Happy Anniversary! And Happy Veterans' Day!

November 11 is Veterans' Day. Or Armistice Day, for traditionalists. At our house, it is also our wedding anniversary. This year we celebrate our Pottery Anniversary. That doesn't have the most romantic ring to it, but we'll make the best of it.

Teaser Tuesday: The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

It was a strange country again but at the end he was not lonely and, later, waking, it was still strange and no one spoke at all but it was their country now, not his nor hers, but theirs, truly, and they both knew it. In the dark with the wind blowing cool through the cabin she said, "Now you're happy and you love me."

-- "The Strange Country" by Ernest Hemingway, from The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition The teaser for me is that this is the last story in the book and it is definitely tantalizing to think that I may soon, finally, finish a collection of short stories that I started almost 30 years ago! I read my first Hemingway short story -- "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" -- when I was a Freshman in high school. In fits and starts since then I have been working my way through the rest. The end is finally in sight. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

Just in time for Mailbox Monday, the mail man delivered: Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay This is my Book Club book for November. It might be horribly sad, since it is the story of the July 1942 roundup of Jews from Paris. Over 6,000 Jews, mostly children, were arrested by French policy acting on orders from the German occupying army, kept in a sports arena for several days, then shipped to camps, eventually Auschwitz where they all were killed. The book goes back and forth between the tragic events of 1942 and modern day Paris. This could be rough going.

Review: The Man Who Loved China

Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilization in China is still the definitive work on the subject, in continuous print since the Cambridge University Press published the first introductory volume* in 1954. In The Man Who Loved China, Simon Winchester turns his inquisitive eye and keen wit to Needham’s life and accomplishments, wrapping personality, history, politics, and science into the kind of irresistible story only Winchester can produce.

Needham was a biochemist, not a Sinologist. He became interested in the Middle Kingdom only after falling in love with Lu Gwei-Djen, a Chinese scientist in Cambridge to study with Needham and his biologist wife Dorothy. After learning Chinese, he obtained a pre-WWII diplomatic post that allowed him to explore China and send truckloads of books and documents about China’s scientific and technological history back to Cambridge.

As with his wonderful books about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, The Professor and the Madman and The Meaning of Everything, Winchester uses the compilation and publication of Needham’s masterpiece as the backbone of this biography. He branches off from the central story to discuss the Needham’s socialist politics, his unconventional love life, and his role as one of Red China’s most “useful idiots.”

This last item concerned Needham leading a commission to investigate allegations that America used biological warfare during the Korean War. In 1953, he issued a report substantiating the claims, although it was later determined that the Chinese government, with Soviet help, staged the whole thing. As Winchester put it, “Needham was intellectually in love with communism; and yet communist spymasters and agents, it turned out, had pitilessly duped him.” Needham was under a cloud for years as a result. America refused him a visa until the 1970s. Only the quality and stupendous success of Science and Civilization finally redeemed his reputation.

Simon Winchester could write an interesting book about garden mulch, so it is no surprise that The Man Who Loved China, based on a fascinating life, is a fascinating book. This is one of his best.

* Science and Civilization in China is now a 25-volume set, although many volumes were written by others under Needham's direction and still others after his death.

OTHER REVIEWS

Age 30+ . . . A Lifetime of Books

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

Blogging Blackout

No blogging today while I am traveling for work. I put in some late posts from my hotel room the last couple of days, but I hope to finish work and drive home to Portland tonight, so no time to blog. I do hate it when my job interferes with my hobbies.