book reviews

Malcolm Fraser’s Dangerous Allies

May 27, 2015 / security / , ,
"Globe Retro" by vectorolie at freedigitalphotos.net
“Globe Retro” by vectorolie at freedigitalphotos.net

Malcolm Fraser was the Prime Minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983. He has recently written Dangerous Allies with Cain Roberts, in which he analyzes Australia’s grand strategy from the 19th century to the present. At its core, his argument is that Australia has always adopted a policy of “strategic dependency,” first with Britain and then with the United States. Given Australia’s economic and military weakness in the nineteenth century, he believes that this was an inevitable choice. At the same time, this approach has consistently led Australia into disaster. Fraser clearly has no love for Churchill. He describes the losses and perils that Australia faced from Gallipoli during World War One, to North Africa in World War Two. By 1941 Australian forces were far from the home front, which was left vulnerable by the British debacle in Singapore. Overall, Fraser’s depiction of Australia’s relationship with Great Britain is one in which the nation made great sacrifices for little reward. …

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Spies of the Balkans: A book review

May 27, 2015 / Europe / , ,
Heinkel He 111 during the Battle of Britain. This file comes from Wikipedia Commons.
Heinkel He 111 during the Battle of Britain. This file comes from Wikipedia Commons.

We live in a time obsessed with spying. Wikileaks and Snowden have shown that non-state actors are now important actors in espionage, while also raising fundamental questions about the right to privacy. Now the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are talking about building their own undersea cable, in order to evade U.S. eavesdropping on their transmissions. This would enable South America to communicate directly with Europe without passing information through the U.S. We now know that the U.S. recorded even German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone conversations. Other nations are outraged, but they might do the same if they had the capability. Spying seems to flourish more now than at any time since the end of the Cold War. In this context, the espionage genre is not fading away. …

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Kwame Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism, A Book Review

May 27, 2015 / teaching, Theory / , , ,
"Glass Globe" by suphakit73 at freedigitalphotos.net
“Glass Globe” by suphakit73 at freedigitalphotos.net

Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism is an engaging, well-written examination of the idea of cosmopolitanism, which will lead students to think deeply about the meaning of global citizenship. At the core of the book is Appiah’s question, what obligations do humans have to each other? I used the book last year in my “Foundations of Global Studies Theory” class, and had the opportunity to read my student’s reflections on the work in their book reviews, which has shaped this review. Based on their feedback and the class discussion, I think that this book would be an excellent choice for an “Introduction to International and Global Studies” course.

Appiah’s work is deeply shaped by his own bi-cultural upbringing, with roots in both Ghana and England. One of his strengths as an author is the ability to make students see how these issues apply to their own lives by relating philosophical questions to his own experience. He also frequently uses case studies or thought experiments to make his point. In both my student’s book reviews and the class discussion my students tended to refer to these examples, which led them to remember his arguments. Appiah’s writing style was clear, jargon-free and accessible, another boon in my class where students were reading authors such as Marx and Chakrabarty. …

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A book review of Dehner’s Global Flu and You

May 27, 2015 / global health / , , ,
The Spanish Influenza. Chart showing mortality from the 1918 influenza pandemic in the US and Europe. Wikipedia commons.
The Spanish Influenza. Chart showing mortality from the 1918 influenza pandemic in the US and Europe. Wikipedia commons.

In 2009 people globally learned of the appearance of a new strain of influenza named H1N1A or “swine flu” in Mexico. By June the World Health Organization had declared the outbreak to be a pandemic, the U.S. and European governments were spending billions of dollars on vaccines and medications, and the tourism industry in Mexico was devastated. For most Americans, vaccine became available only after influenza had already peaked in their communities. Predictably there was an outburst of anger when the mortality rate proved to be low, as people felt that they had been misled by authorities, and frightened unnecessarily. Conspiracy theories regarding the WHO, pharmaceutical companies, and national governments abounded on Youtube and Twitter. While the mechanisms for communication were new, the problem faced by governments was not. Indeed, the U.S. had faced a similar situation in the 1970s. A historical perspective on influenza can provide some much needed context for policymakers and health authorities. George Dehner’s recent book, Global Flu and You: A History of Influenza, is a concise, well written organized overview of influenza’s history, which can help us to better understand contemporary health issues. …

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A book review of Dave Zirin, Brazil’s Dance with the Devil

November 16, 2018 / Latin America / , , ,
1st Royal Engineers, who reached the first FA cup final in 1872, from Wikipedia Commons
1st Royal Engineers, who reached the first FA cup final in 1872, from Wikipedia Commons

With the World Cup starting in Brazil this week, it’s worth reviewing a book on Brazil, soccer and international sporting organizations. Dave Zirin is a well-known sports writer who has covered other major events, such as the summer Olympics in Athens. HIs book seeks to explain why preparations for the World Cup, as well as the 2016 Summer Olympics, have created a wave of protest within the country. The book is written in a popular style, by a non-expert in Brazil. The strength of the book is his deep understanding of both FIFA (the International Soccer Association) and the Olympics. Overall, his book is a good introduction to the issues in a readable format. By the end the reader will have no difficulty understanding the current wave of outrage in Brazil caused by the preparations for these events. …

