TWIB-III: 43

[akujunkan]

A day late, thanks to my work schedule. I only read one book last week, but it was a good one.

1) The Two Koreas - Don Oberdorfer
The Two Koreas is a popular, not academic, history. That said, it is the best popular history (on any subject) I have read, and holds its own against not a few academic histories as well. Part of this is due to length; at 445 pages it is one of the longest popular histories I have read, but it's also one of the most readable. I was knocking back about a page per minute, due largely to Oberdorfer's prose, which is as engaging as it is precise.

After briefly describing the history of the Korean peninsula's division following World War II, Oberdorfer's narrative details the political and economic history of South Korea from the immediate postwar period to the Roh Dae Woo administration, before switching its forcus to political (especially foreign policy-related) and economic developments in North Korea from the early 90s to the dawn of the 21^st century. Oberdorfer diligently and comprehensively explains how North and South Korea's interactions with the great powers (the United States, China, and the U.S.S.R./Russia) influenced their respective trajectories while never losing sight of the fact that he is writing about the Koreas, and not said great powers. He likewise gives concise explanations of important fields and concepts (What exactly is a light water reactor?) without overly digressing into minutiae. Best yet, his is the most objective yet thorough recounting of Korean history I have encountered: he places blame for diplomatic, economic, and political failures where it is due, while his own ideological leanings are completely absent from the narrative.

Really, about my only complaint concerning The Two Koreas is that Oberdorfer seems to have been unsure as to whether he wanted to write a book or anthology by a single author, and the volume's consistency suffers for it. Oberdorfer frequently summarises entire sections or chapters throughout latter portions of the text as if he assumes readers haven't read those earlier passages, but not consisently; nor does he offer such summaries in each chapter or indeed, for the more obscure references (quick, non-Korea experts: do you know to what "the tree incident" refers?). At one--and only one--point in the narrative Oberdorfer provides page numbers along with the rehashes.

That said, in terms of scope, objectivaty, and readability, this is perhaps the best modern history of the Korean peninsula I have encountered. I wish more authors would take their cues from Oberdorfer, and if you haven't read it, I suggest that you do so now.

That will be all.

Comments

[red-rapture.livejournal.com]

...tree incident?

I want to start reading more non-fiction, and especially books about the histories and cultures of other countries (probably leaning more towards pop than academic, at least for now). I checked out a couple about India from the library the other week, but I'm not sure that I picked good ones, and there are so many. I'll look for this book when I go on a Korea fix (which I think will come after China).

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Briefly, the tree incident refers to an incident in 1976 when a U.S.-ROK work team attempting to prune a poplar tree in the demilitarized zone was attacked by a squad of North Korean soldiers. Two of the Americans were beaten to death. Needless to say, many within the U.S. and ROk militaries wanted to retaliate with force, although the situation was "resolved" with a massive show of force on the U.S./ROK side and the cutting down of the poplar tree. It's a well-known incident among Korea scholars (for obvious reasons) but not so widely know otherwise.

Let me know your thoughts on the books on India. I'm pretty good with East and Southeast Asian history, but I want to branch out into South Asia as well.

[bran420-7.livejournal.com]

This is on my TBR list now, along with a myriad of political and international novels that will have to wait til after my now completely overloaded schedule.

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Ooh, names of the novels, please! Not that my schedule is any less overloaded, but I feel guilty if I don't add several books a week to the list...

[bran420-7.livejournal.com]

I'm dying to dive into Ha JIn's novels and I've heard good things about Streig Larsson, plus a whole bunch of non fiction that John will probably read and summarize for me. I'll post that list soon.

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Ditto on Streig Larsson. I've read a few of Ha Jin's books; as always I'll be interested in hearing your opinions on them.

[bran420-7.livejournal.com]

Cool. My first grab will be Waiting. I always like to start at the beginning...

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Excellent, as I haven't read Waiting yet.

[wombatdeamor.livejournal.com]

I will read that at some point as well. Your one complaint reminds me of my one for The Year of Living Biblically, where it had additional notes at the end that weren't marked at any point in the actual chapters they went to, so I read the whole book and then was trying to relocate the passages that he was expanding on. And in retrospect, I was going to comment on that when he was in Ft. Wayne, but he had to be so goddamn nice that I forgot.

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Wow. Usually books at least put the page numbers to which the notes refer to in those sorts of glossaries. Which, by the way, I hate, because I'd rather just have actual notes indicating where the sources came from or no notes at all.

So nice is his secret weapon, non? I also saw Oberdorfer when he was in D.C., but at that point I hadn't read his book, so I have no idea if he has a secret weapon or not.

[wombatdeamor.livejournal.com]

well, the nice only worked because he also had that woody allen, geeky neurotic jew thing going too. It's hard to critisize because you're afraid they've already done it to themselves.

I'm a fan of footnotes personally. If you're reading the book, you're probably interested in the subject matter, and the author should treat it as such. Any expansion, "optional" or no, should be easily available for the reader to decide it's important.

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Exactly, plus, footnotes are reeeeally easy to ignore if you don't give a shit. I just don't get the authors who do the [Notes for Pages 23-6,029] thing because "footnotes are too distracting."

[wombatdeamor.livejournal.com]

Losing the placement of one or both of my bookmarks is what's really distracting. Grrrrr. Though not as distracting as the sidenotes in Stephen Colbert's book.

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

I understand that they were trying to take The Word format into the written medium, but I never managed to read the sidenotes at the appropriate moment, so I always got to the punchline too soon or too late.

[wombatdeamor.livejournal.com]

me too. I think footnotes would have been more admirable...or even an asterick or some kind of mark saying "look sideways!"