and her colleagues.

Gail Hershatter in Dangerous Pleasures presents a picture of a multi-layered discursive terrain in her case in studying Shanghai prostitution. She focuses on the rapid industrialization transformation of the city at the turn of the century. From the beginning, she acknowledges the limitation and the impossibility in retrieving the voices of prostitutes and confronts the subjectivity of the sources: ¡§All historical records are products of a nexus of relationships that can be only dimly apprehended or guessed at across the enforced distance of time, by historians with their own localized preoccupations.¡¨ (4) Prostitution should be understood through the shifting and multiple meanings of categories and the discourses of different issues: The category views through which prostitution was understood were not fixed, and tracing them requires attention to questions of urban history, colonial and anti-colonial state making, and the intersection of sexuality, particularly female sexuality, with an emerging nationalist discourse. (4)

Poststructuralist theory seems to be a potential solution to the problem since it makes the historian more attentive to the process of contextualization of sources in producing the historical narrative and ¡§the trace of craft, as well as the crafty presentation or concealment.¡¨ (13) Using this method, Hershatter eschews the structuralist approach and creates room for broader themes and interpretations. Her approach can be analyzed through several themes that connect her narrative: the writings by male authors that constitute and symbolize masculinity discourse, the classification and naming that form the dominant ideology, and the representations of prostitutes as a human agents. Hershatter questions the male discourses on courtesans, and the process by which prostitution was used for nostalgic purposes to construct their class identity of the men. Her interpretations are mostly based on the writings which represent the imaginations and nostalgia of male authors. She argues that her sources are not only reflective of thinking of reality at the period, but are active in forming the discourse of urban masculinity. As historian Timothy Gilfoyle describes, her main sources, guidebooks of prostitutes and brothels, ¡§provided rules of etiquette for reasons of self-representation, offered cautionary tales on sexually transmitted disease, presented sentimental views of the past, and served as vehicles for men to remember, classify, and count prostitutes.¡¨ She attempts to deconstruct and demystify the nostalgic memory by analyzing the language of the male writers. She concludes that it symbolizes a form of power and status identification, which can be used to negotiate and communicate with each other. The language and text are gendered and form the notion of elite class culture. In the elite writings, only courtesans exist. Juxtaposed with those narratives are fictionalized accounts of the scams and sufferings of prostitutes and newspaper reporting on the ¡§pheasants.¡¨ They are ways in which ¡§elites constructed and sought to contain categories of subordinated ¡¥others¡¦.¡¨ These classifying strategies of orders have constituted a hierarchy of prostitutes and reinforced stereotypes and shaped public judgments on them. ¡§The narrativized traces that form the historical record courtesans and lower-class prostitutes are also a set of congealed relations of power¡¨ in which courtesans were never depicted of furtive or seamy. (11) Different from the earlier historians, Hershatter analyzes the construction of hierarchies of prostitution and the meanings of categories themselves rather than the inequality with the social history framework. Thus, instead of just observing the causes and the effects of regulations on prostitution, Hershatter looks for the meanings of concepts and studies the political and cultural process in which those meanings are created and how they affect prostitutes. In 1920s, the discourse has shifted from one of nostalgia to one of reform. There were reform campaigns to abolish or regulate prostitution. There was a conscious effort by a new middle-class to eliminate prostitution and create a negative image for prostitutes. In analyzing the process of creating the new conception of prostitution, Hershatter dissects and displays the problematic power relations and conscience underlying it, and how the middle-class tried to move away from the earlier elites through their new writings about venereal disease and public disorder. Prostitution once again became a metaphor but for different purposes. It sheds light on the elites and middle classes discussed their problems, fears, agendas and visions and represents social degeneration. Sex is used as a medium through which people talked about larger paradigms, such as political and cultural transformations, nationality etc. Despite the cacophonous sound made by competing discourses and the difficulty to find the elusive subaltern voice of prostitutes, Hershatter still believe that a single seamless account is possible and their voices can be heard. She contends that the dissonances between the discourses are ¡§arguably where the most interesting mapping can be done.¡¨ The way to reconstruct the past is to recognize that the some of the competing discourses can be seen only in relation to each other. (27) Related to it is the search of agency and resistance. Hershatter gives instances of resistance and agency within the system and the structure: A courtesan who left the brothel with an attractive but impoverished young man, or a courtesan who chose handsome actors and drivers as her companions rather than the free-spending merchants preferred by the madam¡KA street walker who represented herself in court as the victim of traffickers resisted being classified as a bad woman, a threat to social order, or a spreader of disease.(27)

