红酒·绿茶 / Red Wine & Green Tea / Vin Rouge et Thé Vert

Book review: "Mafia Inc.: The Long, Bloody Reign of Canada's Sicilian Clan" by André Cédilot and André Noël, translated by Michael Gilson If you ever drive to Montreal, from either Ontario or the United States, you will surely notice that the moment you enter Quebec, the road becomes extremely bad. It only gets worse once you start living in Montreal. "Crumbling" is the only appropriate word to describe its infrastructure. If you ever wonder why, the answer can be summarized in one word: mafia. Originally written in French by two veteran investigative reporters of La Presse , the largest French daily newspaper in Montreal, "Mafia Inc." is, in my humble opinion,  the best book to learn the rise and fall of the most infamous Sicilian crime family in Canada, the Rizzutos. One episode of their story has been immortalized on the silver screen in "Donnie Brasco (1997)" . The authors took pain not to romanticize the life of the mafiosi, a

Book review: “Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War" by Stephen R. Platt 秋天有两种：一种是丰收喜悦之秋，一种是伤感可悲之秋。太平天国之秋，毫无疑问是第二种。 《天国之秋》改变了很多我对于太平天国的认识和评价。作者一上来就对太平天国运动的性质作了一个中肯的评价，认为西方史学界长期以来称之为“太平叛乱”，以及中国史学界以太平天国为原始共产主义而称之为“太平革命”或“太平起义”，都失之偏颇。唯一恰当的称谓，当为“太平内战”。 ("The Taiping were indeed rebels, but to call the entire war the Taiping Rebellion is to cast the rebels forever in the wrong, and to blame on them for defying their legitimate rulers and destroying what one might surmise was otherwise a peaceful and stable empire." "...just as it is unfair to suggest that the Taiping were solely responsible for the devastation of the war, it is likewise an exaggeration to claim they were building some kind of peasant utopia.") 作为西方人写中国史，作者不可避免地更关心西方历史与这段中国历史的联系。全书令人信服地论证了，发生在十九世纪中国的太平内战，已经不再是一个孤立的事件，而是跟欧洲和美国历史有实质性的联系。简而言之，因为美国内战导致大英帝国在美国的贸易锐减，英国害怕同时因为中国内战而失去另一个巨大的贸易伙伴，而违背一贯的中立政策，干预了中国内战。虽然直接干预并不多，而且政策还有反复，却鬼使神差地影响了