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Reviews tagging 'Violence'
Three Tigers, One Mountain: A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea, and Japan by Michael Booth
1 review
cait's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.25
I am in a box on the sea in my underwear with a strange man who thinks I am a piano-playing terrorist.
I'm doing this experiment where I go to my library, walk to the Asian History section, and just grab the first book I see on the China shelf. It just so happens that, on this particular Monday, this was the first one on the shelf and I was not disappointed.
In Three Tigers, One Mountain, Michael Booth does his best to explain the complex history and political tensions between the three most well-known and influential Asian powerhouses ... and Taiwan. Booth explored all four countries and spent time speaking to experts, conversing with students and civilians, and exploring museums and important cultural sites.
It's hard to detail the things you learn from nonfiction, because there's so much to unpack, but I can say that I appreciated Booth's sense of humor and the various differing perspectives he managed to bring to the forefront. I now know that Korea spends more than $5.6 billion per year on coffee, Peppa Pig became a symbol for gangs and organized crime and was therefore banned in China, Japan's Korean schools are mostly funded by North Korea and routinely have black vans parked outside shouting racial profanities at the children, and Taiwan's former ruler, Chiang Kai-shek was actually a brutal dictator and not the democratic beacon of freedom western media would have you believe.
There's nothing better than learning, in my opinion, and with this book, I learned a lot.
I'm doing this experiment where I go to my library, walk to the Asian History section, and just grab the first book I see on the China shelf. It just so happens that, on this particular Monday, this was the first one on the shelf and I was not disappointed.
In Three Tigers, One Mountain, Michael Booth does his best to explain the complex history and political tensions between the three most well-known and influential Asian powerhouses ... and Taiwan. Booth explored all four countries and spent time speaking to experts, conversing with students and civilians, and exploring museums and important cultural sites.
It's hard to detail the things you learn from nonfiction, because there's so much to unpack, but I can say that I appreciated Booth's sense of humor and the various differing perspectives he managed to bring to the forefront. I now know that Korea spends more than $5.6 billion per year on coffee, Peppa Pig became a symbol for gangs and organized crime and was therefore banned in China, Japan's Korean schools are mostly funded by North Korea and routinely have black vans parked outside shouting racial profanities at the children, and Taiwan's former ruler, Chiang Kai-shek was actually a brutal dictator and not the democratic beacon of freedom western media would have you believe.
There's nothing better than learning, in my opinion, and with this book, I learned a lot.
Minor: Addiction, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infertility, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Medical content, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Abortion, Murder, Cultural appropriation, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, and War
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