Asian history Books

Book SynopsisBefore Gandhi and Nehru, there was Dadabhai Naoroji. In the 1800s he called out British policies that immiserated and starved Indians and became the first-ever Indian member of Parliament. Disillusioned by efforts to work within the system, he later called for self-rule. Dinyar Patel's is the first comprehensive study of this nationalist pioneer.Trade ReviewDadabhai Naoroji was a greatly influential figure in his time: a major political actor in India and Great Britain; a pioneer of struggles against racism and imperialism; and a prolific author on religious, economic, and social subjects. Yet Naoroji has been shockingly neglected by generations of historians—now, he has at last been rehabilitated in this magnificent new biography. Dinyar Patel draws on many new, rare, and obscure sources; he writes brilliantly, and he superbly sets Naoroji’s incident-filled life against the backdrop of the tumultuous times he lived through. This is an exemplary work of scholarship that emphatically restores Naoroji to his rightful place in the history of India, Great Britain, and the world. -- Ramachandra Guha, author of Gandhi: The Years That Changed the WorldAn absorbing biography of the first Indian ever to be elected to the House of Commons…This ‘pioneer of Indian nationalism’ is almost entirely forgotten in India…The erudition of [Patel’s] enterprise, while everywhere evident, is never daunting. -- Tunku Varadarajan * Wall Street Journal *[An] important biography…Tells the story of a particular individual but also of the networks that shaped him: a global history of a single man. [Patel’s] account illuminates the intellectual richness and dynamism of the early Indian nationalist movement, but also opens a window onto the histories of Britain’s Indian community and the global Indian diaspora. -- Priya Satia * London Review of Books *Now we have the biography that Naoroji deserves…It powerfully restores Naoroji to his place as a central figure in India’s long struggle for freedom…A disciplined narrative, composed with a historian’s eye for detail. The result is a fine-grained account of Naoroji’s political life…A wonderful read that tells the story of a remarkable life and provides a compelling insight into Indian nationalism and the worlds of Bombay and Victorian London. -- Abhimanyu Arni * Literary Review *In this beautifully crafted and subtly argued biography, Dinyar Patel illuminates the Indian freedom struggle’s devastating critique of imperialism and its exemplary politics of resistance. Dadabhai Naoroji was at the forefront of them both. His politics and ideas, like those of his counterparts throughout the global south, are of equal relevance to Indian and European history and helped usher in the world we live in today. -- Sven Beckert, author of The Empire of Cotton: A Global HistoryDinyar Patel’s compelling biography traces the development of Dadabhai Naoroji’s prophetic thought. From scholar and religious reformer to the precursor and inspiration for Gandhi’s movement for Indian independence, Naoroji’s ideological trajectory is vividly presented by Patel as the gestation and triumph of historical anticolonialism. -- Farrukh Dhondy, author of C. L. R. James: A LifeNaoroji is a lucid, well-paced, and wonderfully illuminating biography, one that should help return this important historical figure to scholarly and public attention. Patel demonstrates Naoroji’s remarkable capacities for political empathy and engagement with a parade of issues and causes, all the while staying true to his own core interests and values. An excellent portrait and authoritative account. -- Sunil Khilnani, author of Incarnations: A History of India in Fifty LivesDinyar Patel’s splendid biography draws on an enormous collection of sources largely untouched by historians and illuminates the astonishing range of Naoroji’s public activities as a pioneering political figure in Britain and India. This superbly researched, revisionist account is unlikely to be surpassed any time soon. -- Srinath Raghavan, author of Fierce Enigmas: A History of the United States in South AsiaA sophisticated and elegantly written intellectual biography and history of ideas, Dinyar Patel’s book on the ‘grandfather’ of the Indian nation sheds new light on Parsi political choices, the urban history of Bombay, and anti-colonial politics in metropolitan London. Patel’s exploration of Dadabhai Naoroji’s international itineraries provides a fascinating new angle to the study of Indian nationalism. -- Sugata Bose, author of His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against EmpireStraightforward in style, and well-detailed in approaches to a life as it intersected with multiple, complex movements, places, ideologies, Naoroji addresses the vacuum in the pre-Gandhian political history of modern India. It is a much-needed intervention in acknowledgment of the contribution of Indian freedom fighters before there were Indian freedom fighters. -- Soni Wadhwa * Asian Review of Books *A fine biography of the first Indian political leader of the modern era with a truly national following… Some defining features of Naoroji shine through in the book…Patel has done well to write a deeply researched biography of a man who has been largely forgotten. -- Niranjan Rajadhyaksha * Livemint *Will be of great interest to students of economics and political science as well as of Indo-British history. It draws the reader into Naoroji’s huge hinterland of knowledge, writings and achievements. What comes across is Naoroji’s passionate commitment to the concept of (an) Indian nationhood within the parameters of the British rule…[An] extraordinary biography…A hero and role model not only to his contemporaries but also to future leaders like Gandhi and Jinnah. -- Ramnik Shah * LSE Review of Books *[A] pioneering book…Patel does an admirable…job of presenting to his readers a full and rounded picture of Naoroji…I cannot see Patel’s book being surpassed in the sheer scale of his documentary coverage and empirical detail. -- Rudrangshu Mukherjee * Business Standard *Speaks volumes about his greatness…Naoroji was the most important modern Indian leader before Gandhi. It is hard to imagine what Indian nationalism would have looked like without him. -- Kumar Chellappan * The Pioneer *A definitive biography of the Indian leader, offering unique insights into his early life before he became a voice for free India. -- Fiona Fernandez * Mid-Day *This biography enlightened me about his extraordinary life. -- Simon McGrath * Liberal Democrat Voice *Splendidly researched, elegantly written…Not only extends our understanding of early Indian nationalism but also throws light on the world of Victorian Britain and the intellectual and political currents that fed into it…[An] engaging biography. -- A. R. Venkatachalapathy * The Wire *

