California Books

Renegade for Peace and Justice: Congresswoman Barbara Lee Speaks for Me is something everyone should read including middle school students.

Barbara Lee's book is very interesting, especially
her life before politics. This gal is a real hero and
really what America is about. By heard work, by not
being involved in the prison of fear, she conquered all.
If all Congresspeople had come up the same fashion I think we
would have a very exciting Congress.
Willliam Forst

It was a quick read. I learned some things I didn't know. For one I never knew that Lee was an active member of the Black Panther Party during her days as a college student at Mills College in Oakland. Growing up she was a domestic violence victim, as was her mother before her. That was a surprise. I could never imagine a man even thinking of beating her down.

When I lived in the Bay Area I had a chance to talk one on one with Lee twice. I found her to be honest, straightforward, and eager to listen to her constituents. That is a trait often unheard of these days. Most politicians only seem interested in campaign contributors not the everyday worker.

The first chapter of the book is a bit slow but it takes off after that. It is also unfortunate that the black and white photos are of such poor quality.

I particularly found her decision to vote against the Baby Bush war and the reactions to it captivating. Not many people in history have had the courage she has.

This is a book I have been waiting a long time for. It was well worth the read and I am anxiously looking forward to her next book.

Dwight
[...]

The Times Literary Supplement July 14, 2006

Before Tiananmen
Jonathan Mirsky
REPUBLICAN BEIJING. The city and its histories. By Madeleine Yue Dong. 400pp.
Berkeley: University of California Press. $50; distributed in the UK by Wiley.
Pounds 32.50. - 0 520 23050 7.
REMAKING BEIJING. Tiananmen Square and the creation of a political space. Wu Hung. 256pp. Reaktion. Paperback, Pounds 19.95. - 1 86189 235 7.
US: University of Chicago Press. $35. - 1 861 89235 7.
LHASA. Streets with memories. Robert Barnett. 244pp. New York: Columbia University Press. $24.50. - 0 231 13680 3.
KYOTO. A cultural and literary history. John Dougill. 272pp. Oxford: Signal.
Pounds 12. - 1 904955 13 4.
US: Oxford University Press. $55. - 0 19 530137 4.
Asian cities are a hot academic subject these days. Madeline Yue Dong, a historian at the University of Washington, must know as much as anyone about Beijing during the past hundred years and the centuries long before. That may have saved her life. In 1989, during the army's assault on the capital's citizens, which extended far beyond Tiananmen Square, her knowledge of the city's alleyways meant that "I could always maneuver the streets and get where I wanted to be when the main arteries were blocked".
But her excellent book Republican Beijing is not about the Chinese capital's most recent history, despite a few pointed remarks about how the city's residents, forced out of their traditional alleys by the demolition crews, no longer know their neighbours. Established by the Mongols as their capital in 1267, except for a brief period during the Ming, Beijing remained the capital of China until 1928, when Chiang Kai-shek settled his regime in Nanjing. In 1949, Mao reestablished Beijing's exalted status (which for many Chinese and foreigners it had never lost, except in name).
Professor Dong has read everything, it seems, from Mongol times to the latest scholarship. She makes clear that she owes much to David Strand's Rickshaw Beijing: City and politics in the 1920s (1989), Sydney Gamble's Peking: A social survey (1921) and a vast array of Chinese sources, notably the great writer Lao She's stories and novels of the 1920s and 30s. Handling her sources competently and entertainingly, she surveys architecture, history, sociology, street life and literature.
Dong's main point is that nostalgia among Chinese and foreign tour operators for "old Beijing" and its food, shops, manners and entertainments, is based on a false premiss. "In many ways, what is today believed to be 'old Beijing' is not so old.
It is not imperial Beijing but the historically recent Republican Beijing." Part of the nostalgia, she notes, is the result of the "commercialisation of history" that brings tourists to the few alleyways not yet mowed down by bulldozers and to the "folk art center" in the Tianqiao district, to which ordinary people were allowed access only after the fall of the last Manchu Emperor in 1911. But Beijing residents themselves, once a kind of modernization began after 1912, and even after they were moved into "modern" buildings surrounded by noisy highways, clung to a past which is not so distant. Far from being a life to which they long to return, the city's past "provides a vocabulary and reference for the city's residents to criticise things they do not wish to see today". Perfect examples of this are the names of the old alleyways. The modernizing Republican city planners found that many of these 3,000 hutong had identical names: of temples, walls, or shapes -"Carrying Pole", "Pants", "Pig Tail", "Pot Mender" and "Pimp" -and changed 300 of them. "Dog Tail", for instance, became "Old Man with High Morality": from vulgar, that is, to cultured. In 1934, new street-markers appeared on every hutong, but "the old names echoed in people's daily speech for years to come".
