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Szonyi, Michael - The China Questions: Critical Insights into a Rising Power

January 1, 2018

book jacket

Edited by Jennifer Rudolph & Michael Szonyi. Harvard University Press, 2018. Publisher's Link

About the book:
Many books offer information about China, but few make sense of what is truly at stake. The questions addressed in this unique volume provide a window onto the challenges China faces today and the uncertainties its meteoric ascent on the global horizon has provoked.

In only a few decades, the most populous country on Earth has moved from relative isolation to center stage. Thirty-six of the world’s leading China experts—all affiliates of the renowned Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University—answer key questions about where this new superpower is headed and what makes its people and their leaders tick. They distill a lifetime of cutting-edge scholarship into short, accessible essays about Chinese identity, culture, environment, society, history, or policy.

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McCormick, Michael - Next-generation ice core technology reveals true minimum natural levels of lead (Pb) in the atmosphere: Insights from the Black Death (Article)

December 12, 2017

journal coverAlexander F. More1,2 , Nicole E. Spaulding2, Pascal Bohleber2,3, Michael J. Handley2,
Helene Hoffmann3, Elena V. Korotkikh2, Andrei V. Kurbatov2 , Christopher P. Loveluck4 ,
Sharon B. Sneed2, Michael McCormick1 , and Paul A. Mayewski2 - Link to Full Article

Abstract Contrary to widespread assumptions, next-generation high (annual to multiannual) and
ultra-high (subannual) resolution analyses of an Alpine glacier reveal that true historical minimum
natural levels of lead in the atmosphere occurred only once in the last ~2000 years. During the Black Death
pandemic, demographic and economic collapse interrupted metal production and atmospheric lead
dropped to undetectable levels. This finding challenges current government and industry understanding of
preindustrial lead pollution and its potential implications for human health of children and adults worldwide.
Available technology and geographic location have limited previous ice core investigations. Read More...... Read more about McCormick, Michael - Next-generation ice core technology reveals true minimum natural levels of lead (Pb) in the atmosphere: Insights from the Black Death (Article)

Szonyi, Michael - The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China

November 28, 2017

book jacketMichael Szonyi. Princeton University Press, 2017. Publisher's Link

About the book:

An innovative look at how families in Ming dynasty China negotiated military and political obligations to the state

How did ordinary people in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) deal with the demands of the state? In The Art of Being Governed, Michael Szonyi explores the myriad ways that families fulfilled their obligations to provide a soldier to the army. The complex strategies they developed to manage their responsibilities suggest a new interpretation of an important period in China’s history as well as a broader theory of politics.

Using previously untapped sources, including lineage genealogies and internal family documents, Szonyi examines how soldiers and their families living on China’s southeast coast minimized the costs and maximized the benefits of meeting government demands for manpower. Families that had to provide a soldier for the army set up elaborate rules to ensure their obligation was fulfilled, and to provide incentives for the soldier not to desert his post. People in the system found ways to gain advantages for themselves and their families. For example, naval officers used the military’s protection to engage in the very piracy and smuggling they were supposed to suppress. Szonyi demonstrates through firsthand accounts how subjects of the Ming state operated in a space between defiance and compliance, and how paying attention to this middle ground can help us better understand not only Ming China but also other periods and places.Read more...... Read more about Szonyi, Michael - The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China

O'Neill, Kelly - Claiming Crimea: A History of Catherine the Great's Southern Empire

November 28, 2017

book jacketKelly O'Neill. 2017. Yale University Press. Publisher's Link

Summary:

Russia’s long-standing claims to Crimea date back to the eighteenth-century reign of Catherine II. Historian Kelly O’Neill has written the first archive-based, multi-dimensional study of the initial “quiet conquest” of a region that has once again moved to the forefront of international affairs. O’Neill traces the impact of Russian rule on the diverse population of the former khanate, which included Muslim, Christian, and Jewish residents. She discusses the arduous process of establishing the empire’s social, administrative, and cultural institutions in a region that had been governed according to a dramatically different logic for centuries. With careful attention to how officials and subjects thought about the spaces they inhabited, O’Neill’s work reveals the lasting influence of Crimea and its people on the Russian imperial system, and sheds new light on the precarious contemporary relationship between Russia and the famous Black Sea peninsula. Read More...

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Jasanoff, Maya - The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World

November 7, 2017

Book JacketMaya Jasanoff. Penguin Random House. November 7, 2017. Publisher's Link

ABOUT THE DAWN WATCH

“Enlightening, compassionate, superb” —John Le Carré

New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017


A visionary exploration of the life and times of Joseph Conrad, his turbulent age of globalization and our own, from one of the most exciting young historians writing today.
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