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Book SynopsisChinese architecture is astonishingly uniform. Buddhists, Daoists, and Muslims, inside China and beyond, built Chinese-style structures the same way for two thousand years, despite mastering new technologies along the way. Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt offers an authoritative overview of design principles that have stood the test of time—and geography.Trade ReviewAn exceptional book that significantly increases our knowledge about the extent of Chinese architecture across a land whose borders have been fluid over the millennia. No one in the West knows this material better than Nancy Steinhardt, who brilliantly weaves Korea and Mongolia into the story of the development of Chinese architecture. Her work is rooted not only in written records and visual materials, but in personal exploration of the sites themselves. Her mastery of the Chinese building system, both above and below ground, and her command of the full range of built structures is outstanding. -- Ronald G. Knapp, author of Chinese Houses: The Architectural Heritage of a NationA fascinating look at architectural examples from China and neighboring regions that are related to China’s long building tradition but not usually included in Chinese architectural history. Steinhardt demonstrates that the cultural ‘boundary’ of Chinese architectural traditions and practices was actually much more porous than expected. By putting border crossing into sharper focus, she argues for a much broader understanding of Chinese architecture as a dynamic cultural expression across East Asia, and even beyond. A delightful treat and indispensable reference for anyone interested in border-crossing issues in art and architectural history. -- Wei-Cheng Lin, author of Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount WutaiSteinhardt brings an authoritative perspective to answering a fascinating question: why has Chinese architecture remained a stylistic constant for 2,000 years?…[A] scholarly and provocative read about the cultural significance (and enduring power) of non-Western architectural ideas. -- Mark Favermann * Arts Fuse *

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Book SynopsisPowers of the Real analyzes the cultural politics of cinema's persuasive sensory realism in interwar Japan. Examining cultural criticism, art, news media, literature, and film, Lewis offers new perspectives on media history, the commodification of intimacy and emotion, film realism, and gender politics in the age of the mass society in Japan.

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Book SynopsisPowers of the Real analyzes the cultural politics of cinema's persuasive sensory realism in interwar Japan. Examining cultural criticism, art, news media, literature, and film, Lewis offers new perspectives on media history, the commodification of intimacy and emotion, film realism, and gender politics in the “age of the mass society” in Japan.

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Book SynopsisIn this groundbreaking study, Maram Epstein identifies filial piety as the dominant expression of love in Qing dynasty texts. By decentering romantic feeling as the dominant expression of love during the High Qing, Orthodox Passions calls for a new understanding of the affective landscape of late imperial China.Trade ReviewOrthodox Passions is not a mere must-read for scholars who are interested in emotion and family relations in Qing literature. It is a book ‘foundational,’ to borrow Epstein’s evaluation of filial piety in premodern China, to new scholarship that restores intergenerational relationships to the center of scholarly treatment of an empire that claimed itself as ‘ruling all under Heaven by filial piety’. -- Yue Du * China Review International *Though focused on the high Qing, it serves as a masterful rendition of an entire tradition…Epstein has executed a radically novel and engaging approach that should spur us and our students to new and deeper realizations. -- Keith McMahon * Journal of Chinese Studies *A pioneering study of filial piety…Epstein argues, linguistically and culturally, romantic love had its European discourse; in contrast, filial piety or filial love was the primary emotional bond in traditional China, which was critical to people’s identity formation…It further advocates a new way of rereading the eighteenth-century texts by decentering romantic feeling as the dominant expression of love during the High Qing, and calls for a new understanding of the affective landscape of late imperial China. -- Guotong Li * Chinese Historical Studies *

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Book SynopsisRegional Literature and the Transmission of Culture provides a textured picture of cultural transmission in the Qing and early Republican eras. Study of drum ballads opens up new perspectives in Chinese literature and history and offers a new paradigm that will interest scholars of cultural history, literature, legal history, and popular culture.

