Maura Elizabeth Cunningham ( of China in the 21st Century)

Maura Elizabeth rated a book really liked it Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia's History by Catherine Merridale	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
3.5 stars Wow. That was a lot of Russian history. In Red Fortress, author Catherine Merridale uses the Kremlin as the focal point for writing a history of Russia that spans hundreds of years, from the construction of the fortress’s first ramparts in th ...more
Dec 27, 2025 05:50PM · like · see review
Maura Elizabeth rated a book really liked it By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Indigenous journalist Rebecca Nagle’s book is fire. By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land burns with Nagle’s passion for truth and justice in reporting; her anger at violence and violations of Indigenous rights s ...more
Dec 20, 2025 08:03AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of By the Fire We Carry by Rebecca Nagle. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — By the Fire We Carry by Rebecca Nagle <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Maura Elizabeth rated a book it was amazing Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity by Joseph V. Lee (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Most of us know Martha’s Vineyard as a vacation destination—a summer haven for the wealthy, celebrity, and political elites of the Northeast. For Joseph Lee and his family, however, the Vineyard is their home. It’s not necessarily where they live—Lee ...more
Dec 17, 2025 05:47AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Nothing More of This Land by Joseph V. Lee. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Nothing More of This Land by Joseph V. Lee <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Maura Elizabeth rated a book it was ok Merry Inkmas by Talia Hibbert (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Maura Elizabeth rated a book liked it Home for a Cowboy Christmas by Donna Grant (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A decent romantic suspense story—nothing special, but fine.
Dec 14, 2025 02:17AM · like · see review
Maura Elizabeth rated a book really liked it Christmas Is All Around by Martha Waters (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Christmas Is All Around is a delightfully meta send-up of holiday rom-coms, specifically Love, Actually. Martha Waters will have you longing for a Christmas trip to London, even as she acknowledges the crowds and the cheesiness of the city’s holiday ...more
Dec 12, 2025 05:36AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Christmas Is All Around by Martha Waters. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Christmas Is All Around by Martha Waters <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Maura Elizabeth rated a book liked it Indignity: A Life Reimagined by Lea Ypi	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Would I have liked Indignity: A Life Reimagined more if I’d had a better idea ahead of time of how Lea Ypi had approached this prequel to her excellent memoir, Free? Would I have been more satisfied if Ypi had explained at the beginning that Indignit ...more
Dec 11, 2025 08:12AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Indignity by Lea Ypi. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Indignity by Lea Ypi <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Maura Elizabeth rated a book it was amazing Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Albania is not the ex-socialist country that gets the most attention. Before reading Lea Ypi’s memoir, Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History, I could have free-associated only a few words about the country’s socialist period—namely, Enve ...more
Dec 09, 2025 06:49PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Free by Lea Ypi. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Free by Lea Ypi <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Maura Elizabeth rated a book really liked it The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague by Timothy Garton Ash	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I’m doing a load of reading on the 1980s in communist countries right now, so I thought I’d go back and re-read The Magic Lantern, Timothy Garton Ash’s “history of the present” essay collection on four revolutions across the Soviet Bloc in 1989. Gart ...more
Dec 08, 2025 05:24PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Magic Lantern by Timothy Garton Ash. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Magic Lantern by Timothy Garton Ash <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Maura Elizabeth rated a book really liked it The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature by Charlie English (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
3.5 stars There’s a slight mismatch between the title of Charlie English’s recent book, The CIA Book Club, and the contents of the volume. I’m going to blame this on English’s publisher, since they get final say on titles. In short: there’s very littl ...more
Dec 08, 2025 09:11AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The CIA Book Club by Charlie English. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The CIA Book Club by Charlie English <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

Maura Elizabeth rated a book really liked it

Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia's History
by Catherine Merridale

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3.5 stars

Wow. That was a lot of Russian history.