Apart from the occasional lapse into professional jargon, Dong is a vivid writer who makes not-so-old Beijing come to life. Wrestlers, food, stilt-walkers, four classes of prostitutes, missionaries longing to reform the city's wicked ways, novelists, and modern-minded intellectuals who scorned the old until they left the city, walk into and off her pages. Another of her central themes is "recycling".
Republican Beijing was not an industrial city. With its overwhelming population of poor, it struggled through grinding years of Japanese pressure and loss of face and wealth when the capital moved south. Poor as it was, very little was truly thrown away. Everything was reused: paper, clothes, metal, jewellery, leather, antiques -reappearing, often dodgily restored, in a hierarchy of markets, to which the poorest of the poor and the richest foreigners found their way.
Specialists for whom nothing was too worn or dilapidated collected cast-offs from every sort of dwelling. Old paper was transformed into shoe soles; valuable articles ended up in the city's 240 antique shops, with their 1,400 clerks. "Used objects underwent a complex journey through a chain of commercial netherworlds before they reappeared on the open market."
Probably Lao She (who would die violently, decades later, in the Cultural Revolution) best grasped the essence of the nostalgia surrounding "old Beijing".
Dong writes that he "took the motionless, frozen world captured by the collectors of the miscellaneous 'old Beijing' and brought it to life by inserting living characters into it". Dong's important book is illuminated by the kind of vivid detail that many scholars ignore. It soars far above the usually earthbound specialist world.
Tiananmen, the "Gate of Heavenly Peace", rises on the south side of the Forbidden City, which faces on to what since 1949 has been a great square. The five centuries of the Gate and the relatively recent Square are explored by Wu Hung, an art historian at the University of Chicago, in his Remaking Beijing:
Tiananmen Square and the creation of a political space, which is a well-informed history of the transformation of the rather small, crowded, asymmetrical space, partly flanked by timber houses, in front of the Forbidden City, into a vast 50-acre "guangchang", a square, the biggest man made space in the world. It arose from the accelerated wrecking of traditional Beijing -just as Lhasa was to be wrecked -at the command of Mao Zedong (although the "modernization" of the Square began in the Republican period, as Dong shows) and the city's metamorphosis into a socialist capital. There the army would parade and hundreds of thousands of citizens "spontaneously" display their adoration of Mao, who stood on the Gate, where Emperors had once appeared, and waved to the masses.
The Square also became, against government wishes, the place where great crowds gathered, in 1976, to show their anger at the Gang of Four, and again in 1989, to demand greater liberty and an end of official corruption. Professor Wu Hung sensitively intertwines his learned analysis with a personal account of how Tiananmen influenced him and his family.
He explains how the Communists decided to turn the area in front of the Forbidden City from a relatively private space into an overpowering public one.
There, too, as in Lhasa, Stalinist brutal buildings have been succeeded by triumphalist flashy ones. He explains as well why Tiananmen was the focus of the 1989 demonstration, why it attracted Chinese from all over the country -and why the leadership took the uprising especially seriously, because of where it took place. Wu Hung watched the killings on a screen in the United States.
"Tiananmen retained its power over me, but a power that threatened to destroy my existence. I was not freed from this repressive power even after I emigrated to America: watching students killed in front of Tiananmen on 4 June, 1989, I felt as if I were there, struggling under its shadow."
Lhasa: Streets with memories is really three books, all by Robert Barnett, a leading young Tibetanist at Columbia University, whose past publications are marked by originality and eloquence. He concedes the presence of two books: one examines "underlying themes in Tibetan myths and histories that might give broad clues to the ways Lhasa's residents think about their city"; the second "looks at buildings and the layout of city streets". These constructions, he claims, are "a kind of concrete spelling out of the dreams and aspirations of the state or the people who had them built".
He aims "to scrape a little of the topsoil off the affective history of a city" and posits "the essential illegibility of a city to its foreign visitors".