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Book SynopsisThe 1980s saw spirited debate in China, as officials and the public pressed for economic and political liberalization. But after Tiananmen, the Communist Party erased the reform debate from memory. Julian Gewirtz shows how the leadership expunged alternative visions of China's future and set the stage for the policing of history under Xi Jinping.Trade ReviewA vivid and readable account of the period from Mao’s death until shortly after Tiananmen, with a focus on the role of Zhao [Ziyang]…It is easy to see why Gewirtz believes that had Zhao stayed in power, he would have fundamentally changed China…Exceptionally well-researched. -- Andrew J. Nathan * Foreign Affairs *A richly researched addition to this literature, enhanced by access to internal Chinese documents and interviews with former officials and intellectuals active at the time. * The Economist *Excellent…provides the most detailed analysis so far written in English of the intense arguments about China’s political, economic, and social futures that raged throughout the 1980s…A fascinating, authoritative account of the paths for China’s future explored during a decade long buried by official, state-sponsored history. -- Julia Lovell * Foreign Policy *[This book’s] aim is to refresh our understanding of the role played by Zhao in the shaping of modern China as well as to revive his luster as a statesman. -- Tunku Varadarajan * Wall Street Journal *Well-written and accessible to nonspecialist readers, Never Turn Back deserves to become the definitive history of the 1980s’ open-ended political exploration and its suppression. -- Sabina Knight * Los Angeles Review of Books *Gewirtz looks at the road not taken—and a tantalizing glimpse, perhaps, at the political possibilities that remain still. -- Emily Feng * NPR Books *A delectable rehabilitation of a momentous decade…Today, China touts its brand of state capitalism as though it were an item plucked—with supreme foresight and wisdom—from the menu of modernity. Gewirtz debunks this myth and shows us how China came to convince the world of it. -- Chang Che * New Republic *Gewirtz challenges many preconceptions about China and its history…He develops an almost literary arc of a tragic, yet forgotten figure in the character of Zhao Ziyang. In this way, Zhao becomes a metaphor for China itself. It conveys a desire to reform, yet a tragic flaw prevents genuine reform from taking hold. -- Justin Kempf * Democracy’s Paradox *The question of when and how things went wrong in China is also the focus of Julian Gewirtz’s important new book…As Gewirtz shows, the ‘reform and opening’ associated with Deng Xiaoping led not just to an economic transformation but to a period of intellectual turmoil, in which all sorts of hitherto forbidden ideas were debated. -- Gideon Rachman * Financial Times *Gewirtz depicts the critical decade of the 1980s, when China began its economic takeoff, as a time of intellectual ferment and ardent experimentation driven for the most part by two ill-fated lieutenants of Deng, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang. -- Howard W. French * New York Review of Books *As this robust work of narrative scholarship shows, the Eighties was an era of free-ranging debate and diversity of opinion towards everything from opening the economy to political liberalization, and even the separation of Party and state and an independent judiciary. Gewirtz…illustrates how the upheaval of 1989 retroactively cast China’s illiberal turn as inevitable, while showing that it did not also need to be so. -- Alec Ash * The Wire China *Gewirtz’s richly sourced book is a welcome invitation to revisit the forgotten debates of the 1980s and to further reflect on the significance of the 1989 turning point. -- Sebastian Veg * China Journal *Julian Gewirtz draws on a wealth of sources, including interviews, internal Chinese documents (some still formally classified) and propaganda and censorship directives…Gewirtz’s riveting, persuasive account reveals that modernity was, in ideology, economics and more, a contested concept in China. -- John Nilsson-Wright * Global Asia *At a moment when Xi Jinping has consolidated power in China on a scale not seen since Mao, Julian Gewirtz’s Never Turn Back reminds us of a time when the Chinese Communist Party debated the most fundamental questions of China’s future. It’s a disturbing and important read precisely because the book’s questions seem to have such tragic answers. -- Ian Bremmer * Stay Informed with Ian Bremmer *A landmark work of historical scholarship with profound significance for understanding China today…There is much rich detail in Never Turn Back, for which Gewirtz delved deep into archives, papers, official accounts, diaries and memoirs, some of which have only recently become available. The result is a provocative counter-narrative to the Communist Party’s account of that era. -- Linda Jaivin * Inside Story *As Gewirtz chronicles in his meticulously researched book, the demand for democracy [in China] in the 1980s was not just a call from the streets or from a fringe group of dissident public intellectuals. The argument about what had happened in the Cultural Revolution, why, and how to avoid a recurrence raged through the highest levels of the party for a decade. -- Isabel Hilton * Prospect *[A] lucid new book on the ideological, political and economic debates of the 1980s. -- Jonathan Chatwin * Mekong Review *A gift to our understanding of today’s China. Gewirtz has brilliantly, vividly revealed a hidden history of elite debate over the defining question of modern China: could it ever be both rich and free? This eye-opening examination of China’s tortured relationship with reform repairs our understanding of the 1980s and gives us a powerful lens through which to glimpse the future. -- Evan Osnos, author of the National Book Award–winning Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New ChinaThe decade of the 1980s was one of the most transformative in modern China’s history. Yet the story we know about it leaves out a key figure: top Communist leader Zhao Ziyang. Showing how Zhao was crucial to the most important decisions of the time, Gewirtz fundamentally changes our understanding of this period, forcing us to rethink an era that continues to shape our world. -- Rana Mitter, author of China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New NationalismIn my judgment, this is the definitive book on China in the 1980s in terms of the depth of research and originality of the argument. It is also elegantly written and a pleasure to read. Gewirtz debunks the official narrative constructed by the Chinese Communist Party that has erased the critical contributions made by Zhao Ziyang, the reformist leader purged during the 1989 Tiananmen crisis. -- Minxin Pei, author of China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime DecayI lived in 1980s China and covered it for the New York Times, yet I learned so much from Gewirtz’s outstanding, brilliantly researched book about the infighting in that period that resulted in the brutal suppression of the Tiananmen democracy movement. Many of those Chinese debates of the 1980s about political and economic reform persist today in Beijing and will determine the country’s future—and that’s why this book is so important. -- Nicholas D. Kristof, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and coauthor of A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating OpportunityAn enormously important book on how the People’s Republic became the China we know today. Gewirtz not only presents the alternatives to repression and conformity; he explains why the panoply of pluralistic thinking, so rich and vibrant after the death of Mao’s revolution, was destroyed by senior Communist leaders during the 1980s. -- Odd Arne Westad, author of The Cold War: A World HistoryA bold and innovative argument about one of the most important policy debates of our time: how China doubled down on autocracy while still developing into an economic and technological superpower. Gewirtz shows how this history was not an inevitable straight line from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping, but was filled with twists and turns. For those seeking to understand China’s rise today, this book is essential reading. -- Michael McFaul, author of From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia

