Comparing Asian Politics: India, China, and Japan

I am not qualified to review this book. I found it browsing a discount warehouse in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee on spring break weekend. The store was right there on the strip and we were dying for something to do so we went in and I purchased several books for less than $10. I think Comparing Asian Politics: India, China, and Japan by Sue Ellen M. Charlton was $2 and it looked brand new. I was looking for books in general but books on China in particular and considered this a steal, the India and Japan part notwithstanding. This book is probably best read under the tutelage of Charlton herself at Colorado State University, Fort Collins where she teaches political science. For that matter, any number of professors might be helpful but I'm trying to get my pre-China trip China studies on-the-cheap. The flight to China is going to cost something like a thousand dollars all by itself. Reading Comparing Asian Politics: India, China, and Japan without the benefit of professors or fear of exams I was sometimes baffled and often just forcing my eyes along thinking about something else. This was in the early India and Japan parts. Nevertheless I learned something. Japan is a lot smaller than I thought. It looms so large in my world-view, you know? Yet Charlton notes that "Japan is, in fact, a mountaneous archipelago, with a total land mass of about the same size as the state of Montana" and some 127 million inhabitants. "Nearly one quarter of the population lives in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area alone," Charlton notes. I found much of interest even in the India parts, especially the story of the rise and trials and 1984 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. There was also a reference to Tennessean Al Gore's electoral college loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. But it was China I came for and Charlton delivers with current information on the developing Three Gorges Dam project, which will power modern China but destroy cultural sites along the Yangtze River and displace many poor people. She also thoroughly examines Communist Party politics with its endless cadres or bureaucrats and provides insight on the Chinese constitution. In a book this serious one is delighted to find maps and the maps in Comparing Asian Politics have immediately become personal favorites for their clarity and sharp use of black and white and shading, and because they were made at the University of Tennessee Cartographic Services Laboratory (Will Fontanez, Cartographer). This might be the smartest two bucks I've ever spent. Comparing Asian Politics: India, China, and Japan by Sue Ellen M. Charlton would be a bargain even at retail price. - THOMAS BRENT ANDREWS / more reviews at http://chronicdiscontent.wordpress.com ##