A Collection of essays, reports, and blog posts of merit. Due to the particularities of my schedule, I will be unable to post much this next week. Perhaps the week after that as well. We shall see. To make up for this lack of material, I offer you a few interesting readings loosely connected in […]
Over the past few days I have been engaged in an interesting exchange over at The Committee of Public Safety, an excellent site on strategic thinking and history. As the topic of this exchange is both timely and thought provoking, I would like to extend this discussion to the general readership of the Stage. The […]
A few older essays – long, but still containing insight: Man from the Margin: Cao Cao and the Three Kingdoms. Rafe de Crespigny. ANU Faculty of Asian Studies. Posted 7 June 2004. Dr. de Crespigny quite literally wrote the book(s) on the later Han dynasty and the “great disunion” that followed its collapse. In this […]
East vs. West — the Myths that Mystify Devdutt Pattanik. TED. November 2009. I endorse this presentation with some hesistance. Pattanik’s presentation is convincing, even brilliant, but there are limitations to the argument he makes. It has been 30 years since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism. The book’s publication brought about the collapse of […]
TOP BILLING: The Ultimate Burden Bob Herbert. New York Times. 24 August 2009. Bob Herbert writes a disquieting Jeremiad against the American people for allowing their best men to have their limbs and faces torn off without giving a damn. By far the best opinion editorial I have read this year from the New […]
I am continually fascinated by the greatest anomaly of our times, the Republic of India. In an age dominated by ethnonationalist states, India’s existence is a modern mystery. It is a hundred nations contained in one, a crucible of religions, cultures, and peoples whose history is as old as recorded history itself. That such a […]