Despite his ability to speak Tibetan, many visits to Lhasa since 1987, and his more recent residence there for a few months every year, teaching foreign students, that illegibility affects Barnett himself: "A foreigner always has limited access to the associations that hover around streets and buildings in Tibet; even visitors fluent in the language are left to guess whether their more political conceptions are shared by local people".
In this short book, Dr Barnett does not begin to describe Lhasa today until page 61. Before that, he surveys, as have many other authors, the views of foreigners who saw Tibet and Tibetans variously as happy, dirty, mysterious, simple, traditional and backward. Tibetans could also be cruel, and Barnett supplies well-known twentieth-century examples of what happened to modernizers or to the politically over-ambitious. He sums up, too, the complex but fascinating history of early Tibetan relations with China, especially that of the seventh-century Tang dynasty. Princess Wencheng was married off to a Tibetan King. The Chinese still imagine that she brought civilization to Tibet; probably she was a sort of protection currency, to buy off Tibetan pressure on China's borders. Barnett unravels the scholarship on how traditional Tibetans viewed Lhasa as a place coterminous with an outstretched pre-Buddhist goddess.
He describes the journey to Lhasa in 1903 by the Imperialist Colonel Francis Younghusband who used Maxim guns to massacre 3,000 to 4,000 ill-armed Tibetans who confronted him. This was such a dastardly deed that at least one of the British gunners pretended, during the slaughter, that his gun had jammed.
Barnett gives this awful and shaming moment in British history a monumental significance: Colonel Younghusband was "the person most responsible for the chain of Chinese invasions that beset Tibet in the following half century".
Perhaps he means to suggest that, after the Younghusband episode, the Chinese felt so threatened by Britain that they moved into Tibet in force in a way they previously had not. Although they were forced to depart in 1912, the Chinese never abandoned their conviction that Tibet is an integral part of Chinese territory; Barnett perhaps piles too much on the savage Younghusband's shoulders.
The remainder of Barnett's book is about what the Chinese occupiers did to Lhasa after the invasion of 1951. He discerns six styles of architecture, ranging from the dormitory and the garage-like shop, to the less Stalinist but still Sino-chauvinist fantasies of today, inappropriate and designed as investment that will benefit the occupiers. These new styles violate traditional Tibetan ones, which look good and suit both cold and hot weather.
Such buildings are being steadily destroyed, as previous studies and many visitors contend. Barnett believes that "The indigenous styles are part of a conversation with the Tibetan past and a dream about the future . . . . Within the world and unworld compounds of the city . . . live people the archaeology of whose lives can scarcely be read from their exteriors". But a simpler explanation would emphasize that these six styles, and this destruction, have been inflicted on all China's cities, as Dong shows in Republican Beijing.
Then there is the third book within a book, not specified by Barnett, but perhaps the most striking and baffling. It is a vivid account of his first visit to Lhasa, undated but almost certainly in 1987, when, a few days after his arrival, he witnessed a sudden uprising and the overwhelming and violent response of the Chinese security forces. He came to the aid of at least one shot person, and eventually walked out to Nepal through snow and avalanches. He did not return for seven years, and at least once more was obliged to flee abruptly. He provides no explanation for this.
Strangely, Barnett gives the impression -and he must know this is not so -that it is only recently that the Chinese have attempted to suppress Buddhism. His own important earlier book, Poisoned Arrow (1997), provides the text of the tenth Panchen Lama's letter, in 1962, to Premier Zhou Enlai, condemning the Chinese for attempting to eradicate Buddhism, the very heart of being a Tibetan.
As Robert Barnett has shown over the years, and even at times in this book, he knows a great deal better than most other Tibetanists what is happening in Tibet.
There is no need to give the impression that his readers must intuit the actual situation in Lhasa. A tough editor could have made this unusual, revelatory -and irritating -book less puzzling.
John Dougill's Kyoto introduces a little history of the ancient capital of Japan, its architecture, gardens, handicrafts, food, literature and entertainments, and the world of the geisha. Dougill is very good on food. Kyoto: A cultural and literary history is something between a good guidebook, which these days must provide much of what Dougill includes, and cultural studies. It is a slim and informative book, and a traveller can pocket it along with the Rough Guide.