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Book SynopsisEdith Sarra radically rethinks the Tale of Genji by focusing on the figure of the house—both the narrative’s images of aristocratic mansions and its representation of their inhabitants. Unreal Houses opens new perspectives on the architectonics of the Genji and the feminine milieu that midwifed what has been called the world’s first novel.Trade ReviewBrings new and valuable insights to Genji studies, and its interest in genealogies and generations of the dead will illuminate other work being done in the field …A compelling read: beautifully written and edited, provided with useful diagrams and helpful notes, Unreal Houses is an academic book that is hard to put down and a welcome addition to scholarship on premodern literature. -- Elizabeth Oyler * Journal of Japanese Studies *

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Book SynopsisChinese Ways of Seeing and Open-Air Painting chronicles the life of a modern art form. In the late 1910s Chinese painters began working outdoors. They also adopted linear perspective and Cartesian optics. Yi Gu reflects on the complex interaction of local and Western aesthetics within the new form and on the nature of visual modernity in China.Trade ReviewYi Gu not only provides an innovative perspective from which to reflect on complicated interactions of the global and local in China, but also calls for rethinking the nature of Chinese visual modernity…After reading Yi Gu’s book…we have a clearer and fresher view of open-air paintings in China and how they have reflected social, political, and cultural changes from the very beginning of open-air painting since 1910. -- Xiaoxiao Li * Chinese Historical Review *[A] penetrating study of 20th-century Chinese landscape painting. * Choice *

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Book SynopsisChinese Ways of Seeing and Open-Air Painting chronicles the life of a modern art form. In the late 1910s Chinese painters began working outdoors. They also adopted linear perspective and Cartesian optics. Yi Gu reflects on the complex interaction of local and Western aesthetics within the new form and on the nature of visual modernity in China.Trade ReviewYi Gu not only provides an innovative perspective from which to reflect on complicated interactions of the global and local in China, but also calls for rethinking the nature of Chinese visual modernity…After reading Yi Gu’s book…we have a clearer and fresher view of open-air paintings in China and how they have reflected social, political, and cultural changes from the very beginning of open-air painting since 1910. -- Xiaoxiao Li * Chinese Historical Review *[A] penetrating study of 20th-century Chinese landscape painting. * Choice *

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Book SynopsisRise of a Japanese Chinatown focuses on a Chinese immigrant community in the Japanese port city of Yokohama from the Sino-Japanese War of 18941895 to the normalization of Sino-Japanese ties in 1972 and beyond. It tells the story of how Chinese immigrants found an enduring place within a monoethnic state during periods of war and peace.

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Book SynopsisThe Chinese Dreamscape, 300 BCE800 CE investigates what dreams meant in late classical and early medieval China. Mapping a common dreamscape that underlies manuals of dream interpretation, scriptural instructions, and other texts, Robert Ford Campany sheds light on how people in a distant age wrestled withand celebratedthe strangeness of dreams.Trade ReviewWhile the book is written for an academic audience, the writing is wonderfully engaging. In the end, it challenges us to revisit our assumptions about dreams: what can and cannot be known about them and how much is a product of cultural context. -- Leanne Ogasawara * Asian Review of Books *[Campany’s] approach to the study of Chinese dreams and dreaming is expansive without falling into the comfortable universals afforded by the perennialism that often creeps into modern studies on dreams. In fact, Campany takes issue with all ‘isms.’ According to Campany, the reification of traditions into monolithic belief systems (e.g., ‘Buddhism’ and ‘Daoism’) only muddies our understanding of these traditions, diverting our attention away from the plurality of information that makes up complex cultural phenomena such as dreams and beliefs. While the book sometimes dwells too long on the critical theory underpinning it, these theoretical forays are for the most part done to great effect. This book is a big and much-needed step forward not only in the study of dreams and dreaming in China but also, more generally, in the fields of religious studies and social history. -- Nelson Landry * Religious Studies Review *[The Chinese Dreamscape] delivers an admirable synthesis of past and present oneirological research, in the Chinese context and cross-culturally, while also presenting a compelling new application of the analytical toolkit that Campany has been honing over his last 25 years of scholarship (such as notions of cosmography, discourse communities, and the performative and semiotic functions of storytelling). Moreover, the author’s recognition of dreaming as an embodied process, and of the complex, recursive interactions between dreams, bodies, and cultures, clearly informed his decision to cite relevant theories and examples from across the social scientific corpus (e.g. anthropology, history, psychology). This resulted in a laudably interdisciplinary study, equally relevant to sinologists and oneirologists. -- Christopher Jon Jensen * Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies *Campany has given us an immensely perceptive, rich, and dense study that will leave its readers with sharpened sensibilities for interpreting dream-related passages in Chinese literature. I am already looking forward to reading the second volume and to detecting the traces this book is bound to leave in future scholarship of early and medieval China literature and culture. -- Antje Richter * Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies *Dreamscape makes major contributions to the field…[It] provides an unparalleled assortment of many facets of dream life; we see sophisticated taxonomies, dream analyses (based variously on wordplay, spoken and written; hexagrams from the Book of Changes; and Chinese medicine), and extensive translations of biographies of elite diviners…‘Seminal’ long ago became an overused characterization in academic book reviews, but one can easily see this work, the product of many years of research, inspiring many future studies to further investigate this fascinating, vital subject. -- Mark Halperin * History of Religions *Campany’s sixth book, The Chinese Dreamscape, 300 BCE–800 CE, builds on materials, themes, and arguments that Campany has been exploring over his previous five in expanding our understanding of early medieval Chinese religious worlds. Chinese Dreamscape is just as generously spirited, combing through scholarship external to Sinology and religious studies for relevant comparative cases and methodological insights, and then devising novel frameworks for his readers to better elucidate phenomena in their own fields of study, Asian religious traditions or otherwise. It is always pleasurable to consume Campany’s unique scholarly voice—at turns cautiously exhaustive, insistently clear, and playfully poetic—for the space of another book. And Chinese Dreamscape might also represent Campany at an especially self-reflexive moment, as the uncanny nature of dreams themselves continually challenge human attempts to render them sensible. We witness the author in the act of growing and reshuffling his theoretical repertoire to better capture the foreignness of the beings early Chinese people met when they were asleep. -- Alexander Hsu * H-Net Reviews *Should prove invaluable to scholars interested in traditional Chinese literature and culture as well as comparative studies as diverse as psychology, theology, and literature. -- Kenneth DeWoskin * Journal of Chinese Studies *This is not a subject that many have written about – nor one that immediately suggests the range and depth of material that the author has succeeded in finding. That Campany has been able to describe consistent patterns of interpretation and approach across such an extended period is as much as tribute to his own scholarship as it is to the remarkable extent of classical Chinese texts that still exist today. * Kerry Brown Reviews *

