JAPAN: AN INTERPRETATION
THE DONALD RICHIE READER: 50 Years of Writing on Japan. By Donald Richie. Compiled and edited by Arturo Silva. Stone Bridge. 238 pp. $29.95 with case. Paper $19.95. Those inscrutable Japanese. They’ve inspired more trash between hard covers over the…
Memory without history: Who owns Guatemala’s past?
In the light and not in the light, in the darkness and not in the darkness, … motionless and in movement —Miguel Angel Asturias, Men of Maize’ On the edge of the Plaza Mayor, Guatemala City’s vast central square, a small…
`Manifest Duplicity’
BLOWBACK: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. By Chalmers Johnson. Metropolitan. 268 pp. $26. Some Sundays back, the New York Times fronted a story from its Paris correspondent, Suzanne Daley, about the fear and loathing Americans induce among Europeans…
The Indigenous and the Imported: Khatami’s Iran
Culture is what remains when one no longer believes in Utopia. —Farhad Khosrokhavar and Oliver Roy Comment sortir d’une revolution religieuse1 At the bar of my hotel in Tehran—or what used to be the bar in officially dry, postrevolutionary Iran—I sip…
Letter from Iran
In a gritty neighborhood of South Teheran not long ago, Iran’s animated opposition movement gathered at a mosque to mark a grim occasion. It was November 23, 2000 a year since state security agents assassinated Dariush Foruhar, the longtime leader…
‘Our’ Gide?
This article focuses on the books “Gore Vidal: A Biography,” by Fred Kaplan and “Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking. Collected Sex Writings,” edited by Donald Weise. These books are biographies of Gore Vidal. Vidal’s life was that fought between the public…
Dark victory
US post-Cold War triumphalism masks a manifest uncertainty about its destiny in the 21st century In late April 1945, on one of the final days of WWII, a poignant scene unfolded on the banks of the River Elbe some miles southwest…
Harnessing the Rising Sun
EMBRACING DEFEAT: Japan in the Wake of World War II. By John W. Dower. Norton/New Press. 676 pp. $29.95. TOKYO UNDERWORLD: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan. By Robert Whiting. Pantheon. 372 pp. $27.50….
Globalism’s Pen Pal
The article focuses on the book “The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization,” by Thomas L. Friedman. Friedman is a globalist and a futurist and a techie true believer, but he thinks people should be separated according to race,…
What does it mean to be modern? Indonesia’s reformasi
How is a nation born? Otto von Bismarck, with his terrifying face, his huge body, and his heavy clothes, would answer “Through blood and iron.” … However, it is also essential to hold on to myths and even dreams—no matter…
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