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Beijing: A Disappearing Imperial Capital

Madeleine Yue Dong. _Republican Beijing: The City and its Histories_. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. x + 400 pp. illustration, maps, note, bibliography, index. $50 (hardcover). ISBN: 0520230507

Reviewed By: Yuxin Ma, Department of History, Armstrong Atlantic State University

Madeleine Yue Dong's Republican Beijing captured the transformations of Beijing from China's imperial capital, to the capital of the Republic, to a city of itself which was integrated into the modern industrial world market in the 1910s-30s. A major contribution of this book is that Dong rejects the dichotomies of tradition / modernity, of past / present, and of East / West, arguing for the centrality of the past, of history, of memory, even of nostalgia in the modernizing and self-consciously modern city. In the three parts of the book, Dong studies the transformation of the city's spatial order, the material life of the city's inhabitants, and cultural representations of the city in the Republican period.
In Part I "The City of Planners," Dong focuses on how the change of political ideal from Qing state to the Republic affected the principles of urban planning. In studying the transformation of spatial order and hierarchy in Beijing, Dong analyzes how the construction of railway and streets destroyed the imperial spatial order, and created new spatial organization and mobility. She finds once Beijing lost its status as imperial capital, its administrative boundaries and fiscal budget changed; Republican Beijing gradually lost her control of caravan trade from Mongolia and other long distance trades to her neighboring city Tianjin, which had easy railway accesses and was a treaty port city. In addition, Beijing had to compete with nearby places given to importance by railway for resources.
Dong is sophisticated in balancing the state planning from above with societal efforts from below in defining the new spatial order in Beijing. She finds both the state and the people utilized new political concepts such as "the public interest," and "people's livelihood" to argue for their cases. In struggling and negotiating with the state, ordinary people tried to define the meaning of those political concepts and the historical identities of their local communities. Dong provides a vivid picture of how the Beijing municipal government, the commercial forces of the city, and ordinary urban residents struggled with each other in getting city-planning information, controlling land use, and regulating street construction.
Dong parallels the change of political orders in China to the different modernizing projects in Beijing. Beijing did not have a self-sufficient economy as the old imperial capital, and the political changes in Republican period further weakened the local economy. Dong argues that when Beijing was still the capital of the Republic in 1911-28, the Republican government destroyed its city wall, created new streets and parks, and built revolutionary monuments, to modernize the city. After Beijing lost its capital status to Nanjing in 1928, under the new mayor Yuan Liang in the mid 1930s, Beijing's imperial glory was emphasized, and her historical sites were preserved. Yuan Liang intended to make Beijing a city of traditional Chinese culture to attract tourism.
In Part II "The City of Experience," Dong brings up a challenging but well supported argument that Beijing was not lagging behind other coastal areas in terms of its integration into the new global economy, but its integration had detrimental effects on local economy. The global industrial economic network made the city a market without improving its industrial production-Beijing people relied on imported goods to live, and the city only exported luxury goods. Dong finds the modern banks in Beijing did not make significant contribution to local economy, meanwhile old style credit institutions were not integrated into the new system. Dong pays attention to different modes of consumptions among people of different classes in Republican Beijing. She finds at the newly developed commercial centers in the wealthy inner city, money could be transformed into social status-consumption at new commercial centers like Wangfujing was an expression of one's social status. But most poor people went to temple fairs and recycling places to get what they needed. She argues that the mechanism of recycling was developed in Republican Beijing as a strategy for survival.
Dong reconstructs the popular culture of Republican Beijing by studying the Tianqio district. Created by new forces-"those who were in the way of new Beijing," facilitated by modern transportation-the railway and trolley, Tianqiao was a popular destination for Beijing people in the Republican period. Initially designed as an elite leisure center, Tianqiao soon became a market for all, and was enlivened and held together by elements from the past. Dong studies the cultural dimensions of Tianqiao market and entertainment, and argued as a public space where everyone could go, Tianqiao did not represent an egalitarian order or equality.
In Part III "The Lettered City," Dong studies how Republican Beijing was explored by sociology, history and literature. She finds in the 1920s sociology as a discipline to examine urban ills provided Beijing scholars the opportunity to turn way from political enthusiasm toward practical study, and they found poverty, crime and prostitution in the city resulted from larger social problems, and proposed social control and reform in Republican Beijing. Turning to history, she finds recording the old Beijing as the imperial capital became popular in the mid 1920s; Ming and Qing gazetteers were reprinted, and the changes of the city were detailed in historical writings. Dong argues that representing Beijing was a serious struggle involved in creating a system of knowledge about the city. She studies the narrative strategies and finds in those historical representation, place was treated as history-spatial changes functioned as the organizing mechanism, and people's everyday practices were taken for knowledge.
Dong excels at studying how Republican Beijing was represented in Chinese literature in different periods. In the 1910s-20s, intellectuals who embraced the new urban order and public spaces of the city created by the Republic criticized the city's low level of efficiency in their writings. From 1924 to 1935, intellectuals became more attached to the city, and their writings frequently mentioned museums and city parks created by the Republic. The rise of study on local customs (minsuxue yundong) attracted many writers to write on the local customs, ballads and pilgrimages. Dong points out that some writers consciously chose Beijing as "hometown" in their writing, to reject what Shanghai represented. She seems to suggest that resistance was also a response to modernity. Dong's analysis on Lao She's writings after 1925 really catches the popular sentiment about Republican Beijing: Lao She used the city as the stage and setting to situate his characters-those typical Beijingren had a good knowledge of the city, but their world fell apart.
Readers who love the old Beijing will enjoy this book. Reading this book is like wandering in an enchanting world which was about to disappear.

This is a book about the history of Beijing, the capital of China, between 1911 to 1937. But it tells you more than just a conventional history of the city. You actually learn how people lived in that time at that place. It also tells you about how Chinese writers wrote about the city. All the scholarly work aside, this book is quite enjoyable for an average reader. Get a copy if you are going to visit or re-visit that city: you will see it in a different light!

Back in the early 1950's, my dad would take the family to Yosemite every year. We'd travel from Los Angeles Basin, over the Grapevine, to Fresno and Yosemite. Though very young, I remembered the old road, before the Interstate 5 Freeway. I remembered many twists and turns and thought we were probably on the original Ridge Route. Years later when I was taking my own family to Yosemite, I'd look for traces of that old Ridge Route. Finally I turned to the Internet, where so much can be learned, and discovered this book on the Ridge Route by Harrison Scott. I ordered and read the book, only to discover that there was an original Ridge Route that I had never been on. It was a very interesting discovery.

