Chinese in Eastern Europe and Russia: A Middleman Minority in a Transnational Era Book

How full of himself is Michael Heller? Well, for starters, he names the central irony that underlies his book the "Heller Paradox" . . . The major problem with this book is that Heller spends far too much time placing him at the center of what is a novel but not very complicated idea, rather than elaborating with examples. More specifically, he doesn't elaborate with enough DIFFERENT examples. We hear about storefronts in Russia five times before he eventually devotes an entire chapter to the example, and by the time you reach the chapter, you already know what the conclusion is because the concept isn't difficult to grasp.

Indeed, Heller, like a latter-day Adam naming the animals, spends almost all of his time creating an entirely unnecessary new vocabulary that is just a little too winking and self-indulgent. I entered this book very prepared to jump on-board with the concept, but I found that the actual discussion wasn't much more enlightening than the description of the book on the inside flap. It was like going to a movie only to find out that not only are the best parts of the movie in the trailer, but the rest of it is completely annoying.

For all of Heller's pomp, there is no reason this should be a book rather than a 70, nay 60, page law review article. But hey, at least the cover is clever.