Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb

"When things started going wrong in Kazakhstan earlier this year, I started dipping into a few books about it and found its history fascinating. The vast, wide-open steppe made it a place of herders for millennia, but during the Soviet era it was also a convenient location for deporting entire populations, locating gulags, and carrying out nuclear testing, which is what Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb focuses on. It’s by Togzhan Kassenova, a Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the United States, but also a Kazakh. She writes of her “immense gratitude for the privilege of telling the story of my land and its people.” It’s scholarly and yet touching. Also, as many world powers seem to be heading closer to war rather than away from it, it’s perhaps hopeful that in the not-too-distant past a country that had more than 1,000 nuclear weapons when it became independent ended up nuclear-free. If you’re interested in Asian history, Eugene Y. Park, Professor in History at the University of Nevada, covers the entire history of Korea across the millennia—from the earliest humans to arrive there to the present day—in Korea: A History , a nice survey of a country that’s often overlooked compared to its bigger neighbours but important to understanding not only East Asia but successful transitions to democracy. A new book of Chinese history, Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern , looks at the script and the people who made possible its simplification and adaptation in the 20th century (wonderful and evocative as Chinese characters are, having thousands of complex symbols representing words has drawbacks). I recently read a thriller set in Tibet at the time of its initial invasion by China in 1950-1 by Lionel Davidson , so I also found myself very drawn to a book about that whole period in Tibetan history by Jianglin Li: When the Iron Bird Flies: China’s Secret War in Tibet. (Also: if you want an introduction to the other outlying region the Chinese Communist Party has treated very badly, Xinjiang, In the Camps: Life in China’s High-Tech Penal Colony by Darren Byler is out in paperback in February). On India, the distinguished historian Ramachandra Guha—whose book India After Gandhi has been frequently recommended on our site—has a new book: Rebels Against the Raj . It’s about the foreigners who gave up everything to help India gain independence. It’s written partly as an antidote to a world that’s currently “governed by paranoia and nationalist xenophobia, with the rise of jingoism in country after country,” Guha says. Excitingly, Garrett Graff, who put together a brilliant oral history of 9/11 (the best audiobook of 2020) has done the same for the Watergate scandal. His Watergate: A New History , is out on the 15th of February. Also of interest in contemporary history is They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents by Neda Toloui-Semnani, about the Iranian Revolution. It’s a heartbreaking tale, very much also about her feelings as she goes about her day and does research on her family and the past. Science Books One thing that really struck me about the books being published in early 2022 is how many science books are coming out that are fun to read, often by top scientists. This Way to the Universe: A Journey into Physics is a nice introduction to physics (including the history) by American theoretical physicist Michael Dine. The End of Genetics looks at where we are in genetics and is by David B. Goldstein, Professor of Genetics and Development and director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. It’s a gripping and accessible book (though his conclusions are a little scary, especially as I carry a genetic mutation myself). There’s also a book about nuclear fusion—potentially the answer to all our energy problems, but still a work in progress—by Alain Bécoulet, Head of Engineering at ITER , the world’s largest fusion experiment. It’s called Star Power . There are also some nice introductory books. Geometry: A Very Short Introduction is by Maciej Dunajski of the University of Cambridge and is ready to take anyone along for the ride: “I assume little prior mathematical knowledge…but you should be willing to use a pencil, paper, compass and ruler as you read”. If astronomy interests you, MIT Press has a new book in its ‘Essential Knowledge’ series: Supernova by Or Graur."