The book is very easy reading and educational. I learned where the original Ridge Route was and that it can still be traveled today. The history of the Ridge Route was even more interesting than I had anticipated. It was fascinating. The road is not the only thing on that ridge of mountains. Oil, water, and electricity also come over the ridge. I also discovered that what I thought was the original Ridge Route, was actually the Alternate Ridge Route, the old Highway 99, when it had three-lanes. I remember the fourth lane being built.

Harrison Scott digs deep into the history of the Ridge Route. So much happened along that road. So many hotels, restaurants, gas stations, wild west roberies, and very interesting characters are associated with the route. Reading the book was a fascinating walk through the making of Los Angeles Basin, the joining of North and South California, the movers and shakers of early California and how they helped build the great Los Angeles Basin. I also enjoyed the many old photographs discovered by the author and reprinted in the book.

Anyone who enjoys history, especially of Southern California, will enjoy reading this book. Harrison Scott does a masterful job of bringing all that history together in a form that's both very interesting and entertaining. I highly recommend the book.

Scotty's book gives us an in-depth look at the old road over the Tehachapi Mountains that scared even the most competent drivers. He was responsible for gaining recognition for this historic transportation route between the great San Joaquin Valley and the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles. Scotty has compiled a wonderful collection of material to share with the reader. Through his words and photographs, he shows the reader the early means of getting from one area to the other via motor car and truck. It is an invaluable reference for anyone studying the great central artery of California.

One of the best road trip guide books I have ever read, "Ridge Route" provides a fascinating look into the history of the most outrageous highway construction projects of the 20th century. This little-known highway parallels the route of the present day I-5 near the Grapevine northwest of Los Angeles. The old highway features 627 curves over the course of about 30 miles and is a true historical gem. Harrison's book will keep you on the edge of your seat, whether you are reading it from the comfort of your study or perched on a turn-out on this remarkable highway. Harrison has included scores of old photographs documenting the history of the road and a wonderful collection of personal stories about the people who lived and worked around the road. This is a book that every fan of road trips should have in their collection.

This wonderful new book on Hinduism and ecology comes as a fresh new perspective. Highly recommended!!!

I echo the other reviewers thus far who have given the book five stars. Haberman's concise summary of the environmental movement, its underlying philosophies, and their relation to Hinduism is enlightening. His treatment of the Yamuna River, its beauty, sacredness, unfortunate pollution, and Haberman's own love for Her is thoroughly enchanting, except for the part about pollution. However, that part has become an essential or urgent aspect of our world. Without understanding pollution, how would we selfish beings tear ourselves away from our trivial pursuits to serve something higher. Our sacrifice to something higher might be a river, the earth, or a deity. However, as Haberman's book implies, we had better sacrifice ourselves unselfishly, rather than selfishly sacrificing the rivers and the earth to our selfish greed.

This is a lovely, lyrical book. The author's encounters with the local people were fascinating as was his description of the religious motivation for the surge in environmental awareness and concern in India. Such a different perspective than we have in the West. This is a wonderful, very readable book for anyone interested in rivers, preserving our planet, travel, India, or the religious traditions and stories of Northern India.

I went to J-Tree for the first time last week. I bought this book at Nomad Adventures in Joshua Tree. Because it's one of three volumes, more detail is given for the routes. There are just too damn many routes in J-tree to try to pack them into one book. This book is a must. I am looking forward to the next two books - and my next trip back.

Got this book this month (December) and have already began picking out new routes I want to do! I definitely am an advocate of his (Randy Vogel's) seeming conviction that his original JTree book needed some updating. This guide gives new route info, as well as more developed topo's, pictures, etc. I will likely get his new book when it comes out in print this January, simply because I am already impressed with this one and his next one will cover the Central (Split Rock, Saddle Rock, etc.) more extensively than his original 1 book volume did.

Just got my copy and after spending a couple hours with this guide, all I can say is Wow! Kinda thick, but so much info and really liked the history section. Can't wait to visit some of the new spots...

Only question, when are the other volumes coming out?

AThis is a fabulous book, of special interest to women and sensitive thinkers of all cultures. Padma Hejmadi writes with a clarity and compactness unrivaled in today's literature. She explores the world from her special vantage point, bringing it alive with her gift of visual as well as written language. The scenes imprint themselves on one's memory forever. The gift of this courageous woman is not to be ignored. Read and enjoy!

This is a soaring, remarkable exploration of human consciousness, seen through the filters of time, place, and language. Hejmadi captures the intricacies of human awareness with precision, clarity, wit, and grace. Whether the setting is East or West, Delhi or Taos, Hejmadi's truths about love, life, work & family are reverberant and universal. She has the gift of making you walk her extraordinary path along with her. A wonderful gift for any booklover in your life.

this small book contains a huge amount of living, thinking and writing. Please read it and buy it. Your view of the world will expand and your faith in humanity andthe ablilty to think will be greatly enlarged.