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Book SynopsisA Third Way tells the story of Deng Xiaoping’s experimentation with export-led development inspired by Lenin’s New Economic Policy and the economic reforms of Eastern Europe and Asia. This book provides important new insights about the crucial period of the 1980s and how it paved the way for China’s transformation into a global economic superpower.Trade ReviewBuilt on decades of rigorous research, A Third Way provides a fine-grained, nuanced, step-by-step analysis on how China opened up to the world. It is an extremely important new addition to a recent body of literature on the beginning of China’s reform. …The author’s on-the-ground knowledge also enables him to accurately capture the social atmosphere in South China during a period of radical changes. …[A] highly informative read for political scientists, historians, and economists interested in modern China, post-socialist transformations, and international trade and investment. -- Taomo Zhou * China Review International *Reardon’s significant study is worthy of close reading by both economic specialists and the broader community of China scholars. -- Frederick C. Teiwes * China Journal *

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Book SynopsisWaleed Ziad examines the development of Sufi-led Muslim revivalist networks. From the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufis inspired reformist movements and articulated responses to the fracturing of Muslim political power. They fostered a “hidden caliphate” that sustained cohesion from Afghanistan to Siberia and China.Trade ReviewBrilliant…An outstanding book, which makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Sufism, modern Islamic thought, and the social and political history of the Persianate world. -- Fitzroy Morrissey * Asian Affairs *An important work…Ziad provides a riveting account of how history has buffeted the fortunes of the Mujadidi Sufis, from Punjab to the Peshawar valley, Kabul, Bukhara and Turkey. -- Farrukh Husain * Friday Times *Hidden Caliphate announces the arrival of a major new scholar. By focusing on the more recent past of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Ziad recenters the study of the Sufi tradition, which all too often has been relegated to the realm of metaphysics and poetry. He brings a contested period to light with encyclopedic insight. I heartily recommend this book. -- Omid Safi, author of The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious InquiryA major achievement. In this innovative, well-written book Ziad shows us a region knit together by the networks of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufis. He is the first to set out their massive influence across Central Asia, Afghanistan, and northwest South Asia, and in the process reveals how limited was the understanding of the colonial powers in the Great Game. -- Francis Robinson, author of The Mughal Emperors: And the Islamic Dynasties of India, Iran and Central Asia, 1206–1925Equipped with an impressive array of primary sources, Ziad skillfully dismantles restrictive notions of region and sovereignty and casts aside binaries such as that of Sufis and ulama. He then offers us a breathtaking view of a Persian cosmopolis held together by vibrant networks of Naqshbandi Sufis in the politically turbulent eighteenth century. This hugely important book should be read across a range of disciplines. -- Supriya Gandhi, author of The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal IndiaA pioneering study of the Mujaddidi Sufi networks that spanned the eastern Islamic world, from Siberia to India, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Grounded in a prodigious range of sources, Hidden Caliphate shows how the order’s doctrinal, ritual, and institutional dimensions offered intellectual and social cohesion for Muslims across this vast region before and after the advent of colonial domination. -- Devin DeWeese, author of Studies on Sufism in Central AsiaRefreshingly original, Hidden Caliphate shows how the Mujaddidi Sufis combined high textual tradition with ecstatic Sufism and local rituals and thus built a seminal authority to unite diverse communities across Central Asia, Afghanistan, and South Asia. Ziad brings a vital new perspective on a region long understood only through the narrow lens of European imperial histories. -- Muzaffar Alam, author of The Mughals and the Sufis: Islam and Political Imagination in India, 1500–1750A brilliant transregional study of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi scholastic–religious networks (the batini khilafat) in Khurasan, Hindustan, and Transoxiana that significantly advances the field of Persianate studies. Ziad traces sacred networks of cultural and economic exchange as well as the leadership structure that helped maintain a degree of stability during a time of political decentralization. A must-read for all interested in Sufism, the Persianate sphere in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the history of the Afghan empire. -- Jo-Ann Gross, Professor of History, Emeritus, The College of New Jersey