For Hershatter, the search for prostitutes¡¦ voices is possible, even through reading the narratives of elites and males, but only if we read the texts carefully and analyze the contents as well as the language. The sources Hershatter uses are guidebooks, tabloid press, municipal regulations, police interrogations, medical reports, newspaper reports of court cases, and learned articles by elites (reformers, regulators and revolutionaries). She also uses many secondary sources both in Chinese and English.

Dangerous Pleasures is hands-down one of the best Shanghai history books available. It is also one of the most pleasurably readable "academic" books I've encountered. It takes the obviously sensational topic of prostitution in the "Wh*re of the Orient" and treats it with candor and humor, not stooping to either exploiting the sensationalism or stifling it under a heavy woolen blanket of academic deconstruction.

Hershatter - who enjoys a well-deserved reputation as one of the foremost social historians of Chinese women and of Shanghai - depicts and dissects the prostitutes and the moralists alike, and without condescending moralism. She explains and then adopts the more relaxed Eastern attitude towards the sex trade, which is important in understanding the deeper culture of the courtesan in late Qing and Republican China.

The western world is already familiar with Japan's Geisha culture, but China's equally rich courtesan tradion - perhaps because it early attacks by missionaries and abolition by the Communists, those stodgiest of prudes - has less to capture the world's imagination.

Shanghai's historical prostitution ran the gamut, from the rarified courtesans to the White Russians to taxi dancers to the cheap bang for the buck street-walking "Ye Ji" ("wild chicken"!), and Hershatter touches on them all in this exhaustive project, but her primary interest lies with the courtesans.

A young girl would be "apprenticed" (essentially sold, as with all apprenticeships of the era) to a brothel, where she would grow up learning the arts of hospitality while developing talents in singing, musical instruments, dance, poetry, and painting - the pretensions of China's traditional scholar class. Once prepubescent, she would break into society, and compete for admirers personal and public with her culture as much as her appearance. Her repute would determine the price of her virginity, but afterwards she was relatively free to select her patron-lovers, provided she was in enough demand to have a choice.

Hershatter documents how courtesans were the pop stars of early cosmopolitan Shanghai before the occurence of film and pop music, their lives and style dissected in the popular press, which is why the movie and music stars that came later were painted with an aura of disrespectability.

Dangerous Pleasures also follows the backlashes against commercial sexuality, culminating in the total eradication of Shanghai's sex trade in the 1950s under the Communists. The tale continues to (almost) present day, with the emergence of prostitution in the early 1990s at foreign-targetted hotels and discos like Galaxy.

In Shanghai now as in then, there is much prostitution but no precise prostitutes; instead of courtesans and taxi dancers and tour guides and Wild Chickens, we now have Golden Birds and Fishing Girls and Little Country Sisters and Barbershop Misses. Along with "Beyond the Neon Lights", a history of Shanghai's lane culture, "Dangerous Pleasures" illustrates how little has really changed in Shanghai over the past 100 years, which is what makes the city delightful.

Despite its heft and specificity, I highly recommend Dangerous Pleasures as first reading for Shanghai novices as well as for Old Hands. It is far more engaging and interesting and readable than the general histories on the market. Don't let its academic credentials phase you, I took this as train reading and couldn't put down.

This is the most sympathetic and healthy accounts of Palestinian Arabs you're ever likely to encounter. Written with disarming simplicity. I assign this book to my classes whenever possible.

Wonderful book. Gives a very insightful summary of the history of Israel from an Arab perspective on a personal scale. The author envelopes you into the story of one ordinary family's life from life in the British mandate through the beginning of the Intifadah. As well as being a description of Arab life within Israel, this book also provides interesting material about the life of small-scale agriculturalists in Arabia.