Dictatorship and the Common Man

Dictatorship and the Common Man

China Unbound: A New World Disorder By Joanna Chiu. House of Anansi Press, 2021. Paperback, 304 pages, $20. Reviewed by Jason Morgan For most of the Donald Trump presidency, the news in the United States about the People’s Republic of China was edged with great-power...
Coopting Modernity

Coopting Modernity

Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping by Klaus Mühlhahn. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 736 pages, $40. Reviewed by Jason Morgan For decades, many Western China-watchers were convinced that, given time, the People’s...
A Mind-Body Problem in Chinese Philosophy?

A Mind-Body Problem in Chinese Philosophy?

Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism by Edward Slingerland. Oxford University Press, 2019. Cloth, xi + 385 pages, $35. Reviewed by Jason Morgan When Scottish missionary James Legge (1815–1897) translated, partly under the auspices of...
Dharma and the Constitution

Dharma and the Constitution

American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War by Duncan Ryūken Williams. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 400 pages, $30. Reviewed by Jason Morgan The Pacific War is generally understood as a political and military...
History’s Untouchables

History’s Untouchables

Who, or What, Dropped the Atom Bombs? Bridging the Atomic Divide: Debating Japan–U.S. Attitudes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Harry Wray and Seishiro Sugihara. Lexington Books, 2019. Hardcover, 340 pages, $115. Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction and the Formation of...