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Book SynopsisStructures of the Earth is the first study of the emergent genre of geographical writing and the metageographies that structured its spatial thought during the Age of Disunion and continue to illuminate spatial complexities that have been incompatible with the imperial and nationalist ideal of a monolithic China at the center of the world.Trade ReviewFascinating…A pleasure to read. It is meticulously researched, consistently engaging, and always thought-provoking without being stridently iconoclastic or tendentious. I highly recommend it. -- Charles Holcombe * Journal of Chinese Studies *This is a brilliant study of fundamental geographic ideas in China’s history. It is extensive and intensive in its research, generous in its acknowledgment of others, compelling in its arguments, and illuminating in its conceptualizations. Bibliographies in the dynastic histories indicate that this period (after Han before Tang) had seen the first blossoming of local historical writing and a surge in geographic writing, but the surviving material seemed unlikely to support significant research on the topic. Felt understood the centrality of Li Daoyuan’s massive commentary on the Classic of Rivers (Shuijing zhu), and his in-depth analysis of the text has established its importance. A mark of great work may be that it all seems obvious after one has read it, until one recalls that prior to that it was not obvious at all. This study should be the point of reference for future writing on the intellectual history of historical geography. -- Peter Bol, Harvard UniversityStructures of the Earth succeeds in its examination of a massive range of discrete evidence. Felt has conducted this research against the enormous burden of the teleological paradigm about Chinese imperial unification in the field of world history. …Required reading for early Chinese medievalists. -- Hieu Phung * Historical Geography *

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Book SynopsisIn Opportunity in Crisis, an exploration of the late Qing Cantonese migration along the West River, Steven B. Miles situates the Cantonese upriver and overseas migration within the same framework, thus reconceiving the late Qing as an age of Cantonese diasporic expansion rather than one of state decline.

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Book SynopsisCelestial Masters is the first book in any Western language devoted solely to the founding of Daoism. It traces the movement from the mid-second century CE through the sixth century, and provides a detailed analysis of ritual life within the movement, covering the roles of common believer or Daoist citizen, novice, and priest or libationer.Trade ReviewThe work represents an enormous contribution to Chinese-area studies as well as the broader religious field. Kleeman’s erudite analysis, copious translations, and detailed notes ensure that Celestial Masters will serve as a useful resource for both scholars of religion as well as students of Chinese literature, history, and culture. -- Lucas Wolf * Journal of Asian Studies *There is much to praise about this book, and it contains a wealth of new material and resources for scholars now made easily accessible for the first time. …[A]n essential volume in any collection of materials on Daoist history, belief, and practice. -- Ronnie L. Littlejohn * Dao *This detailed account of the origins and early development of the Celestial Master organization represents a major step forward in our knowledge of Daoism. Overthrowing countless earlier theories and suppositions with solid textual research, Kleeman’s study will stand as a model of how we might exploit the materials left to us to form solid hypotheses on human culture-building in those long-ago places that we will never be able to visit. -- Stephen R. Bokenkamp * Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies *The most comprehensive examination of early religious Daoism… Kleeman’s outstanding book will be foundational for future studies of Daoist liturgy and organization, especially those parts of the religion that attracted people in and around China. -- Jonathan E. E. Petit * Early Medieval China *Celestial Masters deserves close attention and critical engagement by anyone interested in Chinese history, and not just Daoist studies. [Kleeman’s] historical narrative is very readable and clearly structured, organized around strong, but explicit and argued interpretative choices. …[this] beautiful book will be an indispensable reference work for many decades to come. -- Vincent Goossaert * Journal of Oriental Studies *

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Book SynopsisIn The Epic of Ram, Volume 6, Ram and his allies fight the army of Ravan in a climactic battle, culminating in the demon king’s death. Ram and Sita reunite and board a flying palace to return home. This edition features the Avadhi text in the Devanagari script alongside a new free verse English translation of the beloved Ramayana story.Trade Review[A] cause for celebration—one of India’s most influential texts has been translated into contemporary English by a pivotal scholar who has devoted much of his career to the text, and its afterlives…Gives us a firm starting point for charting horizons and pathways into still-living traditions. -- Nikhil Govind * Scroll.in *Lutgendorf manages a simplicity, elegance and dignity, whereas attempts to rhyme or alliterate by other translators have often resulted in bathos…If this graceful and eminently readable translation can win more readers for this great scripture, which is also the greatest poem ever written in Hindi, it would have served to reaffirm Tulsi’s belief in the countless multiplicity of Ramayans. -- Harish Trivedi * IIC Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisThe sixth edition of Chinese History: A New Manual, revised and expanded to two volumes, includes the latest developments in digital tools and the ancillary disciplines essential for work on Chinese history. Volume 1 covers topics ranging from Language to Technology. Volume 2 presents primary and secondary sources chronologically by period.Trade ReviewA monument of scholarship, one of the great works on China published in English (or any other language) in the last hundred years. -- Lee Moore * China Books Review *Already the size of a telephone directory by the time of its fifth edition, in 2018, Wilkinson’s perennially popular Chinese History: A New Manual has now expanded still further into two volumes, with newly written introductions to each section, additions throughout, links to much recent scholarship, and new chapters that bring its account forward to the end of the Maoist era…An essential reference for even the most casual sinologist, with its pithy explanations of key historical and cultural issues, and extensive bibliographies for those who want to delve deeper. -- Peter Neville-Hadley * South China Morning Post *A magnificent achievement; the most valuable English-language reference book on China anywhere. -- Richard J. SmithWilkinson displays a mastery of a vast array of topics and subfields… No one undertaking serious research about Chinese history…should be without it. -- Bruce Rusk (reviewing the 2017 edition) * Journal of Asian Studies *A mighty book…magnificent. -- Jonathan Mirsky (reviewing the 2015 edition) * New York Review of Books blog *The book is in every way absolutely indispensable to work in Chinese history. -- Carla Nappi (reviewing the 2013 edition) * New Books in East Asian Studies *

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Book SynopsisHonored and Dishonored Guests chronicles Western communities in wartime Japan, using this body of experiences to reconsider allegations of Japanese racism and racial hatred. Its thesis is borne out by a mosaic of stories from dozens of foreign families and individuals, and yields a unique interpretation of race relations and wartime life in Japan.

