Years That Changed China
1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (1982) by Ray Huang is a winner of the American Book Award for History.…
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Old Buildings New Life
I can’t praise this new series on heritage buildings enough. Here are 2 books on Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, respectively, published in 2025. Each building…
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Tunku
Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra prefers the spelling ‘Tunku’ to ‘Tengku.’ He explained so in his own words on p. 11 of this magnificent pictorial tribute…
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US Supreme Court
The US Supreme Court used to be the strongest of the three limbs of the US government. It can declare an executive order of the…
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Israel and Nasser—Part 1
The Six-Day War is the popular name for the 1967 Arab–Israeli war (5–10 June 1967). For all of Nasser’s popularity with the Egyptians and Arabs…
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Red Dawn over China (2026)
This is a recent book by Frank Dikötter, a Dutch historian who became famous for his exhaustive and exhausting The People’s Trilogy. A reviewer has…
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Without Fear or Favour
I used to read this column by Tan Chee Khoon in the Star when I was small. It is wonderful to find the articles compiled…
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Asia Today
Asia Today: Two Outlooks, Beatty Memorial Lectures (1969) is a compilation of three lectures that Han Su Yin gave in 1968 at McGill University. The…
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Christianity and China
The 20 essays in “Christianity in China from the 18th Century to the Present,” edited by Daniel H. Bays (1996), were presented in two symposia…
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The Truth Shall Prevail
It is not clear why this collection of speeches, papers, and articles by the late Tun Abdul Hamid Mohammad (2016), mantan Ketua Hakim Negara, is…
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