What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)

[LBJer]

Ireland: A History by Thomas Bartlett.  Covers Irish history from 431 to 2010.  Highly recommended--both very scholarly and detailed and very well-written. 

[LBJer]

Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War by R.M. Douglas.

When you start reading a book and immediately start learning a lot, you know it's a book worth reading, and that has certainly been true for me with this one. 

Douglas is certainly right to question why such a monumental event--between 12 and 14 million ethnic Germans were expelled from eastern Europe after the war--is ignored or only barely mentioned in standard histories of Germany or Europe in general, even in those that are otherwise excellent. 

[LBJer]

I'm more than three-quarters of the way through Sidney Shapiro's translation of Pa Chin's novel Family.  Set in the city of Chengdu circa 1920, it paints a vivid picture of major elements of Chinese history during this period, and demonstrates how oppressive--often brutally so--the old order was for a younger generation eager for more freedom.  

The novel starts out somewhat slowly but really picks up later on.  I highly recommend it.  I always look forward to reading it, and that's the sign of a good book. 

[LBJer]

Having finished Pa Chin's (or, in an alternate transliteration, Ba Jin's) novel Family, which I discussed in an earlier post on this thread, I'm now reading (again in translation) another novel of his called Ward Four, published in 1946.  This work depicts conditions in a Chinese hospital during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45).