PositiveThe Financial Times... engrossing ... should become a guiding reference work for how we view the new Myanmar ... Readers are given a deep dive into the history, myths and atavistic fears of the dominant ethnic Burmese, and their relations with the country’s many minorities ... Thant Myint-U does not let his countrymen off the hook for what Rohingya victims describe as crimes against humanity, and prosecutors at the International Court of Justice are seeking to prove genocide. However, he succeeds in putting the violence in the broader context we need to grasp it ... a sympathetic but sobering account, told elegantly and eruditely by one of the people who understands Myanmar best. Yet the book is, for its virtues, sparing in its assessment of Aung San Suu Kyi’s record in office, a relevant topic for a powerful leader set for re-election to a second term later this year. If Myanmar is turning into an illiberal democracy like Narendra Modi’s India or Viktor Orban’s Hungary — which hosted Aung San Suu Kyi last year — perhaps we should not be surprised.
Max Boot
MixedThe Financial TimesLansdale, who coupled his cloak-and-dagger gambits with nation-building operations — what today is called ‘soft power’ — is now the subject of a capacious biography by the war historian Max Boot … While parts of this book might work as a star vehicle for Tom Hanks or Matt Damon, there is perhaps not quite enough here to justify the 600-plus page length. Boot is a conservative who is comfortable with heterodox views — he recently published an apologia for being a beneficiary of white male privilege — and I would have liked to see more of his own analysis of how Lansdale’s precepts have been adopted or ignored in subsequent US military interventions.
