Champion’s Day: The End of Old Shanghai

I will admit that I approached historian James Carter’s book Champion’s Day: The End of Old Shanghai with seriously mixed feelings. On the one hand, I spent some time last year reading about the International Settlement in Shanghai in the 1930s while I was working on a piece on self-styled “girl reporter” Peggy Hull  I…

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A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words: World War II in Infographics

I have said it here before, and I will doubtless say it again: I hoard collect reference books. There is something about the words “atlas,” “dictionary,” or “encyclopedia” in a title that causes me to stop and take a second look at a remainder table, second hand bookstore or library sale.* I own dictionaries for…

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