Emily Hahn's Ireland: A Brilliant Observer Turns Her Discerning Eye on a Fractured Emerald

A revolutionary woman for her time, Emily Hahn broke all of the rules of the 1920s from traveling dressed as a boy to working for the Red Cross in Belgium, becoming the concubine to a Shanghai poet, using opium, and bearing an illegitimate child. Hahn fought against the stereotype of female docility that characterized the post-Victorian era and was an advocate for the environment until her death at age of 92. A star journalist for the New Yorker, she wrote hundreds articles and fifty-two books including two of E-Reads' most popular titles, The Soong Sisters and China to Me.

In Fractured Emerald: Ireland she turns her observant and discerning eye to the troubled land of Ireland. In a magisterial combination of historical research and keen personal observation, Hahn gives us a view of Ireland's history from the legends of the great kings and heroes of myth to the saint who converted Ireland to Christianity. She details the tribulations of a conquered people as they rebel against their exploiters and fight and die for independence, eventually achieving their goal but only at the price of bitter divisions that haunts the country to this day. Hahn’s breadth of vision and acute sense of telling detail paints the big picture while also pinpointing the small but significant moments.

For other Emily Hahn books published by E-Reads visit her author page.

Three Amazing Sisters, Portrayed by an Amazing Chronicler of China

In its own quiet way, The Soong Sisters by Emily Hahn has become one of E-Reads' bestselling nonfiction books, and even a cursory look at the story of these three extraordinary individuals will tell you why it compels us decades later. And though the release of this writeup is timed to tie to the Beijing Olympics and the soaring rise of China to a dominant place among the world's superpowers, it's not because China is in the news that we recommend this book to you.

Through inheritance or marriage the girls were among the wealthiest and most influential in China in the 1930s as the clouds of two wars -- first between China and Japan, then the Second World War -- roiled over Asia. Politically, the sisters had been divided between nationalism and Communism and for many years the two supporters of nationalism - Ai-ling and Mei-ling - did not speak to their Communist sympathizer sister Ching-ling. All that changed when the Japanese brutally invaded and occupied their country. It is worth a few moments of your time to read the Wikipedia entry summarizing their story. It's worth a few hours of your time to read the inspiring The Soong Sisters.

The Soong Sisters is the second book by Emily Hahn published by E-Reads, the other being China to Me, about which I have written so enthusiastically elsewhere in these pages (see A Missouri Feminist Captures Shanghai). And there are more books to come by one of the most remarkable women of the Twentieth Century.

- 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