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Mami Suzuki: Private Eye • Simon Rowe

In my review of Simon Rowe’s Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere (2020), I wrote of the titular “Pearl City” chapter: “It’s a very satisfying story but one that leaves you wanting a full novel. We want to ride with Ms. Suzuki again.” And that’s exactly what we get [...]

Bridging East & West • Kathie Wei-Sender

Bridging East & West is a fast-paced and fun account of Kathie Wei-Sender’s long, fascinating life, from childhood dangers during the Sino-Japanese War to an arranged marriage and move to the United States, to a career in nursing and then a reinvention as bridge champion mixing with world political leaders. [...]

Lily Narcissus • Jonathan Lerner

This engrossing novel of expat life in Taipei in the late 1950s is a story which stays with you. That’s due, in part, to the interesting, believable characters, but also because the ending leaves a few threads untied. The minor mystery of the “Narcissus” in the title is easily enough [...]

The Baseball Widow • Suzanne Kamata

Taiwan’s greatest sports story occurred during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945). The Kano baseball team, a ragtag band of players from a two-bit school in a backwater city, defied the odds to reach the final of the 1931 Koshien High School Baseball Tournament in Osaka. The team came from a [...]

Osaka! Osaka!: A different kind of history • James Jensen

It’s been sad watching the decline in popularity of the travelogue over the last quarter century. I remain hopeful, however, that there can be a renaissance of the genre, because a good travel book is an inherently wonderful blend of fun and fact. This satisfying mix of escapist pleasure and [...]

Getting China Wrong • Aaron L. Friedberg

Aaron Friedberg would be justified in adopting an “I told you so,” attitude to the West’s belated waking up to its failed engagement project with China. In articles and books such as Contest for Supremacy (2011), the American political scientist has long warned about the China threat. However, in Getting [...]