Excerpts

  • Are You With Me?

    Mike Chinoy
    The Lilliput Press, 2020
    978-1843517726

    Kevin Boyle, 1943-2010, was a tireless fighter for human rights and his story highlights how human rights battles require tenacity. Former CNN correspondent and YaleGlobal author Mike Chinoy has written the first biography of this early leader of the Northern Ireland’s civil rights movement. As lead lawyer in a series of cases at the European Court of Human Rights, Boyle shaped international human rights law. This excerpt focuses on his work on behalf of Turkey’s long-suffering Kurdish minority.

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  • Empire of the Winds

    Philip Bowring
    I.B. Tauris, 2019
    978-1788314466

    Nusantaria is based on a word that means Outer Islands and encompasses Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Timor.  Philip Bowring, who has reported on Asia since 1973, and Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago analyzes the history of what he describes as the world’s most important archipelago as a leading maritime and cultural crossroads, and he notes “a common history, and deep linguistic and cultural roots, remain.”

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  • Cold War in the Islamic World

    Dilip Hiro
    Oxford University Press, 2019
    978-0190944650

    Hostility between Saudi Arabia and Iran dates back centuries, with the emergence of two sects in Islam.  Dilip Hiro details the rivalry’s influence over the past century’s events – oil discoveries and conflicts like the Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, the 1990 Gulf War, the Iraq War, civil wars in Syria and Yemen. Both nations position themselves as regional leaders,  yet rigid politics,  extreme religious views remain obstacles. Hiro warns the rivalry is unlikely to subside soon. 

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  • Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States Since FDR

    Bruce Riedel
    Brookings Institution Press, 2017
    ISBN: 978-0815731375

    Bruce Riedel analyzes the history of relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia based on his career spanning the Central Intelligence Agency, the White House and the Brookings Institution. The relationship has held since 1943 and the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt even though the two nations are polar opposites, one a superpower democracy and the other an absolute monarchy that embraces Islamic fundamentalism. “There is a basic conundrum at the core of the American relationship with Saudi Arabia,” Riedel notes in his prologue...

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  • The Longest August: The Unflinching Rivalry Between India and Pakistan

    Dilip Hiro
    London and New York: Nation Books, 2015
    ISBN:978-1568587349

    The antagonism between India and Pakistan, the world’s second and sixth most populous countries, permeates every regional and international governing body. Historian and journalist Dilip Hiro analyzes the roots of the bitter divide in The Longest August: The Unflinching Rivalry Between India and Pakistan. Those in and out of power repeatedly used the religious conflict to gain influence before and after the partitioning of British India into independent Pakistan and India in August 1947. In this excerpt Hiro explores a brief period...

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  • The Age of Aspiration: Power, Wealth, and Conflict

    Dilip Hiro
    New York and London: The New Press, 2015
    ISBN: 1620971305

    Indians who embrace globalization, whether in business or politics, find great success. Author and journalist Dilip Hiro describes the “profound transformation” for the country’s 1.25 billion people over the past two decades in his most recent book The Age of Aspiration: Power, Wealth, and Conflict in Globalizing India. Focus on education increased literacy, economic growth, rising living standards and technological prowess. Hiro relies on personal narratives to portray a country of stark inequality, gap between rural communities and the...

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  • Asia Inside Out: Changing Times, Volume 1

    Eric Tagliacozzo, Helen F. Siu, and Peter C. Perdue, Editors
    Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015
    ISBN: 978-0-674-96694-9

    The three-volume set aims to survey the historical, spatial and human dimensions of Asia’s many connections. The editors move beyond the conventions of modern national boundaries and undertake an interdisciplinary study that focuses on the constant movements and interactions underway in Asia over the centuries. In this brief excerpt, Victor Lieberman, a professor of Asian and Comparative History at the University of Michigan, analyzes the revival of four imperial regimes in Russia, Burma, Japan and North India after a long period of ...

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  • The First Firangis: Remarkable Stories of Heroes, Healers, Charlatans, Courtesans & Other Foreigners Who Became Indian

    Jonathan Gil Harris
    New Delhi: C. Aleph Book Company, 2015
    ISBN: 9789382277637

    India has attracted immigrants from all corners of the globe for thousands of years, making it a truly multicultural state. Under Mughal rule, immigrants – known as firangi – traveled to India for many reasons: to escape poverty and religious persecution, or as slaves, traders or adventurers. There was no singular “immigrant experience,” as each immigrant assimilated into Indian culture in a unique way. Jonathan Gill Harris, who migrated to India and serves as dean of academic affairs and professor of English at Ashoka University, tells the...

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  • The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics

    Andrew Small
    London: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 2015
    ISBN:9781849043410

    China and Pakistan have close ties as neighbors, so much so that “Pakistan is a central part of China’s transition from a regional power to a global one,” explains Andrew Small, a fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Asia Program, in the introduction to The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics. “The country lies at the heart of Beijing’s plans for a network of ports, pipelines, roads and railways…. Its coastline is becoming a crucial staging post for China’s take-off as a naval power….” Yet Pakistan is also a source of Islamic...

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  • European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics Are in a Mess – and How to Put Them Right

    Philippe Legrain
    CB Books, London, 2014
    ISBN:1782924809

    Uncertainty paralyzes an economy. When politicians argue endlessly about budgets and the high costs of social benefits, families stop spending. Over the course of decades, as evidence mounts on climate change and governments struggle to develop regulations, corporations lack goals for future innovation.  Society lumbers on in unsustainable ways.  “Sometimes economies need to adjust in conditions of radical uncertainty,” argues Philippe Legrain, former independent economic adviser to the president of the European Commission, in his book...

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