Central Asia
Jeannine Davis-Kimball’s Warrior Women
I am ashamed to admit that Jeannine Davis-Kimball’s Warrior Women–An Archaeologist’s Search for History’s Hidden Heroines sat on my shelf unread for months.* I looked at it early on in the research stage. I decided I wanted to own a copy so I could scribble in the margins. (As opposed to scribbling in the Margins.)…
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In Manchuria
Michael Meyer’s In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland And The Transformation of Rural China is a beautifully written blend of memoir, travel account, history and social commentary. In 2011, Meyer moved to his Chinese wife’s hometown–a Manchurian village with what proved to be the inappropriate name of Wasteland. He had lived in Beijing for several…
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Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms
In recent weeks, Ezidis, Druze, Mandaeans and other Middle Eastern religious minorities have appeared in the world’s headlines. For the most part, these groups, unfamiliar to most Westerners, have been no more than names attached to tragedies. Gerard Russell’s Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East appears just in…
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