This book is good,too.I am like it.

Eileen Chang has created a vivid and poignant portrait of a young who is trapped in a traditional, patriachal system. Yindi, a lower-class girl, is forced into an unhappy marriage. Her husband is ineffectual and somewhat infantile. Blind and addicted to opium, he can not defend Yindi and himself. Yindi's mother-in-law, Old Mistress, is also a victim of the system herself. She turns her power onto everyone in the house. In reality, after her death, none of her sons gets a dime. In the end, Yindi mistakens her madness as her power. Her insanity escalates as China goes through drastic changes. Chang's prose is captivating; it keeps spinning the fascinating, complex of Yindi. The descriptions are vividly drawn. Chang wrote this novel in English (no translation).

In Ding Ling's "Miss Sophia's Diary," in the entry of March 28, the main character, Sophia, makes an honest assessment of her life as a woman: "....why I've felt such bitter despair for so long. Only I know how many tears I've shed....Rather than calling this diary a record of my life, it's more accurate to regard it as the sum of all my tears." In a way, Eileen(Ai-Ling)Chang's Rouge of the North is the sum of Yindi's tears. From a lower class, Yindi is fated to be doomed in a patriarchal system. As a woman, she does not have much choice in deciding whom she's going to marry. Her only shred of freedom is shown when she fantasizes about marrying Young Liu. However, she knows, for more practical reasons, that marrying Young Liu is out of the question. He is poor and unassertive. Her brother and sister-in-law quickly arrange her marriage with a richer family. Little does she know, her new husband is blind and somewhat an invalid, who lies in bed and gets high on opium. The second part, a big bulk of it, devotes to Yindi's life at the Yao's residence. At her new husband's residence, Yindi has to deal with her controlling mother-in-law, Big Mistress, who, after the death of her husband, practically takes over the household. Furthermore, Yindi is more like a babysitter to her husband than she is a wife to him. He refuses to talk about their future or where they're standing as far as family inheritance is concerned. Along with a demanding mother-in-law, Yindi also has to face the other sisters-in-law. They ridicule her of her child-like husband and her sex life. However, later on, Yindi finds out that Third Mistress (or third sister-in-law) is as unhappy as she is. Third Mistress eventually laments to Yindi that Third Master is never home. He is always at a "singsong" house or an opium den. He usually comes home in the wee hour of the night. On top of that, Third Mistress has to concoct all sorts of stories to save him from his mother, Old Mistress. Through out this part of the novel, we also learn that Third Master and Yindi have sexual attraction for each other. Whether or not they carry that relationship further, I am not quite sure. That part of the relationship is rather ambiguous. However, readers can definitely feel the sexual tension or attraction between them. In any cases, it seems that Yindi revels in that kind of tension. She needs attention. Another interesting element in the novel is how Chang creates that competitive sense among these women. They all want to protect each other; unfortunately, they also feel to have the need to stab each other's back. It is like a vicious cycle. In the final part, Yindi gives birth to a boy,Yensheng, which itself is a blessing and a celebration. The birth of a girl would probably not only diminish Yindi's status but also devastate her. Yengsheng also becomes an opium addict. As a child, he has chronic asthma. They breath opium into him to relieve his asthmatic symptoms. Also at this point of the novel, as China is going through drastic changes, so does the Yao family. Old Mistress dies. China is at war with the Japanese. The family wealths are divided among the men, of course. Most of these men are senior members of the family. With the possibility that Yensheng may be inherited the future estate, Yindi's power is spinning out of control. The family is falling apart. Third Master is getting old and being pounded by debt collectors. I think Third Mistress kills herself (I am not sure). Consequently, in the end, we see Yindi gradually becoming powerful, in a mad sense. Eileen (Ai-Ling) Chang has created a brilliant portrait of a young girl going mad because of the patriarchal, recyclic system, in which women are regarded as merely a reproductive opportunity. Whether one sees Yindi as a coward or a victim, one thing is certainly true, she does not have a choice. Like Flaubert's Madame Bovary or any of Austen's female characters, regardless of their status and intelligence, marriage and death are the only two options. The viable option is obvious. After reading The Rouge of the North, one either senses the triumphant of Yindi's perseverance or sees her as a mad concubine who chooses to compromise her dignity for power. Whatever view the readers adopt, one thing is certain, Eileen Chang has written a poignant masterpiece of an incredible woman who perseveres through the confinement by her society.

** Also read Su Tong's Raise the Red Lanterns (also a film by Zhang Yimou) and anything works by Ding Ling **

It's a refreshing change to see a tough, hard-bitten detective roaming Hawaii. Florida's had more than its share, and Baron Birtcher has finally brought a great one to polynesia. Great action scenes, and a surprise ending. This one is worth the money.

I read this in one sitting, and it really moves. I read a little bit of everything, but keep coming back to mysteries. This one is a standout.

