Advance review from Publisher's Weekly

I won't do this systematically, because that would mean I'd have to include bad reviews too!, but for the record here is an early, nice PW note on my forthcoming collection of China writings, Postcards from Tomorrow Square. It's a "starred" review about halfway down the page that this link brings up. Actual text of the review after the jump. The book is a Vintage paperback original (bargain!) and has a pub date of January.  (Links through Amazon, B&N, Powell's.) 

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From Publisher's Weekly

Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China James Fallows. Vintage, $14.95 paper (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-45624-3

Fallows (Blind into Baghdad) offers a candid outsider's take on contemporary China in this entertaining and richly illustrated investigation of what distinguishes China from other Asian nations and what causes the dissonance between how China sees itself and how it is viewed by the rest of the world, particularly the U.S. The author's range is admirably broad--he takes on Chinese reality television, school systems, incisive economic analysis--and uncovers a raft of surprising similarities between the East and West. Fallows compares Shenzhen--the manufacturing and migration capital of southern China--to New York, where once you've left the airport and stashed your suitcase, it's difficult to tell if you're a tourist or a native. In the gambling mecca of Macau (whose revenues recently exceeded those of Las Vegas), the author finds strains of Atlantic City. What Fallows lacks in expertise, he makes up for in a truly global vision and a magician's chest of social, economic and political insight. (Jan.)

And, in just this second, an equally nice item from Kirkus Reviews, which -- thank you, Lord! -- emphasizes that the book is actually funny.

Enough of this for now.