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Book SynopsisPersian Manuscripts & Paintings from the Berenson Collection presents an in-depth analysis of the little-known Persian manuscripts and paintings collected by the world-renowned art historian, art critic, and connoisseur Bernard Berenson. Fourteen essays focus on three manuscripts and four detached folios.

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Book SynopsisThe Afterlife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi explores how sixteenth-century samurai leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi's continued and evolving presence in popular culture in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Japan changes with the needs of the current era, and in the process expands our understanding of the powerful role that historical narratives play in Japan.

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Book SynopsisThe Afterlife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi explores how sixteenth-century samurai leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s continued and evolving presence in popular culture in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Japan changes with the needs of the current era, and in the process expands our understanding of the powerful role that historical narratives play in Japan.

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Book SynopsisJuliane Noth shows how art and discussions about the future of ink painting were linked to the reshaping of the country, leading to the creation of a uniquely modern Chinese landscape imagery. Noth offers a new understanding of these experiments by studying them as transmedial practice, at once shaped by and integral to the modern global art world.Trade Review[An] important new volume…It will be necessary reading for all scholars of Republican China’s cultural politics. -- Craig Clunas * Journal of Chinese History *A comprehensive and insightful series of analyses on the problems of landscape painting and its practitioners at the junction of intermediation via photography, and on the need to proclaim and reinforce the continuity of ‘Chinese landscape painting’. Because of its detail and precise analysis this text will be an important reference for some time. -- John Clark * 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual *

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive introduction to Chinese legal scholarship and the scholars who developed the new Communist legal system during the initial decades of the PRC when the old system was abolished by the newly established Communist government. Through their scholarship, we see where the field of Chinese legal studies came from and where it is going.Trade ReviewThe PRC legal system can hardly by understood without knowing the leading legal scholars’ careers, thoughts, critiques, and contributions, which have influenced and reflected the tortuous path of China’s contemporary legal development. Dr. Nongji Zhang’s unique work provides comprehensive coverage of the most influential Chinese legal scholars based on personal contacts with and first-hand information of these scholars. This is a book that needs to be read and used by anyone who wishes to understand the PRC legal system more deeply. -- Wang ChengangNongji Zhang’s biographies of pioneering legal scholars in China will act as an important bridge for understanding their contributions to legal discourse, not simply in a Chinese context but globally as well. Her carefully edited selections provide us with intellectual genealogies that have remained opaque outside of China, and remind us that despite political upheavals, serious scholarship on law has continued in China. -- Karen G. TurnerNongji Zhang’s new book is a valuable publication, both as a research tool and as a summary introduction to the first generation of legal scholars in the PRC. Many of the figures introduced in this volume may not be well-known in the English literature but will be of interest to scholars working in the field. It opens the door to vast historical records showing how Chinese legal scholars struggled with the idea of law, rights, and revolution. Now that China is, again, embracing Mao’s revolutionary spirit, it is even more meaningful to bring that earlier history back to light. -- Dongsheng Zang

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Book SynopsisIn Cine-Mobility, Han Sang Kim argues that the force of propaganda films in Korea were derived primarily from the new mobility afforded by transportation. Kim explores the association between cinematic media and transportation mobility, and its connection with the new culture of mobility, including changes in gender dynamics, that accompanied it.Trade ReviewPerhaps the best academic book produced on the subject of Korean literature, film, and culture over the past twenty years…Han Sang Kim has achieved a feat in the English language that no one outside Korea has yet to match—that of telling a fascinating story about the intimate relationship between Korean socioeconomic phenomena (transportation) and media (screen) throughout the twentieth century. -- Kyung Hyun Kim * Seoul Journal of Korean Studies *Its breath of research is impressive—from Korean, American, and Japanese original sources, the subject of the visual mobility of Korea during the past century is groundbreaking and innovative, and the overall historical narrative is brilliant and unique. I can’t think of another book that takes this approach in understanding Korea during the twentieth century. I read it from the beginning to end in about two or three sittings, and each and every chapter read as if there were more truth to be told about the author’s unorthodox approach at examining the history of Korean development. -- Kyung Hyun Kim, author of Hegemonic Mimicry: Korean Popular Culture of the Twenty-First CenturyHan Sang Kim’s wonderful new book offers a vivid exploration of South Korea’s twentieth-century experience of modernity, focusing on technologies and representations of mobility within a political-economic framework. Admirably broad in scope, it covers trains, automobiles, and planes as they appear in feature films, documentaries, and TV shows. Kim fluidly combines a transnational perspective with deep dives into national history, and his exceptional knowledge of Korean visual culture enables him to trace continuities and ruptures across the colonial divide. Filled with nuanced textual interpretations, this book expands our understanding of Korean modernity immeasurably. A major contribution to the field of Korean studies. -- Christina Klein, author of Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korea Cinema

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Book SynopsisA Treatise on Dharma, written in the fourth or fifth century, illuminates major innovations in religious, civil, and criminal law, and informed Indian life for a thousand years. This new critical edition, presented alongside the Sanskrit original in the Devanagari script, opens the classical age of ancient Indian law to modern readers.

