Books by Adam Brookes
“The elevator pitch for this book is The Monuments Men, the China side of the story. It’s about how people tried to preserve these precious works of art during wartime. It very much takes you into life within a fragmented and embattled China during World War Two. Any book that does that for a popular readership is important because in the English language world, there is still a tendency to forget just how central the battles fought in Asia were. There’s a default to just thinking about the European war, or about Japan and America and Pearl Harbor. So, I liked that about it. In addition, Brookes really makes some of the curators, who devoted themselves to going along with these works of art and hiding them in caves and other unlikely places, come to life as characters. There were very dramatic moments in the odysseys of the objects, and in describing them he draws on the diaries and in one case the poems of the curators to make them fleshed-out people.” Read more...
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Historian
Interviews where books by Adam Brookes were recommended
-
1
Fragile Cargo: The World War II Race to Save the Treasures of China's Forbidden City
by Adam Brookes -
2
Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA's Covert War in China
by John Delury -
3
Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden: Two Sisters Separated by China's Civil War
by Zhuqing Li -
4
Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong
by Louisa Lim -
5
Accidental Holy Land: The Communist Revolution in Northwest China
by Joseph W. Esherick
The Best China Books of 2022, recommended by Jeffrey Wasserstrom
The Best China Books of 2022, recommended by Jeffrey Wasserstrom
From a true story that reads like a spy novel to a detailed study of the mythic origins of the Chinese Communist Party in Northwest China, there were lots of interesting books published about China this year. Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor at UC Irvine and specialist in modern Chinese history, recommends some of his 2022 favourites.
