From Ships to Revolutions: Book Reviews
Weep and cheer with him on one lonely, desperate night as he contemplates suicide and finds the inner strength to rail against his fate and then begins to question what was never questioned before. "Why had the Revolution given us all so little when we had sacrificed everything for it?" This is not a "Communism is bad" book. It is the enduring story of one man's love for his country and the love he finds with an American teacher in China. It is about the struggle he faces to understand so many questions which begin with the word "why." It is about learning that "danger lies in blind obedience," and that the future of China is not one filled with hopelessness, but with promise and brightness, as exemplified by Liang Heng's life.
Through Japanese Eyes by Richard H. Minear, Edited by Leon E. Clark. A CITE Book, New York, 1994. If you wanted to learn about American culture, would you go to a library and check out a book on sociology? Or would you rather dig deeper into the stacks and find a book with essays, oral histories, trivia, newspaper articles and cartoons as told, written and seen by Americans? This is exactly what Through Japanese Eyes does. We've all heard about "examination hell," during which students desperately cram for entrance exams to good schools. Read one young man's letters to his mother during this critical time.
Take a gander at Japanese comic books from the 1980s and see their take on the Detroit auto industry. Read the anti-war poetry and find out what Japanese women really think about their role in society. How did Honda Soichiro become so successful? This is the kind of "can't-put-down" book that will leave you with the feeling that Japanese culture is not something mysterious and unapproachable. This book is, above all, a look at the lives of ordinary Japanese people through their own eyes, which readers will find are not dissimilar to their own.
Am I A Hindu? by Ed Viswanathan. Halo Books, San Francisco, 1992. "Daddy, may I talk to you?" So begins a little treasure of a book which talks about the meaning of Hinduism in a question and answer format. The questions are asked by a fourteen year old Indian boy born in America and are answered by his father. It is a book which does not have to be read from front to back, but
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