Word: authoring
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...both. A Turning Wheel is Shaplen's magnum opus, an enormous work on his years as a correspondent in Asia. Like any sweeeping work, it has its ups and downs. If Shaplen's book is flawed by the sheer breadth of his topic, it is held together by the author's personal approach. But A Turning Wheel is also a strangely unfulfilling work, copious in its detail, but marred by its omission of China...
...reaching subject and molds it into a simple framework. In each of 11 chapters, he outlines the post-World War Two history of an Asian nation. A longtime writer for The New Yorker, Shaplen's chapters are in-depth articles, examining phases of development within the context of the author's experiences. The author knows his story well, though he explains events and people in almost frustrating detail at times...
...elsewhere, he eagerly tackles Japan in less than 100 pages and the Philipines in even fewer. While one might expect this--American reporters' access to the mainland has been extremely limited--it leaves a gaping hole. A Turning Wheel is subtitled "Three Decades of the Asian Revolution," but its author has omitted a discussion of the revolution that many believe has shaped the better part of the region's modern history...
Shaplen takes more dangerous risks when he abandons armchair criticisms and turns to present-day issues. He doesn't hesitate to discuss China's recent incursions into Vietnam, the refugee problem, or the Cambodian-Vietnamese situation. Lucid, insightful and delightfully straightforward, the author recounts the past and predicts the future. Shaplen is no dummy; when he doesn't know what will happen, he says so. On China, he writes, "No matter how many crystal balls one uses, it is patently impossible to foresee the future evolution of the Chinese Communist Party." Where a lesser writer would have struggled to find...
...degenerates into an encyclopedic rendition of facts and events. A tendency toward run-on sentences packed with references and acronyms may deter the novice. But if Shaplen has only written the encyclopedia of modern Asia, it is a reference work that is desperately needed. As one might expect, the author is at his best in relatively uncharted territory; the chapters on Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia are not only fascinating, but promise to fill gaps in most people's knowledge...