Recently Read Books: Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most Important Rising Generation

 Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most Important Rising Generation

 by Amy Werbel

I knew I wanted to read this book from the moment I laid eyes on its description. As a visiting Fulbright scholar, Amy Werbel spent a year in China (from 2011-2012) teaching courses on American studies to Chinese university students. She wanted to train her students how to think critically, and her goal in teaching American history was not to “make the United States look better than it is—but rather to share what it feels like to be in a classroom in which everyone is free to scrutinize history without fear.” In her classroom, she and her students studied, critiqued, and scrutinized American history the whole semester. I enjoyed reading the excerpts from her students’ assignments; looking at one’s own history through someone else’s cultural lens is fascinating. I was even more fascinated at how the discipline of critiquing another culture’s history offers the honest thinker a non-threatening chance to critically examine his/her own culture’s history as well. I also loved reading her descriptions of her students and China; it felt so wonderfully familiar to me. Great book!