Provocative insights into China, travel, and technology in the 21st century
". . . Recommended for medium-sized and larger libraries, as well as for the personal reading of librarians interested in China." —Library Journal
". . . rather effortlessly brilliant . . . . It penetrates with a lightly knowing eye and ear into the interior mind, heart and soul of giant China and the innumerable Chinese." —AsiaMedia
"China's Brave New World is a must-read for anyone interested in the world's most rapidly changing society. Wasserstrom explores China with an ethnographer's lens: he takes the reader into coffee shops, fast-food joints, red-chip firms, and bootleg video parlors—the kinds of places where with-it young Chinese spend their time. These are the stories that lie behind the 'economic miracle' of post-Mao/post-Teng China." —James L. Watson, Harvard University, editor of Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia
"This book provides a powerful lens for outsiders to understand a globalizing China and a unique mirror for the Chinese to reflect on their own society in a global context." —Yunxiang Yan, author of Private Life Under Socialism
"These are not only reflections on the 'brave new world' of China's globalizing regions, but also an intimate tour of the author's thoughts on Eastern Europe, the handover of Hong Kong, Mark Twain's Missouri, and much in between. Setting aside his hat of academic historian, Wasserstrom writes in lively, clear language and is not afraid to put his own actions and private feelings into his absorbing and penetrating accounts." —Perry Link, author of The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System and Evening Chats in Beijing.
". . . readers will find themselves far more observant and attentive to local distinctions when they take their first or next trip to China." —Stanley Rosen, The China Journal No. 60
If Chairman Mao came back to life today, what would he think of Nanjing’s bookstore, the Librairie Avant-Garde, where it is easier to find primers on Michel Foucault’s philosophy than copies of the Little Red Book? What does it really mean to order a latte at Starbucks in Beijing? Is it possible that Aldous Huxley wrote a novel even more useful than Orwell’s 1984 for making sense of post-Tiananmen China—or post-9/11 America?
In these often playful, always enlightening “tales,” Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom poses these and other questions as he journeys from 19th-century China into the future, and from Shanghai to Chicago, St. Louis, and Budapest. He argues that simplistic views of China and Americanization found in most soundbite-driven media reports serve us poorly as we try to understand China’s place in the current world order—or our own.
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. His books include Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai. He lives in Irvine, California.
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Distribution: World
Publication date: 5/1/2007
