For the record: three book reviews
I am grateful for, and note for the record, three recent and positive reviews of my
Postcards from Tomorrow Square.
Here, by Sam Oglesby, in the Philadelphia Bulletin (newspaper from the city of my birth);
Here, by John Pomfret, in the Washington Post (newspaper from the city where I usually live);
Here, by John Guise, in the China Economic Review (magazine from the country where I'm living now).
So where's the Redlands Daily Facts? Newspaper from the city of my childhood. But I digress.
The nature of the book-writing life is often to grind your teeth about the insights and sublime subtleties of your argument that brutish (or biased!) reviewers have somehow missed. In these cases I feel fortunate in reviewers who saw and explained exactly the points I was trying to make. Also, these writers are Genuine China Hands -- including Pomfret, whose
Chinese Lessons is a genuinely important book. Now, back to work.
For the record, a review I'm very grateful for
In
Blogcritics, by Xujun Eberlein, about
Postcards from Tomorrow Square, a review whose first two or three paragraphs capture what I've been trying to do. I know it's not seemly to point out one's own good reviews, but this one meant a lot to me and I note it for the record. (Reprinted in China Beat
here.) In the same vein, gratitude to Fareed Zakaria for a generous mention of the book on
yesterday's GPS show.
And while I'm at it, I'll be doing appearances for the book at the
Shanghai Literary Festival on March 7 and 8 and the
Beijing Literary Festival on March 19.
Ok, I've got this out of my system now. Back to the F-22 etc.
The independent-minded Gregg Easterbrook
Gregg Easterbrook -- of the Washington Monthly, the New Republic, the Atlantic, Brookings, ESPN, and probably half a dozen places I am forgetting -- is a long-time friend of mine. He is also is about the most independent-minded, sometimes contrary, person to come out of the Washington Monthly culture, which is saying something. A three-book series over the last decade -- A Moment on the Earth, Beside Still Waters, and The Progress Paradox -- took on liberal conventional wisdom about the environment, spirituality, and the nature of economic life in a brave (and overall convincing) way.
Consistent with his nature, Gregg has neve been shy about saying, in public, when he disagrees with his friends. Indeed much of the item linked here (from his wonderful TMQ feature, which of course is mainly about football) consists of disagreeing with me, about my preceding book. But the item also had the following to say about my current book, which -- knowing that praise from Gregg is far from automatic -- i gratefully reprint:
His brilliant new book "Blind into Baghdad" is the most important thing anyone has written about the Iraq War. Read it.
