ing about the concept of mediation. Gershon’s deployment of terms like ‘media ideologies’ and ‘idioms of practice’ is not always helpful ethnographically. At times I felt it prevented her from fully exploring the ways students assigned agencies to certain media and the ways in which students identify interactions, trans- formations and agencies around those media (I guess I would have liked some kind of engage- ment with the work of Alfred Gell, or maybe with actor network theory). It might also have been possible to further explore ethnographic categories like ‘love’ or ‘desire’ on the North American campus, themselves both interesting theories of agency and transformation. But I want to end on a point of praise. For me, one of the chief benefits of reading this book has been its effect on my teaching. Not so much because my students enjoy it (although I am sure they would), but because the kinds of questions it asks and the kinds of ethnographic scenes it describes have proved powerful devices for gen- erating discussion among anthropology students. In short, I have never come across a topic that my students have so much to say about, or one which makes them reflect as much on the assumptions and expectations behind their own behaviour. It has made, for instance, a usually dry class on research methods come alive and has sparked some of the best conversations among pre-fieldwork PhD students. That the ethnogra- phy rings true to them is testament to Gershon’s skill and attentiveness. That it opens the possibi- lity of critical reflection is testament to the intel- lectual project that informs the topic’s selection. Adam Reed Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA and Memories of a Forgotten War C. McGranahan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. xvii + 307 pp. Maps, illustr., appendix, notes, bibliog., index. ISBN 978-0822347514. US$84.95 (Hc.); ISBN 978-0822347712. US$23.95 (Pb.) History is a shared narrative that has become public and hegemonic. As the author of this insightful book on a small Tibetan resistance army observes, ‘Any history that claims to be sin- gular makes that claim at the expense of multiple other histories, of many other ways of explaining the past’ (p. 10). By revealing the interstices and struggles that lie behind the making, and suppres- sion, of histories, McGranahan has written a his- torical ethnography that pays tribute to the remarkable men and women who were part of the Tibetan resistance army and contextualises their efforts in the larger field of pre-existing social structures and international political relations. Chushi Gangdrug (Four Rivers, Six Ranges) is the name of a region of eastern Tibet known as Kham. It is also the name of the army that was formed to combat Chinese rule from 1959 to 1974. Significantly, members of Chushi Gang- drug were trained and supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America as well as marginally supported by the governments of India, Nepal and Bhutan. Nonetheless, the role of Chushi Gangdrug in the history of Tibet is not part of the shared narra- tive among the exile community because ‘the resistance army contested not just China but also long-standing power structures and cultural hierarchies within Tibet itself’ (p. 2). For a number of reasons, McGranahan argues, the silence over Chushi Gangdrug is the public secret of the Tibetan community-in-exile: the army fought a guerilla war that implicated the governments of four countries; they advo- cated a violent resolution opposed to the non- violent approach of the Dalai Lama; they never won their war; and they challenged the Tibetan social and political status quo. For the members of Chushi Gangdrug itself, silence represents the pain of forgetting their remarkable experiences and the pain of belonging to a community that cannot acknowledge their contribution. They bear this pain nonetheless because of their utmost and undivided devotion to the Dalai Lama. It is this love and respect, in fact, that gave birth to Chushi Gangdrug in the first place: theirs was, above all, a religious war, gathering momentum in the difficult years Book Reviews 426 ª 2011 Australian Anthropological Society