China's Brave New World: And Other Tales for Global Times - Softcover

Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253219086 ISBN 13: 9780253219084

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2007

Synopsis

If Chairman Mao came back to life today, what would he think of Nanjing’s bookstore, the Librairie Avant-Garde, where it is easier to find primers on Michel Foucault’s philosophy than copies of the Little Red Book? What does it really mean to order a latte at Starbucks in Beijing? Is it possible that Aldous Huxley wrote a novel even more useful than Orwell’s 1984 for making sense of post-Tiananmen China―or post-9/11 America?

In these often playful, always enlightening "tales," Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom poses these and other questions as he journeys from 19th-century China into the future, and from Shanghai to Chicago, St. Louis, and Budapest. He argues that simplistic views of China and Americanization found in most soundbite-driven media reports serve us poorly as we try to understand China’s place in the current world order―or our own.

About this title

About the Author

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. His books include Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai. He lives in Irvine, California.

Review

China's Brave New World is a must-read for anyone interested in the world's most rapidly changing society. Wasserstrom explores China with an ethnographer's lens: he takes the reader into coffee shops, fast-food joints, red-chip firms, and bootleg video parlors―the kinds of places where with-it young Chinese spend their time. These are the stories that lie behind the 'economic miracle' of post-Mao/post-Teng China. (James L. Watson, Harvard University, editor of Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia)

. . . rather effortlessly brilliant . . . . It penetrates with a lightly knowing eye and ear into the interior mind, heart and soul of giant China and the innumerable Chinese. (AsiaMedia)

. . . Recommended for medium-sized and larger libraries, as well as for the personal reading of librarians interested in China. (Library Journal)

. . . readers will find themselves far more observant and attentive to local distinctions when they take their first or next trip to China. (Stanley Rosen The China Journal No. 60)

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0253219086
• ISBN 13: 9780253219084
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240