Book Reviews
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Pieces
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2025
The Radiance of France
In fact, what surprised me most after finishing this book was the extent to which its arguments are saturated with Foucauldian undertones. For a long time, I felt that Foucault’s grand discourses…
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Seeking Certain Numbers: Making It Count
A Review of Arunabh Ghosh’s Making It Count In the grand narrative of the history of science and technology during the Cold War, Arunabh Ghosh’s Making It Count offers a unique revisionist…
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China’s Techno-Warriors
This monograph was published in 2003. Reviewing it now, two decades after its release, one cannot help but adopt the perspective of a Monday-morning quarterback. The passage of time, the declassification of…
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China’s Path to Modernity Through the Typewriter
In 2012, for an undergraduate reading report, I submitted an analysis of Lin Yutang’s The Gay Genius: The Life and Times of Su Tungpo. It was in that book I first learned…
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Inventing the Internet: Rediscovering the Tension between Military and Civilian Technology
Professor Janet Abbate’s Inventing the Internet is a foundational work in the study of the internet. Precisely because it is a foundational work, looking back from two decades later at this book—published…
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The Death of the Degree: A History of the Demise of American PhDs
The author, who earned a doctorate in middle age, wrote this book—a raw outpouring of true feeling—after serving several years as an adjunct instructor, filled with boundless hope for tenure. Although the…
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学历之死：美国博士消亡史
一个人到中年才取得博士学位的作者，在当了数年兼职教师之后，带着对Tenure终身教职无限的期望，写下了这本真情实感流露的书。尽管在最后作者一再强调回到过去并不意…
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2024
Agricultural Technology and Its Political Continuity: Red Revolution, Green Revolution
Beginning with The People’s Peking Man, Professor Schmalzer has demonstrated a keen focus on the history of popular science in China, particularly through the lens of elite-mass relations. Red Revolution, Green Revolution…