Following Younghusband’s and Mark‘s posts, here are the books that I read in the past year:
Fiction
- Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, by John Joseph Adams
- Permanent Damage by Dean Barrett
- Flashforward, by Robert J. Sawyer
Non-Fiction
- For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History, by Sarah Rose
- The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China, by Jay Taylor
- The Generalissimo’s Son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan, by Jay Taylor
- How the Mighty Fall, by Jim Collins
- The Looming Tower: al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright
- Obama’s Wars, by Bob Woodward
- OpticalIllusions: Lucent and the Crash of Telecom, by Lisa Endlich
- Stillwell and the American Experience in China, by BarbaraTuchman
- The Man on Mao’s Right: My Journey from Harvard Yard to Tiananmen Square, by Ji Chaohu
- Sun Yatsen, by Marie Claire Bergere, translated by Janet Lloyd
- The Victorian Internet, by Tom Standage
Fiction (Not Reviewed)
- The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross
- Full Dark: No Stars, by Stephen King
- The Fuller Memorandum, by Charles Stross
- Teatro Grotessco, by Thomas Ligotti
- Ur, by Stephen King
Non-Fiction (Not Reviewed)
- Built to Last, by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras
- Good to Great by Jim Collins
- Inside the Kaisha: Demystifying Japanese Business Behavior, by Noboru Yoshimura and Philip Anderson
- The Microsoft Way, by Randall Stross
- Microsoft: First Generation, by Cherl Tsang
In Progress
- Atlantic, by Simon Winchester
- Beam: The Race to Make the Laser, by Jeff Hecht
- Double Lives, by Stephen Koch
- Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State, by Yasheng Huang
- The Long March: The True History of Communist China’s Founding Myth, by Sun Shuyun
The stand-out of these is The Generalissimo’s Son, by Jay Taylor, about Chiang Ching-kuo. Ching-kuo inherited the supreme leadership of the Republic of China on Taiwan from his father, and lead the island to democracy. He is perhaps one of only three leaders (along with Kemal Ataturk and Ruhollah Khomenei) to have effectively used Terror to destroy an indigenous Communist Party. He was a Leninist who created a government of, by, and for the people.
Another book you might try is Venice: Lion City by Garry Wills. In the section on the Interdiction crisis of the late 16th century, the pro-Venetian arguments given by Paolo Sarpi sound a lot like arguments the Chinese government might give in one of its periodic arguments with the Vatican.
So, a reading project on China & the tech industry. How do the books you are reading provide context for your new job?