9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too Little About "China's Great Train", August 20, 2008
This review is from: China's Great Train: Beijing's Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet (Hardcover)
Lustgarten, an American journalist, says his "reporting was completed without [China's Ministry of Railways'] sanction and involvement." He also says the story was "inspired by my early introduction to the Dalai Lama and Tibetan culture when I was a young boy." These two comments at the end of the book help explain the failure of the preceding 277 pages. Instead of a story about "China's Great Train" - the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, a stunning engineering achievement by any standard - the book is little more than invective against "Beijing's Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet," the book's subtitle. Only two of the book's twelve chapters (8 and 9) are truly devoted to the making of the railway, and they fly by in 45 pages. Too much of the rest of the book is polemic, with page after page going by without so much as a reference to the railway.
Take advantage of Amazon's "Search Inside!" feature: the opening tone of the book carries throughout, as does the prose style. (The first sentence on page 6 is a doozy.) Also, "Search Inside This Book" for the word "stringy," go to the page where it appears (179 - actually page 163 of the book) and read the churlish description there of Zhao Shiyun, the man who successfully directed the multibillion-dollar railroad project to completion a year ahead of schedule. Throughout the book, Lustgarten rarely lets an opportunity to be negative toward the Chinese go by.
Readers looking for thoughtful journalistic writing about the development of new technology (like Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine") or level-headed historical writing about a massive railroad project (like David Haward Bain's "Empire Express") will not find it here. As someone who drove alongside the full length of this railway (on the Qinghai-Tibet Highway) a year before its completion, and wondered how in the world its myriad challenges were overcome, I found this book to be a major disappointment.
UPDATE: On September 2, 2008, the author sent me email responding to the above review. He said I was "not factual in [my] characterization of [his] book" and that if I read it in its entirety I will find it "pretty evenly split between a detailed accounting of the railway and the context of the place to which it goes." He said he "spent considerable time with dozens of key sources within China Railways and China's scientific community" and has "always held them in great regard." He "was surprised" that I "seem to believe that a story of such magnitude should be viewed only in the context of the present, and taken at face value." He also said, "I take umbrage at your suggestion that my early discovery of the Dalai Lama should undermine several decades of reporting experienced [sic] for the worlds [sic] top publications." Finally, he scolded by saying that writing opinions on Amazon is "a priveledge [sic] that should be used responsibly, and that when offering your criticism, it should be justified, and well informed and substantiated, not knee-jerk and pedantic."
My reply below to the author, sent two days later, includes a fuller review of his book:
I do wish I could have reviewed your book more favorably. Ever since driving alongside the length of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, in the summer of 2005, I've looked forward to reading an in-depth account of how that amazing railroad got built. As mentioned in the review, I expected such an account to focus on how its myriad challenges - scientific, engineering, construction, logistical - were overcome, because the railway is by any standard a remarkable achievement. That's why I marked your book for purchase from Amazon before its publication and before its contents could be read online.
I did expect such an account to bring up the passions of Chinese nationalists and Western activists over the railway. But I did not expect such an account itself to succumb to those passions. Much of the book is indeed invective against China and the Chinese, with far too many examples beyond those mentioned in the review, small and large, to list here. The world has enough Tibet books like that already, and I had no desire to read yet another one. I just wanted to read about the railway. It's a unique wonder in and of itself, and no strong stand need be taken to write a great report about it. No doubt you disagree. But I think about what John McPhee might have done with this story, and I sigh.
That's the kind of account I expected. That a reader might expect a book entitled "China's Great Train" to be primarily about China's great train should come as no surprise. Yet except for brief mentions, 40% of the book passes before the railroad's groundbreaking, 60% passes before the first track is laid, and by 80% the railway's done. That, to me, is a problem. The story of the railroad itself lacks depth. Too much of the book that could have been a cool-headed account of overcoming unique railway challenges is instead just another inflamed account of China in Tibet. Of course some context for the railway is necessary, but not well over half-a-book's worth, and not in such a tone. No doubt you disagree with this as well. But that lack of depth makes me wonder how much the lack of involvement with China's Ministry of Railways adversely affected the book.
I did not suggest that your early introduction to the Dalai Lama undermines your decades of reporting experience, if for no other reason than I did not know you have decades of reporting experience. But your statement about that early introduction definitely jumps out after reading the book in full, suggesting an investment in this story beyond the norm and perhaps a source of its spite.
Suffice to say that I expected a more dispassionate, more in-depth report about the railroad itself than the one presented in the book - hence my disappointment, and hence my review, to alert others who might expect the same. The review does advise them to read the online excerpts from the book; if they have no problem with its tone or its content as I did, and if they like those reviews from voices far more important than mine, then nothing is stopping them from enjoying your book.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide you directly with greater feedback.
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