Ignore me. My reading skills aren’t as good as I thought they were. My comments are on Chang’s history The Rape of Nanking. Later reprints of that book do have some biographical details in the preface. But I haven’t read the memoir.

Recommended. Although this could be classified as “pop history” I found Chang’s writing informative, sober, and even restrained given the horrors she detailed. Important book. Bonus weirdness - one of the good guys was the local Nazi party rep 🤯

The source material from the FSB.

Excellent example of blissfully unaware arrogance working with cultural ignorance. I don’t think I would call the author a racist though without an established pattern of similar behaviour.

Clearly, neither Oliver nor his publishers consulted with anyone who had any familiarity with Australia. To have a story hook built around an Aboriginal child being abducted is obviously “tone deaf” in light of the “Stolen generations” - one doesn’t need to be indigenous to know that. Oliver should write kids’ books about what he knows if he isn’t prepared to do the research.

That sounds awesome 😀 Which part of the world did that happen in?

I applaud the use of graphs to educate but this one is lacking forcing the reader to assume a lot.

• what is the vertical axis? I assume it’s percentage change since some arbitrary time but the title text could mislead one to think it is “rate of change”
• year against which everything is measured is not stated. I assume it’s 2000.
• are the figures inflation adjusted? If not, the graph could well be underplaying the situation.
• I assume (again) that “average” here is the arithmetic mean but medium would be a much better measure of typical incomes and mortgages repayments because it is more robust to outliers. In a country with big disparities in wealth, the income of billionairees will skew the average high.

Not just any retired general but a proud member of nafo and CSIS.