Global Shanghai 1850-2010

Like Walter Benjamin in his 'Arcades project', Wasserstrom uses elegant, shrewdly chosen vignettes to illuminate the paradox of urban modernity as simultaneous rupture and nostalgia. If he deflates some of Shanghai's current, boosterish hyperbole, it is only because he is so attentive to the many faces of its past.' Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz 'Professor Jeffery Wasserstrom has written the most enthralling history of modern Shanghai there is. Global Shanghai does not claim to be a definitive history (it focuses on seven pivotal years set a quarter of a century apart - 1850, 1875, 1900, 1925, 1950, 1975, 2000 - hence the "fragments" of the title), nor does it claim to provide definitive answers to the intriguing questions it raises. Instead, the University of California history professor seeks to frame those questions into a meaningful historical context. The result is a meticulously researched, cornucopic splendiferous wonder. Yes, we did say history book.