Destination Shanghai by Paul French. It follows figures who traveled to Shanghai pre WW2. Pretty fascinating to me because I love Shanghai and that time period, but wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't share those interests. Especially fun to read, for me, was the movie stars and the transition from silent films to "talkies."
The author is incredibly talented. He manages to keep the book flowing smoothly while also giving an enormous amount of information.
This has to be the slowest I've ever read a book. I find myself constantly on wikipedia looking up things which he references, or wanting to know more about the person. So far the biggest wikipedia hole I fell through due to this book was for Eugene O'Neill, which the author opens with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_O%27Neill
Quote:
The drama Long Day's Journey into Night is often numbered on the short list of the finest U.S. plays in the 20th century, alongside Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.
Maybe I'm an uneducated rube, but I'd never even heard of him before. Kind of amazing considering this quote, and how widely known those authors/plays are.