Now Mishra turns to epic history himself, writing this magisterial account of the revolutions (and their makers) that flooded into the void left behind by retreating imperialism.ħ. From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia by Pankaj Mishra – This author briefly blazed through the freelance-review firmament by correctly picking a fight with bloated toff Niall Fergusson about his book Civilization: The West and the Rest (the self-satisfied fatuity of which was rendered all the more bitter by its author’s undeniable ability to do brilliant work). The Twilight War by David Crist – In this muscular, incredibly readable, and very detailed account of the tangled interactions of the United States and Iran since the Shah was overthrown in 1979, Crist does a completely masterful job of broad-strokes scene-setting, gripping action-narration, and most of all, extremely perceptive character analysis (as might be expected considering the subject, the bulk of the book concerns the Reagan administration, and it’s excellent on that front too) – adding up to that rarest of reading phenomena: a long book you’ll wish were even longer.ĩ. It was a spotty year for another of my favorite genres, history (books, that is – actual history broke somewhat on the side of the good guys, for a change), but there were unmistakable highlights, the top ten of which were these:ġ0.
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