A War Game Called on Account of War

War games are essential to simulating battle conditions without anyone getting hurt. In order to test the U.S. Special Operations Command's ability to respond swiftly to a threat by China, a computer genius simulates a retaliatory strike. But a political crackdown in China so enrages the programmer that he converts his simulation to the real thing. To forestall a massive US attack on the People's Republic, Dragon Team leader Dave Riley must infiltrate China's borders and execute a treacherously dangerous mission.

That's the premise of Dragon Sim 13 by Bob Mayer, a West Point graduate, Special Forces veteran and author of numerous thrillers. He wrote Dragon Sim 13 before the "Sleeping Giant," as China was known in the 20th century, awakened. It awakened with a vengeance in the 21st century, and today Mayer's scenario is almost too frighteningly real to contemplate.

- Richard Curtis

A Missouri Feminist Captures Shanghai

I don't usually send visitors away from our website to visit another, because I'm afraid they may never come back. But I'll take my chances by telling you that you absolutely must must must read the Wikipedia entry on Emily Hahn. You may be so entranced that you forget to return to our website. But please do come back to hear about China to Me: A Partial Autobiography, a memoir by one of the most remarkable women of the Twentieth Century.

The New Yorker called her "a Forgotten American literary treasure" and she certainly was that. But she was a treasure in so many other ways that it's almost impossible to wrap your arms around them. If I tell you that she was a revolutionary, a radical feminist, an adroit diplomat without portfolio, a sociologist, a chemical engineer, and a lover (she was the concubine of a Shanghai poet who hooked her on opium), I will have merely grazed the surface. As a feminist she fought tooth and nail against the stereotype of female docility that characterized the Victorian Era (and didn't do much for her in China, you may be sure). And she was an advocate for the environment until her death at the age of ninety-two.

Oh - and did I mention she was drop-dead gorgeous? That's her picture on the cover.

China to Me takes you on a breathtaking journey through the China of the 1930s that extends from the highest courts of political power to the personal lives of Asian prostitutes.

The best way to reconstruct her life is through her fifty-two books, of which E-Reads currently has two with more on the way.

- Richard Curtis