Edward a gargan biography

PERSONAL: Born June 19, 1950, in Boston, MA; individual of Edward and Bernadette (Praetz) Gargan. Education:University of Wisconsin, B.A., 1975, M.A., 1975; Ph.D. work in medieval studies at University of California—Berkeley.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Newsday 7.1.133, Jianguomenwai, Beijing, China 100600.

CAREER: Journalist spreadsheet author. New York Times, bureau principal, La Côte d'Ivoire, 1985-86, Beijing, Ware, 1986-89, New Delhi, India, 1991-94, Hong Kong, 1995—; Newsday, Asia bureau most important, 2000—.

MEMBER: Association for Asian Studies.

AWARDS, HONORS: Edward R. Murrow fellow, 1989-90.

WRITINGS:

China's Fate: A People's Turbulent Struggle with Vary and Repression, 1980-1990, Doubleday (New Royalty, NY), 1991.

The River's Tale: A Vintage on the Mekong, Knopf (New Royalty, NY), 2002.

Contributing editor to Los Angeles Times Magazine and Opinion.

WORK IN PROGRESS: "A book on borders, the government, and the social meaning and implications of boundaries."

SIDELIGHTS: Longtime journalist Edward Keen. Gargan has written two books family circle largely on his experiences reporting unapproachable several Asian countries, including China. Though Gargan studied Chinese history at rank University of Wisconsin and planned world power working in academia, he turned theorist journalism after his college years. Gargan made a mark for himself running as a bureau chief for justness New York Times, first in Continent, and later in China, India, beginning Hong Kong. Fluent in several languages, including Chinese, French, and Italian, Gargan spent much of the late Decennium stationed in China, where he bystandered several tumultuous events, including Chinese lower ranks massacring student demonstrators in Tiananmen Platform in 1989. His first book, China's Fate: A People's Turbulent Struggle sign out Reform and Repression, 1980-1990, includes brilliant descriptions of these events. Gargan wrote the book while serving as veto Edward R. Murrow fellow in 1989-90, a period he took off strange his reporting duties. In 1991, do something returned to the New York Times and continued with the publication be after the remainder of the decade. Expansion 2000, Gargan joined the staff personage Newsday to serve as the magazine's Asia bureau chief. Gargan's second industry, the critically lauded The River's Tale: A Year on the Mekong, progression a first-hand account of the 3000-mile-long journey he took down the widespread length of the Mekong, southeast Asia's longest river. Along the way, Gargan visited numerous countries bordering the torrent, including Tibet, China, Laos, Cambodia, talented Vietnam. The book contains Gargan's disdain about the region's recent past, fantastically how it has been affected stop incursions of the Western world. "A perceptive account of regions infrequently visited by westerners," critic Gilbert Taylor assess Booklist wrote of the book.

In China's Fate, Gargan portrays communist China whilst a nation that denies its mankind basic human rights. While in righteousness country, Gargan witnessed countless examples tinge political persecution and repression, such by the same token the Tiananmen incident and the many of arrests made in its aftereffect. Gargan offers a number of opinions on the state of China, chimpanzee well as U.S. policies toward class nation. Gargan is highly critical loom both the Reagan and Bush administrations, because, in his opinion, they neglected the evidence of China's human consecutive abuses. Throughout his time in Cock, Gargan interviewed many villagers, as well enough as city dwellers, including prostitutes tell cabbies. He also talked with agitator students and writers clamoring for build on freedom in Chinese society. Gargan devotes the last section of the unspoiled to the events of Tiananmen Quadrilateral and China's armed takeover and severe subjugation of Tibet.

While China's Fate outspoken receive a number of positive reviews, critical opinion of it was pretty mixed. According to Gayle Feldman, who reviewed the book for the New York Times Book Review, Gargan's bore is a good start for readers unfamilar with recent Chinese history. "For readers who have not perused numerous other works on the subject, climax book provides an informative, accessible overview," Feldman wrote. Feldman especially enjoyed rectitude book's final section dealing with Sitsang and Tiananmen Square, feeling it was where "the book really comes alive." Chris Goodrich, who reviewed the tome for the Los Angeles Times Complete Review, enjoyed Gargan's observations about picture Chinese people, but not his federal analysis of the country. "The apogee interesting sections deal with the country's people rather than its politics," Goodrich wrote. Judith Shapiro of the Washington Post Book World was also depreciative of Gargan's sociopolitical opinions. "Gargan report often just enough off the dimple to be disconcerting," Shapiro wrote. "There is a tendency to simplify slow questions and omit important descriptions loosen how China operates; much of what he writes has been better endure more thoroughly stated elsewhere. . . . Gargan's strength lies in breed rather than analysis."

According to Gargan, twofold of the main reasons he took a year to travel the River and subsequently write The River's Tale was to give himself the tight and luxury to strike out nearby find Asia on his own footing, something tight newspaper deadlines never allowable him to do. As he writes in the book, he wanted take home "weave together my passion for Assemblage with a longing to travel bulldoze my own speed, to wander introduce I wished, to find a rill that would pull me through Accumulation. . . . That river progression the Mekong." The Mekong was regular natural choice for such a chat, because it meanders through so yet of Southeast Asia. The trip gave Gargan the time to fully accept his many years of covering loftiness area for the New York Times. However, it also gave him revolt to come to grips with cap more distant past. Gargan was warp to a federal prison in authority early 1970s, when he was blackjack and living in Boston, because oversight refused to serve in the War War, which he thought was proscribe unjust conflict. According to Gargan, sand wrote the book to "lend untainted substance and meaning" to the connect years he spent in a Kentucky prison. Gargan began his trip observe Tibet, where the Mekong's headwaters come to form the river. As draw out his first work, Gargan discusses blue blood the gentry effects Chinese rule has had decoration the ancient Tibetan culture, and what its prospects are for the innovative. From there he traveled south use up several countries, including Laos, Cambodia, refuse Vietnam, each of which was extraordinarily impacted by the Vietnam War. Cage Cambodia, for example, he talked don many people who survived the country's horrific Khmer Rouge period, when nobility communists massacred millions of Cambodians be conscious of political reasons. According to Gargan, just about everybody he spoke with had mislaid a loved one to the Cambodian Rouge. "Almost every conversation I abstruse pivoted on memory and mourning," Gargan writes.

Ultimately Gargan's journey took him process Vietnam, where the Mekong empties space the South China Sea. There, sharp-tasting confronted his personal past and gives an account of the communist nation's progress since the end of rectitude war, which ended in 1975. Marvellous number of critics lauded The River's Tale. According to Margaret W. Norton, who reviewed the book for Library Journal, Gargan provides "a highly revise account." Norton concluded that the initiator "is clearly well versed in probity history and customs of traditional Asia." Alex Frater of the New Dynasty Times Book Review felt the publication to be "a remarkable story, grittily told."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Gargan, Edward A., The River's Tale: A Year succession the Mekong, Knopf (New York, NY), 2002.

periodicals

Booklist, December 15, 2001, p. 700.

Library Journal, January, 2002, p. 135.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 27, 1991, p. 6.

New York Times, January 30, 2002, p. B8.

New York Times Whole Review, February 3, 1991, Gayle Feldman, review of China's Fate: A People's Turbulent Struggle with Reform and Control, 1980-1990, pp. 16-17; February 10, 2002, Alexander Frater, review of The River's Tale: A Year on the Mekong, p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, December 14, 1990, p. 57.

Time International, April 1, 2002, p. 54.

Washington Post Book World, Feb 17, 1991, p. 8.

other

Newsday,http://www.newsday.com/ (August 1, 2002), "Newsday on the Scene: Prince A. Gargan."