In Red Fortress, author Catherine Merridale uses the Kremlin as the focal point for writing a history of Russia that spans hundreds of years, from the construction of the fortress’s first ramparts in th ...more

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By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
by Rebecca Nagle

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Indigenous journalist Rebecca Nagle’s book is fire. By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land burns with Nagle’s passion for truth and justice in reporting; her anger at violence and violations of Indigenous rights s ...more

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Nothing More of This Land by Joseph V. Lee

Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity
by Joseph V. Lee (Goodreads Author)

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Most of us know Martha’s Vineyard as a vacation destination—a summer haven for the wealthy, celebrity, and political elites of the Northeast. For Joseph Lee and his family, however, the Vineyard is their home. It’s not necessarily where they live—Lee Most of us know Martha’s Vineyard as a vacation destination—a summer haven for the wealthy, celebrity, and political elites of the Northeast. For Joseph Lee and his family, however, the Vineyard is their home. It’s not necessarily where they live—Lee himself, in fact, has also been a summer visitor for most of his life—but it’s the land of the Aquinnah Wampanoag, their Indigenous tribe, which farmed the island, fished its waters, and lived next to its red clay cliffs long before John Belushi or Bill Clinton showed up.

Lee wrestles with his own relationship to Martha’s Vineyard, as well as that of the greater Aquinnah Wampanoag community, in his new nonfiction book, Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity. Growing up, Lee says, “The only frames I had for understanding Native history were absence and genocide.” Stories of Indigenous tribes slaughtered and driven off their land in the western United States didn’t fit with the Wampanoag’s history, which was more about a gradual dispersal as tribal members (including Lee’s great-grandfather) left the island. As a result, there is a Wampanoag diaspora within the United States—and the risk that those who remain on Martha’s Vineyard can be thought of as the “real” Wampanoag, while others are somehow lesser. Lee pushes back against this inferred hierarchy, noting that “Moving from the island in search of opportunity is not a deviation or departure from Wampanoag identity, it is a part of it.”

Still, it has sometimes been difficult for Lee and other Aquinnah Wampanoag who live elsewhere to participate fully in tribal politics or maintain connections with a community and culture deeply rooted in Martha’s Vineyard. For decades, Wampanoag governance took place in-person at meetings on the island, and there was a lack of transparency that frustrated and distanced those who could not attend. Only the Covid-19 pandemic forced a change, as the tribe (after some initial reluctance and technical difficulties) scrambled to organize virtual sessions that could, in turn, include anyone who wished to participate. “In a strange way,” Lee observes, “the restrictions from the pandemic led to the best access for off-island tribal members in our history.” Aquinnah Wampanoag who had grown apart from the tribe could now reconnect through a conscientious and inclusive use of technology.

Lee explains for non-Indigenous readers of Nothing More of This Land the ins and outs of how sovereign tribes operate within the United States, sometimes comparing policies here with those in other countries to show alternative possibilities. Despite this big-picture element, the heart of his work lies in Aquinnah (formerly Gay Head), the Indigenous town at the eastern tip of Martha’s Vineyard where his grandparents opened a souvenir shop that Lee’s parents now operate. Working in the shop, Lee reflects on “the many sacrifices that tourism and colonialism demand of us,” grappling with the performance of Indigenous identity for outsiders that has provided his family’s livelihood for multiple generations. Summer visitors to the Vineyard like the charm of having the Aquinnah Wampanoag there and will talk a good game about respecting their ties to the land—until that land’s value proves too irresistible to ignore. (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, for example, wound up in a protracted legal battle with the Wampanoag over the rights to a slice of beachfront located on her 340-acre property.) Such conflicts don’t just affect tribes living near up-market real estate like the Wampanoag, Lee notes. “The price might fluctuate from place to place, but the more I learn about other tribes and indigenous nations, the more I realize that we’re all dealing with the same issue. Everyone wants our land, no matter where it is or what condition it is in.”

Nothing More of This Land is a skillful blend of history, memoir, and current events—a deeply personal investigation into identity and community. Ultimately, Lee decides, “The way we think about Indigenous identity may shift from generation to generation, but what really matters is that we do what we can to ensure future generations have as many options as possible and a strong relationship with land and community.” Indigenous identity, in this sense, means more than carrying a tribal ID card. It requires active engagement with the community and culture and conscious decisions to share them with others and pass them on to the next generation. ...more

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Merry Inkmas
by Talia Hibbert (Goodreads Author)

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Home for a Cowboy Christmas
by Donna Grant (Goodreads Author)

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A decent romantic suspense story—nothing special, but fine.

