On 3/22 we will have Book Chats led by extra credit readers and discussion leaders of two books that capture the stories of Communism in Transition.
Putin's Russia -- Anna
Politkovskaya
A searing portrait of a country in disarray, and of the man at its helm,
from "the bravest of journalists" (The New York Times)
Hailed as "a lone voice crying out in a moral wilderness" (New Statesman),
Anna Politkovskaya made her name with her fearless reporting on the war in
Chechnya. Now she turns her steely gaze on the multiple threats to Russian
stability, among them President Putin himself.
Putin's Russia depicts a far-reaching state of decay. Politkovskaya describes an army in which soldiers die from malnutrition, parents must pay bribes to recover their dead sons' bodies, and conscripts are even hired out as slaves. She exposes rampant corruption in business, government, and the judiciary, where everything from store permits to bus routes to court appointments is for sale. And she offers a scathing condemnation of the ongoing war in Chechnya, where kidnappings, extrajudicial killings, rape, and torture are begetting terrorism rather than fighting it.
Sounding an urgent alarm, Putin's Russia is both a gripping portrayal of a country in crisis and the testament of a great and intrepid reporter
Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy is available at Amazon.com for as little as $4.27 used. I will give extra, extra credit for leaving a legacy and donating your book.
Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now -- Jan Wong
Jan Wong, a Canadian of Chinese descent, went to China as a starry-eyed Maoist
in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution. A true believer--and one of
only two Westerners permitted to enroll at Beijing University--her education
included wielding a pneumatic drill at the Number One Machine Tool Factory. In
the name of the Revolution, she renounced rock & roll, hauled pig manure in
the paddy fields, and turned in a fellow student who sought her help in getting
to the United States. She also met and married the only American draft dodger
from the Vietnam War to seek asylum in China.
Red China Blues is Wong's startling--and ironic--memoir of her rocky six-year romance with Maoism (which crumbled as she became aware of the harsh realities of Chinese communism); her dramatic firsthand account of the devastating Tiananmen Square uprising; and her engaging portrait of the individuals and events she covered as a correspondent in China during the tumultuous era of capitalist reform under Deng Xiaoping. In a frank, captivating, deeply personal narrative she relates the horrors that led to her disillusionment with the "worker's paradise." And through the stories of the people--an unhappy young woman who was sold into marriage, China's most famous dissident, a doctor who lengthens penises--Wong reveals long-hidden dimensions of the world's most populous nation.
In setting out to show readers in the Western world what life is like in China, and why we should care, she reacquaints herself with the old friends--and enemies of her radical past, and comes to terms with the legacy of her ancestral homeland.
Red China Blues is Wong's startling--and ironic--memoir of her rocky six-year romance with Maoism (which crumbled as she became aware of the harsh realities of Chinese communism); her dramatic firsthand account of the devastating Tiananmen Square uprising; and her engaging portrait of the individuals and events she covered as a correspondent in China during the tumultuous era of capitalist reform under Deng Xiaoping. In a frank, captivating, deeply personal narrative she relates the horrors that led to her disillusionment with the "worker's paradise." And through the stories of the people--an unhappy young woman who was sold into marriage, China's most famous dissident, a doctor who lengthens penises--Wong reveals long-hidden dimensions of the world's most populous nation.
In setting out to show readers in the Western world what life is like in China, and why we should care, she reacquaints herself with the old friends--and enemies of her radical past, and comes to terms with the legacy of her ancestral homeland.
Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now is available on Amazon.com for as little as $0.29. I will give extra, extra credit for leaving a legacy and donating your book.
Please blog here your comittment to read and lead with one of these two books.
5 comments:
I'll read the Russian one if that's ok.
I ordered red china blues off amazon and it arrived yesterday. What was interesting was that inside were a bunch of clippings from news papers from 1998-99. The articles were about different things and people in china. I'm curious to see if the people in the news articles are characters in the book too.
I ordered red china blues off amazon and it arrived yesterday. What was interesting was that inside were a bunch of clippings from news papers from 1998-99. The articles were about different things and people in china. I'm curious to see if the people in the news articles are characters in the book too.
Also this is a used book, which makes me wonder...
My brother passed on this interesting video about the USSR. It's called the "Complete History of the Soviet Union Arranged to the Music of Tetris" (it’s about 7 minutes long)
Here's a link to the YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8
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