The Taiping Civil War oppressed China in the 1850s and 1860s and may have killed more people than any other civil war in history. Last February the NY Times published a review by Dwight Gardner, who mostly makes it sound fascinating, except he opens with a patronizing paragraph about how no one will read it.
There should be a term in German that describes the sinking feeling you have when reading a serious book of scholarship, one whose determined author deserves praise and tenure, that no civilian reader should pick upI'm sure there is a term in German for reviews like this. Meanwhile, Platt, who looks youngish and is an associate prof, not someone emeritus or anything, says
“I never intended to become a historian – I was a math major who ended up in the English department – it was only in the course of a two-year teaching position in the Hunan province after college that I began to take a serious interest in how the past and present interweave,” Platt said at the soirée. “As most who practice history know, the truth can indeed be more wondrous than fiction.”