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Christmas Is All Around
by Martha Waters (Goodreads Author)

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Christmas Is All Around is a delightfully meta send-up of holiday rom-coms, specifically Love, Actually. Martha Waters will have you longing for a Christmas trip to London, even as she acknowledges the crowds and the cheesiness of the city’s holiday ...more

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Indignity: A Life Reimagined
by Lea Ypi

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Would I have liked Indignity: A Life Reimagined more if I’d had a better idea ahead of time of how Lea Ypi had approached this prequel to her excellent memoir, Free? Would I have been more satisfied if Ypi had explained at the beginning that Indignit Would I have liked Indignity: A Life Reimagined more if I’d had a better idea ahead of time of how Lea Ypi had approached this prequel to her excellent memoir, Free? Would I have been more satisfied if Ypi had explained at the beginning that Indignity was closer to a work of fiction than narrative nonfiction? She acknowledges this with a wink and a nod halfway through the book, putting the words in the mouth of a young graduate student escorting her to the archives: “I gave up researching women. Women and archives. Good luck with that. You’re better off writing a novel.”

A novel is mostly what we get in Indignity, Ypi’s imagined recreation of her grandmother Leman’s life, from her childhood in Salonica to her adult years in Albania. Ypi knew Leman as an older woman who had lived through decades of socialist rule; Indignity explores Leman’s earlier privileged life as part of a cosmopolitan group of well-placed merchants, scholars, and government officials. Ypi draws what she can from government archives, and presumably heard stories from her grandmother, but the line between fact and fiction is very fuzzy here. Although I’m not a stickler for historical accuracy, reading Indignity led me to realize that I’m a big believer in describing a book accurately. Classifying Indignity under “bios & memoirs,” as the publisher’s website does, implies a far greater confidence in the book’s contents than I have.

So, what if I simply approach Indignity as a novel? I’m not sure it’s one I would have stuck with. Tales of fallen families, their former wealth and privilege swept away with the arrival of a communist state, are fairly common, and Leman’s story doesn’t stand out in this genre. So I’m left feeling that Indignity is either a largely fictitious biography, or a run-of-the-mill novel. It’s a book that intrigues me, and one that I want to talk about with others—mostly because I find it so confounding.

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley. ...more

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Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History
by Lea Ypi

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Albania is not the ex-socialist country that gets the most attention. Before reading Lea Ypi’s memoir, Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History, I could have free-associated only a few words about the country’s socialist period—namely, Enve Albania is not the ex-socialist country that gets the most attention. Before reading Lea Ypi’s memoir, Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History, I could have free-associated only a few words about the country’s socialist period—namely, Enver Hoxha, China ally, isolated. That’s it. I had virtually no idea of what this era was like in Albania, or what it would have been like to grow up there in the 1980s and 1990s as the country transitioned from socialism to … something else. Ypi, born in 1979 (three years older than me), movingly narrates the upheaval of these years through the eyes of a child observing the adults and the society around her.

As a young girl, Ypi had no sense of the crushing oppression that the Party-state dictatorship inflicted on its citizens. To the contrary, she writes, “We had plenty of freedom. I felt so free that I often perceived my freedom as a burden,” confronted with choices that would each result in different consequences. Ypi’s parents and grandmother protected her from political realities: speaking in code about people “attending university” (imprisoned), hiding their true feelings about the Communist Party, and denying their relationship to former prime minister Xhaferr Ypi, who had collaborated with the Italian Fascists. But then the socialist government fell in late 1990 and the scales fell from 11-year-old Ypi’s eyes. She suddenly awakened to the deceptions all around her and, like other Albanians, felt cast adrift on the turbulence of the post-socialist era.

