Global Shanghai News

Authors

Date of this Version

12-6-2008

Document Type

Article

Citation

December 6, 2008 in The China Beat http://www.thechinabeat.org/

Comments

Copyright December 6, 2008. Used by permission.

Abstract

Regular readers of this blog may think it is a bit redundant for me to do a “Self-promotion Saturday” post about Global Shanghai, 1850-2010: A History in Fragments, since I’ve managed to slip references to and images of the cover of my new book onto the site already in recent a piece about the 1980s and one about the Beijing Forum, cell phones, and a Chinese Obama joke.

Still, when you’ve worked on a publication as long as I labored on this one (even though it is a short, it took well over a decade to get from first inspiration and initial research to actually having the first copies in hand this week), the actual appearance of the artifact is something you want to mark. (The book should be available for purchase in Britain now, ready for sale in other parts of the world early in the new year.)

I also couldn’t resist the opportunity to mention the first review it has received, a very positive one in That’s Shanghai, which not only has just the kinds of adjectives authors love to find applied to their books but is written with verve to boot. And who wouldn’t like getting five out of five thumbs up?

In addition, just in case there are any China Beat readers who don’t also regularly check out the Danwei site as well, this post gives me a chance to pass on the word that I have a new piece up there linked to the book. It’s the first of a two-part essay called “A Brief History of Shanghai’s Future” (the sequel will follow soon). It isn’t an excerpt per se, but it draws from material in Global Shanghai and should give readers a pretty good sense of what the book is like.

Other pieces that tie-in with the book will be published elsewhere on the web. I’ll flag them in future posts. I’ll also use those posts as an opportunity to give some background on the book (like why a historian like me has a year still to come in its title) and mention places I’ll be giving book-related talks. So stay tuned.