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Book Review: Sylvia Wrigley, The Mystery of Malaysia Flight 370

October 12, 2018 / mystery / , , ,
Indian Ocean, CIA map from Wikipedia Commons
Indian Ocean, CIA map from Wikipedia Commons

The tragic loss of a Malaysian Flight 370, which was traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 with over 200 passengers, has obsessed people around the world. Sylvia Wrigley, who is a professional pilot, has written a careful study of the disappearance, based on what is now known. In her forward, she says that she “purposely wanted this book to be accessible to my mother and the cleaning lady at the office, to people who were extremely interested in understanding the situation but lacked the aviation background and experience to be able to make sense of all the contradictory reports, especially with the media rush to present half-truths as fact.”  What is remarkable is that a book as factual and reasoned as this work could be written in such a short period of time. This book provides a much-needed balance to some of the wilder material available in the press and other venues. …

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A book review of Robert Kaplan’s Asia’s Cauldron

May 27, 2015 / Asia, security / , , , , , , , ,

Robert D. Kaplan is a well-known journalist who has authored popular works on international issues, such as Balkan

South China Sea from Wikipedia Commons.
South China Sea by NASA from Wikipedia Commons.

Ghosts and the Coming Anarchy. Kaplan has a knack for writing books on topics about to rise to international prominence; in his most recent work, he has sought to understand the international competition in the South China Sea, which is in the global news this week because of a naval confrontation between Vietnam and China.

Kaplan’s works typically try to show the legacies of history for contemporary issues, and this book is no exception. He begins by describing the historical influence of India upon Vietnam, which he depicts as a kind of cultural shatter zone between two great Asian powers. One of the strengths of his work is that he has traveled widely in Asia while writing it, so he can draw on conversations that he has had from Vietnam to Singapore. He also has read widely in history, so the work is interspersed with allusions to Walter Benjamin, Livy, Machiavelli and Thucydides, which are are generally well-chosen and insightful. It is this ability to put contemporary issues into a broad historical and geographical context that is Kaplan’s strength. …

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Book Review of Eric Cline’s 1177

May 27, 2015 / globalization / ,
"Abandoned Mine Town" by porbital at freedigitalphotos.net
“Abandoned Mine Town” by porbital at freedigitalphotos.net

Modern Western society is fascinated with the idea of collapse, particularly in the United States. People watch Doomsday Preppers, follow blogs on Peak Oil, and think about what their world would look like if banks failed. Even before the Club of Rome’s report in the 1970s, many scholars have long warned about modern civilization’s over-reliance on non-renewable resources, minerals and fuels. There is a faction within the environmental movement now that warns of collapse with such intensity that its members almost appear to desire it. When people talk about the collapse of a great civilization, they typically reach back to ancient Rome. In my class “Foundations of Global Studies Theory” course I use a blog post by Ugo Bardi called “Peak Civilization: the Fall of the Roman Empire,” which always sparks interesting conversations about energy in our modern world. …

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Book Review of Akash Kapur’s India Becoming

May 27, 2015 / Asia / ,
"Leh Ladakh City, India" by siraphat at freedigitalphotos.net
“Leh Ladakh City, India” by siraphat at freedigitalphotos.net

Akash Kapur’s new book, India Becoming, in some respects is reminiscent of Oscar Lewis’s classic work, Five Families, which used the stories of a small group of Mexican families to explore poverty in that nation. Kapur uses detailed interviews with a series of individuals to explore major transformations sweeping India: the decline of agriculture, the rise of the information economy, and urbanization. The key theme of this well-written and engaging book is the human costs that this transformation entails. Throughout the work Kapur tries to show that development destroys as it creates, so that people have to make difficult choices throughout this transformation. This is clear in multiple areas. With gender relations, women have new opportunities that they must balance against obligations, in a manner familiar to Western culture. Traditional landowners face the loss of their power, while low status Dalits (once called untouchables) embrace new opportunities, in an urban context in which wealth can matter more than birth. …

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A Book Review of Mark Willacy’s Fukushima

May 27, 2015 / energy, environment / , , ,
"Mt. Fuji, Japan" by Worakit Sirijinda
“Mt. Fuji, Japan” by Worakit Sirijinda

The Fukushima nuclear disaster is so recent that it’s been difficult to have a nuanced and thorough perspective on this event. Mark Willacy’s history attempts to tell the story of Fukushima through the stories of not only the people who lived in the area, but also the senior government officials who dealt with the crisis. Willacy has a deep knowledge of Japan, and had visited the area hit by the tsunami a year before the disaster. One of the strengths of the work is the extensive interviews Willacy undertook to build a detailed image of complex events. By using the techniques of narrative non-fiction, his book conveys information largely by showing the reader through scenes, which helps to show why data matters. With his deep knowledge of contemporary Japan, and his detailed interviews, Willacy creates a beautifully written and detailed account of this disaster. …

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