Image Source. As much of the material here at The Stage narrates the history of Chinese warfare, diplomacy, and strategic thought or analyzes contemporary Chinese politics and international relations, I am occasionally asked a question that goes something like this: “Mr. Greer, if you had to recommend one book to help me understand how the […]
I ask my readers to excuse me for the relative dearth of posts over the last month or two. The back log of posts is reaching intolerable levels, but it cannot be helped. In two weeks I will be moving away from the Hawaiian islands. Preparation for this move has swallowed up most of the […]
Jun Fujita, “National Guardsmen Questioning African American, 1919,” 1919, Photograph, Chicago Historical Society Archives. Chicago. Image Source. A week or so ago I came across a short Pacific Standard column by Jim Russel on Twitter. The article highlights a new paper by economists Dan Black, Seth Sanders, Evan Taylor, and Lowell Taylor on the early twentieth century “Great Migration” of African Americans away […]
Perhaps the most predictable fall-out of Graeme Wood’s influential cover article for The Atlantic, “What the Islamic State Really Wants,” is another round of debate over whether or not the atrocities committed by ISIS and other armed fundamentalist terrorist outfits are sanctioned by the Qur’an, Hadith, and other Islamic texts, and if not, whether these […]
Illustration of Rashid-ad-Din’s Gami’ at-tawarih. Tabriz (?), 1st quarter of 14th century. Source: Wikimedia. “One day after the suppression of the Sambyeolcho rebellion, the two comrades in arms, Koryo general Kim Pang-kyong and Mongol general Hsintu enjoyed a moment together in Kaeyong. Presently, Hsintu caught a young sparrow and, after playing with it awhile, he clubbed […]
In the December issue of International Studies Quarterly Paul Avey and Michael Desch published one of the more interesting articles to come from an academic international relations journal in a long while. For the last few years there has been a rather voracious debate within social science generally and political science specifically about whether or […]
“Examination hall with 7500 cells,” Guangdong (1873). Image Source. “Gifted as you are and coming from an illustrious family,” said Ma Zhunshang, “you should have passed the examinations long ago. How is it that you are still in retirement?” “Since my father died early I was brought up by my grandfather and occupied with […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit. TOP BILLING “The State of Consumer Technology at the End of 2014“Ben Thompson, Stratechery (16 December 2014). One of the defining characteristics of the three major epochs of consumer computing – PC, Internet, and mobile – is that they have been largely complementary: we didn’t […]
Victor Mair’s translation of the Sunzi Bingfa. Image Source. When translated into English, the Sunzi Bingfa, usually titled Sunzi’s Art of War, is a fairly small work. When we take away the commentary and annotation added by its translators we are left with a sparse text indeed: Roger Ames’ translation is 71 pages long, the […]
Image Source Sometime in the fall of 2009 I realized that I was having trouble keeping the topics and titles of the many books I have read straight. To fix the problem I started “an annotated bibliography of everything,” recording the bibliographic information and a concise (usually 3-5 sentence long) review of every book I […]
