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James Palmer's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books James Palmer recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of James Palmer's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
Peter Goullart was brought up in the Orient and spent most of his life there. Forgotten Kingdom describes his years in the ancient forgotten Chinese Kingdom of Nakhi in Yunnan, by the Tibetan border, where, as a representative of the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives, he really mixed with the people. This is a book about paradise by a man who lived there for nine years. It is not easy to write a good book about paradise, but people are Mr. Goullart's forte, and when he mixes us up with the Nakhis he delivers us up to his idyll. Likiang itself, its sunlight and its flowers and its rushing... more
Recommended by James Palmer, and 1 others.

James PalmerIt’s one of the most beautiful and productive images of minority life in China. (Source)

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2
For 250 years, the Turkic Muslims of Altishahr the vast desert region to the northwest of Tibet have led an uneasy existence under Chinese rule. Today they call themselves Uyghurs, and they have cultivated a sense of history and identity that challenges Beijing s official national narrative. Rian Thum argues that the roots of this history run deeper than recent conflicts, to a time when manuscripts and pilgrimage dominated understandings of the past. Beyond broadening our knowledge of tensions between the Uyghurs and the Chinese government, this meditation on the very concept of history... more
Recommended by James Palmer, and 1 others.

James PalmerThe actual historical connection between the Uighurs and today’s people is pretty shaky. (Source)

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3

Wolf Totem

China's runaway bestseller and winner of the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize

Published in China in 2004, Wolf Totem has broken all sales records, selling millions of copies (along with millions more on the black market). Part period epic, part fable for modern days, Wolf Totem depicts the dying culture of the Mongols--the ancestors of the Mongol hordes who at one time terrorized the world--and the parallel extinction of the animal they believe to be sacred: the fierce and otherworldly Mongolian wolf. Beautifully translated by Howard Goldblatt, the foremost...
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Recommended by James Palmer, Isabel Hilton, and 2 others.

James PalmerIt positions the Mongols as this kind of in-touch-with-nature, fierce, warrior people, like wolves, and the Han as these settled ‘sheeple.’ (Source)

Isabel HiltonWolf Totem contains certain things that have universal romantic appeal: wolves, tribesmen, and so on. But the message that central Chinese policies have been catastrophic for the people who were China’s neighbours – and who are now incorporated into China – very much needed to be said. And it was a way of criticising the party without it being about Han China. But it spoke for a lot of what had... (Source)

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4
In 1644, the Manchus, a relatively unknown people inhabiting China’s rude northeastern frontier, overthrew the Ming, Asia’s mightiest rulers, and established the Qing dynasty, which endured to 1912. From this event arises one of Chinese history’s great conundrums: How did a barely literate alien people manage to remain in power for nearly 300 years over a highly cultured population that was vastly superior in number? This problem has fascinated scholars for almost a century, but until now no one has approached the question from the Manchu point of view.

This book, the first in any...
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Recommended by James Palmer, and 1 others.

James PalmerQing borders, with the exception of outer Mongolia, pretty much define the shape of China today. (Source)

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5
For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical... more
Recommended by James Palmer, and 1 others.

James PalmerI love Scott, he’s one of my favourite authors. (Source)

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