“The personal is political,” second-wave feminists proclaimed, and this is also true in Ypi’s memories of the 1990s. Her mother, an unwilling math teacher during the communist years, flourished as an opposition party cadre after socialism fell. Her father struggled as a company manager in the market economy, anguished by the demand to put profit over people’s livelihood, then had a brief career as an MP, “an unmitigated failure.” Foreign NGO staffers and World Bank employees flocked to the country and crowed about Albania’s transition to democracy and the free market. In the meantime, Ypi studied for her high-school graduation exams amid power outages and the sound of Kalashnikovs firing as the country fought a civil war. Although the Ypi family had not been highly placed in socialist society—her relationship to “Ypi the quisling” would have placed a ceiling on Lea’s future prospects—there was a steadiness in those years that vanished in the post-socialist era. Again and again, Ypi muses on whether or not more freedom is really better: democracy and capitalism have not proven a cure-all for Albania, or for her family.

“It is not that I felt nostalgic,” Ypi writes of her decision to study political theory and to remember the past. Instead, her experiences of multiple political and economic systems have made her more aware of the shortcomings of all:

My family equated socialism with denial: the denial of who they wanted to be, of the right to make mistakes and learn from them, to explore the world on one’s own terms. I equated liberalism with broken promises, the destruction of solidarity, the right to inherit privilege, selfish enrichment, cultivating illusions while turning a blind eye to injustice.

Provocative and compelling, Free thoughtfully blends a coming-of-age story with essential questions on the meaning, and the limits, of freedom.

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley. ...more

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The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague
by Timothy Garton Ash

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I’m doing a load of reading on the 1980s in communist countries right now, so I thought I’d go back and re-read The Magic Lantern, Timothy Garton Ash’s “history of the present” essay collection on four revolutions across the Soviet Bloc in 1989. Gart ...more

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The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature
by Charlie English (Goodreads Author)

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3.5 stars

There’s a slight mismatch between the title of Charlie English’s recent book, The CIA Book Club, and the contents of the volume. I’m going to blame this on English’s publisher, since they get final say on titles. In short: there’s very littl 3.5 stars

There’s a slight mismatch between the title of Charlie English’s recent book, The CIA Book Club, and the contents of the volume. I’m going to blame this on English’s publisher, since they get final say on titles. In short: there’s very little CIA in The CIA Book Club. In actuality, English tells the story of the extensive Polish dissident network that operated throughout the 1980s, delivering books, newsletters, and video/audio cassettes into the hands of Polish citizens yearning for lives beyond their communist reality. Yes, this enterprise received significant funding from the CIA, but the primary agents of change were the brave local activists working to undermine their country’s ruling regime.

In episodes that read like a quality Cold War spy thriller, English relates the elaborate maneuvers necessary to transport not only reading materials but also printing presses, ink, and paper around Poland. Surveilled by the government’s security apparatus, known dissidents had to employ an arsenal of tricks to evade the authorities. Meeting points changed regularly, conversations had to use coded language, and activists could never let down their guard. Despite these obstacles and regular setbacks, smugglers managed to continue their operations all the way up to the fall of communism in late 1989. As I read The CIA Book Club, I was amazed—not that this episode in history existed, but how large it grew. I can only assume that more than a few employees of Poland’s Party-state were turning a blind eye to the smuggling taking place all around them.

Among the memorable figures who populate English’s tale, publisher Mirosław Chojecki stands out as a key focus of the story. Chojecki lived the 1980s in unexpected exile, finding himself stranded in the United States when the Polish state suddenly imposed martial law in December 1981. Chojecki settled in France and carried out his work from afar, organizing shipments of materials across Europe and playing a unique role in the weakening of the Party-state. Although the CIA backed and facilitated Chojecki’s efforts, as well as those of other dissidents, the U.S. government shouldn’t take too much credit for the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. As Charlie English shows, the real work was done by members of the Polish underground resistance who understood the power of the written word. ...more

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	China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham (Goodreads Author) 3.51 avg rating — 680 ratings — published 2010 — 25 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	China Stories (Los Angeles Review of Books - Digital Editions, Issue #10) by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (Editor), Helen Gao, Alec Ash (Goodreads Author) 4.50 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2013	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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