As you know by now, at Slogs Happy, I bring advance copies for our commenters to review. This week, commenter "dc.al.coda" reviews James Fallows' Postcards from Tomorrow Square. Anything you don't like about this review is in no way the reviewer's fault; it is the fault of the editor. I am the editor.

James Fallows is one of those NPR commentators who makes me want to shoot my radio. His commentaries are both smug and unmemorable. He's a pretty good writer, though.

Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China is a collection of essays Fallows wrote for The Atlantic Monthly while living in China. The essays cover two years, and they end in November 2008, just as the entire world collapsed - or at least its economy.

The back cover says that book is about "the momentous changes taking place in China and what it means for America." Yeah! What's in it for US?! A productive, happy society, which will bankroll America through the 21st century? Or a hyper-Dickensian monster, which will annihilate all of humanity with unsustainable economic policies, brutal oppression and environmental indifference?

The answer is, we just don't know. China is complicated. Well fuck you, James Fallows! I don't need to read your book to tell me something I already know.

Except that I don't REALLY know much about China. Fallows knows way more than I do. And he is smart enough to admit that his knowledge is spotty, even after two years of traversing the country and talking to lots of Chinese citizens. And he is relentlessly upbeat, if cautious, about China's future.

Occasionally, Fallows' optimism veers into Pollyannaism. This is especially true when he writes about China's environment. Yes, Fallows acknowledges, there is horrible air pollution in China's cities, and there are far too many waterways ruined by industry and agriculture. And yet, he writes, there's a surprising amount of forward movement on the environment. He describes many eco-friendly demonstration projects taking place across China, leaving the reader with the impression that China may turn the tide against environmental doom. Call me a glass-half-empty kind of guy, but considering how quickly my own country is ruining its environment, it's damned near impossible for me to believe that China will reverse course in time.

But China MUST reverse course on this issue, as it must on many others. What Fallows does most effectively in Postcards from Tomorrow Square is to clearly show that every scheme, admirable or shameful, has its place in China. And there are plenty of positive schemes going. Fallows' essays, with their classically American blend of optimism and pragmatism, leave the reader feeling that tomorrow's China might well be a "good" superpower. If they don't destroy the universe first.

I love it when the right reviewer gets the right book. Many, many thanks to dc.al.coda, and remember all you other Slog Commenters to get crackin' on your book reports and send them in to me in the New year.