Baron Birtcher proves with Ruby Tuesday, his second Mike Travis novel, that Roadhouse Blues, his first, was no fluke. We now have a Great New Series Writer amongst us. In this newest adventure, Mike Travis, Ex-L.A. homicide detective, sails his yacht from Southern California to Kona Hawaii, only to find trouble awaits. As was the case with his first novel, this book is very fast paced, with more twists and turns than you'll find on the Saddle road between Kona and Hilo. Having moved from Southern California to Kona himself, Baron not only takes us on a wild ride of emotions, but also adds the natural beauty of the Big Island. As is the case with most excellent reads, the end, although unexpected, comes way too soon. I'm already looking forward to the next Mike Travis novel,and another trip to the Big Island of Hawaii.
I suggest, that as is the case with most series, if possible they should be read in order.

In many respects, Timothy Mitchell's Rule of Experts appears to be a cautionary tale of unintended consequences for modern policy makers and economists of the western world, as these experts work to decipher market relationships and implement market policies in non-western nations. But Mitchell's book, with its message seemingly so obvious, goes much deeper as it challenges the very framework historians use when examining non-western cultures. Mitchell does this by bringing into question the creation of the nation-state of Egypt and by tracing the genealogy of how "the economy" came to arrive at its present meaning. He also studies the term capitalism, arguing that it is not as definitive as is assumed in western culture. To examine how these ideas build a framework to help the reader understand their importance in studying poverty, Mitchell uses several themes, three of which will be examined here: first, terms that represent accepted ideas often conceal more than they reveal; second, capital can develop characteristics that allow it to function as both human and nonhuman; and third, property equals power, thus no property equals no power.

First, Mitchell spends a great deal of time tracing the history of the transformation of the term "economy" to "the economy." While this may not seem to be directly related to a discourse on poverty, Mitchell explains for the reader how economy, until the twentieth century, referred to a husbanding of resources or a"'proper governing' of the community's affairs" (pp. 81-82), even when used in relation to a nation-state. It was only through colonialism that the transformation from "economy" to "the economy" was made, and it is the colonized nation of Egypt that Mitchell examines. Here, Mitchell shows how another accepted western idea - that of the nation-state - created great wealth for some in Egypt, while creating or increasing the poverty of others. His argument is well researched, and traces how the European estate along with the production of cotton and sugar cane as cash crops led to property disputes and eventually to land seizures. This, tied to the creation of the Aswan Dam's shrinking the area of arable land, impoverished the "peasant" class to subsistent levels. This study of "the economy" allowed the experts to distance themselves from their object of study (Egypt), and in so doing, allowed them to conceal both their own role within the economic structure, and their failure to address the underlying issue causing the growing poverty of the "peasant" class. The economy, the nation-state, and even the peasant, Mitchell argues, should not be accepted as given; to understand the use of these terms and their impact, their genealogy and current meanings must be questioned.

Second, Mitchell examines Marxist ideas on capital as both a human and nonhuman entity; after examining this theory in chapter one, Mitchell alludes to this theme periodically throughout the book. In chapter one, he uses a particular example, Ahmud Abbud, to show how this personification of capital is possible. After obtaining capital, Abbud became an agent of his capital in several instances (most of these involved his efforts to obtain government contracts for various projects, with the most notable involved with the Aswan Dam) as he sought new ways to increase his wealth. With this clear example eloquently portrayed for the reader, Mitchell's use of this theme returns in his sections, Peasant Studies and Fixing the Economy, as he examines first Fathy and his village at Gurna. While Mitchell is writing about Fathy to illustrate the larger issue of the making of a nation by establishing an Egyptian past that has remained unchanged for six thousand years, he nonetheless alludes to the personification of capital as Fathy received his contract to build his village for the peasants, because he came from a well-to-do family of architects that sought out government-funded projects. Only the wealthy and the government could afford the architectural services of Fathy; therefore, Fathy had to represent his capital as he (or his family) sought out these well-paying contracts. This same theme returns again as Mitchell examines the expertise provided by western entities (mainly the U.S.) as government agencies such as USAID, in order to provide a future market for U.S. wheat, provided detailed analyses describing why Egypt needed to import U.S. wheat. This expertise, while supplied on the pretext of modernizing Egypt, served the largest owners/producers of the wheat they recommended that Egypt buy.

