Korean Job Discussion Forums

Gopher · Joined: 04 Jun 2005

William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal (2006).

Suraiya Faroqui, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (2007).

Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: the Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (1998).

Oh yeah: and sixty bluebooks filled with undergraduate wisdom on post-1945 American history... Wink

Ya-ta Boy · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994

Odd. I just answered the same question over on the Off Topic Forum.

Since it's gloomy outside I decided to spend the day reading Booth Tarkington's 'Penrod and Sam', the follow-up to 'Penrod'. Penrod is a 10 year old living in Indiana about a hundred years ago. Like Tom Sawyer, he's a 'real' boy. They're just stories about the shenanigans around the neighborhood.

Although they're listed under Children's Lit, the vocabulary and observations are for adults. Tarkington went on to write two Pulitzer winners, 'The Magnificent Ambersons' (Orson Welles made a movie of it) and 'Alice Adams' (Katherine Hepburn won an Oscar for it). They're sitting on the shelf, waiting their turn.

For my real Lit fix, I'm re-reading Josheph Conrad's short works. Next up is 'Nigger of the Narcissus'. Had to re-read Conrad because of 'King Leopold's Ghost' that I read a couple of weeks ago.

I'm also working on two of Stephen Pinker's books ('The Language Instinct' and 'The Blank Slate', but felt like vegging today.

For history, Peter Hessler's 'Oracle Bones', (modern China) but it's kinda spotty. Good in parts, not so in other parts. Last week I did 'The First Crusade' by Asbridge. I prefered the multi-volume Runciman, but it's 50 years old and scholarship has moved on, but it was delightful for it's detail. Asbridge's is only one volume, and it's biggish print, so not much detail. Sigh.

Gopher · Joined: 04 Jun 2005

nicholas_chiasson · Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Location: Samcheok

Jospeh Conrad is Late 1800's early 1900's. So I think not. He's also a polish-brit.

Ya-ta Boy · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994

nicholas is right. 'King Leopold's Ghost' is about how King Leopold conned the European Powers into recognizing his rights over the Congo Free State as private property in the 1880s and then how he presided over a holocaust (10 million dead qualifies it for that label) over the next couple of decades. One of the chapters is about Conrad and some of the people who may have been the models for his characters in 'Heart of Darkness'. About half the book is about the humanitarian movement to stop Leopold.

It's pretty hair-raising. Missionaries sent back photos (a few of them included in the book) that were shown in meetings across Europe and America. I was shocked. I can't imagine how Victorians reacted.