Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

At its heart, China in the World is concerned with the tensions between China's national salvation and world vision. Inspired by Joseph Levenson's Revolution and Cosmopolitanism (1971) and Wang Hui's works, this book traces the evolution of the Confucian concept of tianxia, meaning "all under heaven," through political writings, literature, and films. Beginning with Kang Youwei's world community (Datong) and continuing to Liang Qichao's cosmopolitan nation, Wang (Stanford Univ.) charts how Chinese expressions of world vision were renovated and transformed over time. The vision took on new forms of socialist internationalism and surged in Third World movements during the Cold War era, transforming into a new cosmopolitanism in the age of globalization. Such evolution demonstrates China's alternative approach to modernity by adapting its imperial legacy to Western ideas of Enlightenment, humanism, and socialism. The author criticizes China's depoliticization in its attempts to join Western globalization. Aimed at using the past to understand the present, this book ends by pondering whether the combined legacies of tianxia and socialist internationalism will enable China to rule the world or sow global harmony. Anyone interested in similar questions will find this book inspiring and compelling. A must-read for Chinese studies.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty; professionals.

This volume by Menon (religious studies, DePaul Univ.) is a timely exploration of the dynamics of place-creation in modern India. Often criticized as majoritarian, introverted, and exclusionary, India's social landscape is facing concentrated and innovative challenges from many groups perceived as outside the cultural and political mainstream. As exclusionary Hindu nationalism seemingly tightens its grip on India's politico-cultural milieu, the country's large Muslim community must constantly articulate and recapitulate a vision of a nation to which they belong. Religion, the author shows, is not simply a set of transcendental notions or methods of spiritual practice. Rather, it is a method of self-fashioning, a way to narrate one's life and experiences within a wider community. The book's first section, "Landscapes of Inequality," sets the stage. It introduces the vibrant Muslim communities of Old Delhi and shows how Muslims, especially women, must navigate the very real dangers of life as a religious minority in an increasingly xenophobic society. The second section, "Making Place," discusses specific strategies of self-narrativizing. Chapter 4, "Living with Difference," is particularly insightful. In all, Making Place for Muslims in Contemporary India is vital.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Troeung (formerly, English, Univ. of British Columbia, Canada) strongly and artfully argues that the so-called Cold War was not cold in Cambodia. The author, who was born in Cambodia to refugee parents, uses historical research, archives, and familial anecdotes to draw a shocking and moving portrait of the lives of Cambodians after the massive traumas of the Americans' mass bombings in the 1960s and the genocide the Khmer Rouge committed in the 1970s. She also treats the lingering trials of the refugees who escaped, frequently inserting examples of relevant works of literature and other arts throughout her narrative. An effective storyteller, Troeung has produced a work of grieving that creatively interweaves discussions of autofiction, autotheory, political grievance, trauma, and disability, including the "violence of benevolence" of the countries that received Cambodian refugees. She frames these refugees in terms of cripistemology--understanding and navigating the world through the experience of disability--describing their experiences as shaped by practices of survival rather than recovery. Troeung concludes by noting the Cambodian belief in the possibility for regrowth even after immense damage, symbolized by the lotus flower emerging from muddy water. Though not a happy book, this is an excellent one.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.

Goscha (Univ. du Quebec a Montreal, Canada) employs his unrivaled command of French-, English-, and Vietnamese-language sources in a magisterial new interpretation of how Ho Chi Minh transformed a band of guerillas and an embryonic political entity into the military force and administrative state that defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu. Using the example of Vladimir Lenin's war communism, he explains how Vietnamese communism and nationalist manipulation grew the political state and a large modern army. Although there is deference to his zealous talents, there is no hint of hagiography about Ho, a brutal totalitarian who, with Chinese assistance and following their model, subjected his people to untold, unconscionable suffering through death and starvation, using mass mobilization, conscription, manipulation, and land reform to achieve his goals. For Goscha, the sociology of the conflict is as important as the military campaigns, and, inter alia, his descriptions of the acquisition, allocation, logistics, and politics of food are as important as the battles. Alongside Fredrik Logevall's Embers of War (2012) and the never-outdated writings of Bernard Fall, this is the new standard on the French Indochina War, the battle of Dien Bien Phu, and Ho Chi Minh and his associates.Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.