Book Reviews

Nadia Murad is courageous and impeturable in detailing her experiences of 2014 in The Last Girl. A Yazidi villager in northern Iraq, aged 21, she witnessed the murder of close family members before being kidnapped by Islamic State militants and escaping three months later. She and other survivors hope to raise global awareness about the plight of Yazidi refugees, bring members of the Islamic State before the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, and help survivors of human trafficking to return and rebuild their communities. Murad is the recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Survival of the world’s livable habitat depends on 6 billion people living in developing nations to resist the lifestyles practiced by 1 billion people living in the world’s wealthiest nations. Reckless consumerism has become more threat than comfort, wasting limited resources and poisoning water and air, and government intervention is required. The only solution, author Chandran Nair concludes, is corporations selling less. Susan Froetschel reviews The Sustainable State by Nair and suggests a role reversal is due on leadership: “Developing nations should no longer feel pressured to catch up with advanced nations, and wealthier nations could slow their frenetic pace, becoming more vibrant while learning to live with less.”

China ranks 11^th among countries with the most coastline, well after Indonesia, Russia, the Philippines and Japan. Supported by the US-led international security and trade rules, China has steadily risen to become Asia’s largest economy and home to the continent’s most powerful navy. “Embedded in China’s thinking is securing itself against foreign intervention,” explains BBC foreign correspondent and longtime YaleGlobal contributor Humphrey Hawksley in Asian Waters. Only the United States could take China on. Hawksley  describes conflicts throughout the Asia Pacific region, explaining how China plots long-term strategies while US policies shift  abruptly under disparate leaders. In her review, Susan Froetschel warns that over-reach could treacherous for any nation hoping to dominate Asia Pacific waters.

Muslim and Buddhist people lived side by side in Southeast Asia for centuries. But the political changes in Burma associated with colonization followed by dictatorship, then gradual reopening of the country renamed Myanmar with the introduction of democracy, have fueled resentment. Neighbors turned on neighbors, with Muslims marginalized and denied citizenship. UN spokespeople have called the plight of the Rohingya people the “world’s fastest growing refugee crisis.” Journalist Francis Wade explores the history of this ethnic conflict. Reviewer David Dapice, economist of the Vietnam and Myanmar Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, concludes that Myanmar cannot hope to achieve stability or peace without subduing the hatred.