Last, Mitchell illustrates repeatedly the idea that property equals power, and therefore no property equals no power. Again, much of the groundwork for this theme is laid in chapter one as Mitchell examines the history of Egypt, beginning with the malarial epidemics of the 1940s, the dam built at Aswan, and the property policies that allowed Egyptians such as Ahmud Abbud to accumulate large tracts of land for growing sugar cane. While Abbud was increasing his land holdings, he was increasing his power. By the same token, many of the "peasants" that had to give up land for Abbud, and others like him, were becoming landless. This, in turn, made them more powerless than before, because now they had to become day wage earners, and very often they did not earn enough to live on a daily basis. This lead to indebtedness, and a form of indentured serfdom. This theme returns again in Peasant Studies, as Mitchell writes his chapter entitled, "Nobody Listens to a Poor Man." The title alone speaks to the theme; Mitchell's examination of the central power of the state, or rather, the constructs assuming central power of the state, is apropos, because the power is not in the fields of the laborers. This theme is also present in the third section of the book, as Mitchell examines the fixing of the Egyptian economy. Again, the peasant is powerless and has no voice (with one notable exception: the bread riots) as the central government of Egypt complies with demands made by the International Monetary Fund, even though these demands have the intended consequence of making the poor poorer, at least in the short term.

To understand Rule of Experts in relation to poverty, the reader must examine some basic themes: first, terms that represent accepted ideas often conceal more than they reveal; second, capital can develop characteristics that allow it to function as both human and nonhuman; and third, property equals power, thus no property equals no power. It is with these three themes that Mitchell creates a coherent body of essays, serving the overarching idea of challenging the basic constructs western historians use when examining non-western cultures. He shows the reader why it is necessary to question basic assumptions that social scientists, economists, and policy makers ascribe to if they are used out of context.

Mitchell's "Colonising Egypt" transformed my experience as a student in Egypt, so I was looking forward to this work from one of the best minds in in Middle East Studies. "Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity" does not disappoint. Mitchell's work is self-reflective, de-orientalized, thought-provoking scholarship. Mitchell not only connects contemporary political and postmodern theory to his Egyptian primary sources, but he extends theory in new directions and unique interdisiplinary ways. Mitchell empowers the reader to think critically about the negative influences of power and hegemonic discourse on policy and scholarship to create distorted representations and self-fulfilling, self-replicating prophecies. We need more writers like Mitchell to question and challenge the current theory and expertise that has so much currency and momentum in the echo chambers of the Washington Consensus.

The essays cover a wide range of 20th-century topics from malaria to mapmaking, from the manipulated image of the peasant to techno-political nonsense in current development praxis. I have long believed that developmental applications of modern economic theory are very much a "faith-based" process, and Mitchell has put these thoughts in engaging prose. In addition, I was particularly impressed by the chapter on violence, which helped me frame my own thinking on violence, for example, in Syria, Algeria, or Tunisia, places where not so hidden violence functions as an instrument of power and social control. Mitchell writes eloquently on issues that have troubled most of those who work or live or travel in the developing world and who have not found the right language to express their reservations about the descriptive and prescriptive power of current scholarship and techno-political expertise.

Timothy Mitchell writes consistently on the Middle East in ways that challenge the presupposition of field. This book is a collection and revision of many studies previously published, but they are integrated into a whole to provide insights into new ways to consider. The conclusions thereof are wide-ranging, highlighting the falsification and fallacies of behind the reasoned application of universalized logics capital and techno-politics to Egyptian particularities.

Mitchell's most powerful and provocative insights occur in his essays on the history of peasant politics in instances of malaria epidemics, colonial agricultural policies, and violence and the establishment of private property and land 'reforms'. This work likely can bring its insights to bear are on any research currently being done on the Middle East.

Ray knows central California. He's fished there for decades, and it shows in the detailed knowledge he has put into his book.

A good, well-written guide to California fishing.
Wayne Heinz, author of How to Catch Salmon, Sturgeon, Lingcod, Rockfish, and Halibut Along the Pacific Coast: Fish On!

The waters of the Sacramento Valley teem with sturgeon, salmon, bass, steelhead, crappie, bluegill, and more, to offer the dedicated angler a great variety of fish. The "Sacramento Valley Fishing Paradise" by expert angler Ray Rychnovsky is a detailed and thoroughly "user friendly" guide to the Sacramento River and all of its tributaries and lakes up to an elevation of 2000 feet above sea level. Anglers will learn when, where, and how to catch each major game fish anywhere in the valley. Enhanced with historical points of interest, advice for "best fishing" by the month, by location, and by the species, Sacramento Valley Fishing Paradise is especially recommended for anyone planning a fishing trip to the waters of the Sacramento Valley.

The waters of the Sacramento Valley teem with sturgeon, salmon, bass, steelhead, crappie, bluegill, and more, to offer the dedicated angler a great variety of fish. The "Sacramento Valley Fishing Paradise" by expert angler Ray Rychnovsky is a detailed and thoroughly "user friendly" guide to the Sacramento River and all of its tributaries and lakes up to an elevation of 2000 feet above sea level. Anglers will learn when, where, and how to catch each major game fish anywhere in the valley. Enhanced with historical points of interest, advice for "best fishing" by the month, by location, and by the species, Sacramento Valley Fishing Paradise is especially recommended for anyone planning a fishing trip to the waters of the Sacramento Valley.