Mao the scholar
Most people are under the impression that Mao is a coarse and illiterate leader, perhaps because of his round and big Hunan facial features. That…
A Problem from Hell
This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 as well as other book prizes. I read this book in 2003. It is a tour de…
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Prophet Muhammad—Part 1
I have read two biographies of the Prophet Muhammad over the years. For Ramadan 2026, I am reading two recently published biographies. Muhammad and the…
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Cairo Geniza—Part 1
The term “Cairo Geniza,” to the initiated, refers to a repository of priceless ancient texts found in 1896 in a synagogue in Cairo. These texts…
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Lord Denning The Judge and the Law, 1984
Lord Devlin, in an insightful foreword to this book of essays on Lord Denning’s contribution to the law, said, in the beginning paragraph, that there…
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Hankow, Shanghai and Chinese Society in the 18th century
Hankou, also spelled Hankow, is one of the three Imperial towns (the other two are Wuchang and Hanyang) that merged to become modern-day Wuhan City,…
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Names chosen for military operations – Part 1
The name given to a military operation is taken very seriously. The US military strike on Iran on 28 Feb 26 is named Operation Epic…
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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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