The Power of Words
Freedom
of the press lies at the very core of Wars
Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent
Magazine in Suharto’s
Indonesia (Equinox
Publishing, 2005), by Janet Steele, associate
professor of media and public affairs. Tempo magazine was Indonesia’s most important
news weekly for 23 years before it was banned
in June 1994 after an inflammatory article enraged
authoritarian President Suharto’s feuding
inner circle. Refusing to accept defeat, the
magazine’s passionate staff waged an “underground” revolt,
culminating in an online version of the magazine
highly critical of the now-deposed regime, which
fell in 1998.
Steele tells the story of Tempo from the news
magazine’s founding in 1971, through its
fall and subsequent rebirth, as well as the publication’s
relationship to the politics, culture, and social
development of modern Indonesian society. In
so doing, she sheds light on broader questions
concerning the role of the press in developing
countries. Wars Within includes more than 100
interviews with Tempo’s founders, writers,
and contributors, in addition to previously unpublished
archival material.
Currently in
Indonesia on a Fulbright senior scholar grant,
Steele is spending the year teaching working
journalists at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute
in Jakarta and conducting trainings throughout
the region. In 2003, she was a Fulbright Senior
Specialist in communication and journalism at
Jakarta’s Institute for the Study of
the Free Flow of Information. She has published
articles on media history and criticism in journals
such as Indonesia, Journalism
and Mass Communication Quarterly, Columbia
Journalism Review, and The
American Journalism Review.
Modern Jewish History
The achievements and afflictions of the Jewish
people across six continents during the past
400 years are chronicled in the epic saga, A History of the Jews
in the Modern World (Alfred
A. Knopf, 2005), by Howard M. Sachar, professor
emeritus of modern history at GW.
A renowned scholar of Jewish history, Sachar
tracks the fate and fortune of the Jews from
Western Europe’s age of mercantilism in
the 17th century to the post-Soviet and post-Imperialist
Islamic upheavals of the 21st century. The 831-page
volume recounts the emergence of Jews as key
players in commerce, science, politics, mass
communication, and entertainment worldwide, as
well as their dark days as victims of horrific
anti-Semitism.
“Notwithstanding their modest demography,
the Jews have functioned not simply as the anvil
for the hammers of other, larger and more powerful
nations,” he states. “They have generated
a formidable musculature in their own right.
Whether in economics, politics, culture, diplomacy,
or even warfare, their role over the past several
centuries looms strikingly out of proportion
to their attenuated critical mass.”
In his easy-to-read style, Sachar transports
readers to major centers of Jewish life around
the globe over the years, focusing primarily
on the Jews of the United States and Western
and Central Europe, while also telling the story
of lesser-known Jewish communities in the Muslim
world and Africa. Adding to the richness of the
volume, the author presents Jewish history in
the context of complex political developments
affecting the various nations where Jews lived. “Possibly
more than any other people in history, the fate
and fortune of the Jews prefigured the fate and
fortune of the nations among whom they lived
and interacted,” Sachar says. Throughout,
the author’s lifetime of scholarly research
shines through, painting a sweeping portrait
of a people.
Sachar is the author of 15 previous books and
the editor of the 39-volume The
Rise of Israel: A Documentary History.
Asia’s Changing Face
China’s expanding influence as a major
power in Asia takes center stage in Power
Shift (University of California Press, 2005),
edited by David Shambaugh, professor of political
science and international affairs and director
of the Elliott School of International Affairs
China Policy Program.
A collection of essays by 17 leading China scholars
around the globe, Power
Shift examines China’s
growing economic and military power, rising political
and diplomatic influence, and increasing involvement
in regional multilateral institutions, as well
as the impact of that rise on international relations
in Asia. In the book’s introduction, Shambaugh
states that since the late 1990s, “China
is no longer out of the mainstream, but is repositioning
itself as a (and some believe the) central actor
in the region and as a responsible power seeking
to enhance the stability and security of the
area.”
The volume is an outgrowth of the December 2003
GW conference “China and Asia: Toward a
New Regional Order,” where experts spent
two days brainstorming and debating the parameters
and implications of China’s rise in the
region. Many of the top scholars in the field
who attended the conference share their interpretive
insights and expertise in the chapters of Power
Shift.
Divided into six sections, the book examines
the changing Asian landscape, China’s economic
impact on Asia, political and diplomatic ties
with its neighbors, regional security strategy
and military posture, the potential impacts of
China’s increased centrality in Asia on
U.S.-China relations, and the broader implications
of China’s growing power and influence
for the regional order.
A widely published author, Shambaugh specializes
in China’s domestic policies, foreign relations,
and military affairs, as well as international
politics and security in Asia.
—JLF
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