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Book SynopsisThe Qing dynasty office purchase system (juanna), which allowed individuals to pay for government appointments, was regarded in traditional Chinese historiography as inherently corrupt and anti-meritocratic. Lawrence Zhang's groundbreaking study of a broad selection of new archival and other printed evidence contradicts this widely held assessment.Trade ReviewWith exacting research and sweeping vision, Lawrence Zhang has offered the most sophisticated study yet written of how the Qing state and Chinese society negotiated the path to office. By showing that the examination system can only be understood in relation to office purchase, Power for a Price becomes one of those rare books that genuinely transforms our understanding of late imperial China. -- Matthew W. MoscaLawrence Zhang's book is the most important study of Qing-dynasty official recruitment and elite formation to appear within the last twenty years. Zhang demonstrates that, as part of the strategic portfolio of many of the era's most successful officials and lineages, the purchase of degrees, offices, and shortcuts to appointment complemented Confucian education and examination success. Far from being the stigmatized last resort of exam failures in the desperate last decades of the dynasty, direct purchase of degrees and offices in fact constituted a regular, approved practice right through the Qing, providing a steady source of revenue (not unlike the sale of bonds) that enabled the imperial state to tap private wealth by promising repayment through future appointment. Far from being a betrayal of social mobility, the relatively low price of the lower degrees and offices made purchase a far more realistic route to upward mobility than examination alone, which tended to reinforce and reproduce elite status. This book will be required reading for all historians of China. -- Matthew Sommer

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Book SynopsisVietnam focuses on how the country's governance shapes its politics, economy, social development, and international relations, as well as on the reforms required if it is to become a sustainable and modern high-income nation in the coming decades. This book features work by scholars from Vietnam, North America, and Europe.Trade ReviewIf you are going to read only one book on Vietnam to get up to speed with the state of scholarship on the country, this should be the one. A stellar cast of scholars looking at Vietnam from the rise of the party-state to its socioeconomic and diplomatic evolution gives readers an admirable compendium. -- Nayan Chanda, Ashoka University, former editor of Far Eastern Economic Review This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in how Vietnam transitioned from a poor, isolated country one generation ago to a rising Asian success story. Contributions cover both the economics and the politics of this ongoing transformation. -- David Dollar, Brookings Institution, former World Bank country economist for Vietnam and China This compilation provides a penetrating ringside glimpse into how Vietnam transitioned from a crippled centrally-planned economy into a global trading powerhouse and from a diplomatic pariah into a close partner of the U.S. and the West. The authors, including Vietnamese practitioners in and foreign advisers to the country's remarkable reform, detail the challenges Vietnam faces along the road to becoming a high-income nation, including a rigid political system, rampant corruption, growing economic inequality, serious environmental degradation, and a weak secondary education system. It is an invaluable read for anyone trying to understand this complex and dynamic country. -- Murray Hiebert, Center for Strategic and International Studies, author of Under Beijing's Shadow: Southeast Asia's China Challenge This is a critically important book that will be embraced by scholars of Vietnam and economic/political development more generally. The editors have assembled an astounding group of experts in a range of specialties from political science to economics to health to diplomatic history. Each chapter provides new insights that will enrich the knowledge of even long-term students of the country. -- Edmund Malesky, Duke University How can a communist party state coexist with a plural society? Read this book to find out! -- Stein Tonnesson, Peace Research Institute Oslo

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Book SynopsisThe Threshold, a study of the culture of historiography in early medieval China, explores the History of Liu-Song, a dynastic history of the fifth century compiled in 488. Zeb Raft shows how history was constructed through rhetorical elements including the narration of officialdom, the anecdote, and, above all, the historical document.

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Book SynopsisHistorian Odd Arne Westad provides a concise, insightful overview of 600 years of relations between China and the Koreas. The story traces the transition from Korean cultural and political dependence to the tensions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, providing essential background to a complex contemporary geopolitical dynamic.Trade ReviewThe relationship between China and Korea is one of the most important, and least understood, in Asia. With the wisdom and clarity we have come to expect from Westad, this book illuminates the long history of these two neighbors. He tells a story both of closeness brought about by Confucianism and Communism and of prickliness that comes from two fierce and rival nationalisms, providing compelling insights on the future of this volatile partnership. -- Rana Mitter, author of China’s Good WarIn this incisive and engaging overview, Westad offers a new framework for understanding China and Korea that weaves their interconnected histories together in a concise, thoughtful way. The themes of ‘empire’ and ‘righteous nation’ offer some excellent insights into both the differences between the two countries and their long, complex relationship. -- Gregg Brazinsky, author of Nation Building in South KoreaWestad offers a sweeping historical overview of what is arguably the most important relationship in Asia today, that between China and the Korean Peninsula. How that relationship is managed and plays out in the coming years is central to questions of national and regional interests as well as to global issues of war and peace. Unique in its broad perspective and engagingly written, this is a timely must-read primer on the China–Korea relationship in its longue durée and its impact on and implications for our world today. -- Carter J. Eckert, author of Park Chung Hee and Modern KoreaA smart and engaging work, with a provocative, sweeping narrative that is a pleasure to read. Anyone interested in Sino–Korean relations and the current standoff on the peninsula would be well advised to start with this book. -- Andre Schmid, author of Korea Between Empires, 1895–1919Valuable and wide-ranging…As two thousand years of history have shown, China’s role in Korea is a complex one. Westad’s short and stimulating study provides many clues to understanding that relationship. -- J. E. Hoare * Literary Review *

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Book SynopsisThe Rājyābhiṣeka Manual for the Coronation of King Bīrendra of Nepal contains the only extensive coronation manual available for a Hindu king. Long regarded as highly secret, it can now be presented, after the abolition of the monarchy in its entirety in 2008. This manual was checked and signed by the royal priests and religious advisors.

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Book SynopsisAriel Fox's The Cornucopian Stage examines a body of influential yet understudied early modern Chinese plays by a circle of Suzhou playwrights. These plays about long-distance traders and small-time peddlers, impossible bargains and broken contracts, place commercial forms not only at center stage but at the center of a new world coming into being.

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Book SynopsisIn Betting on the Civil Service Examinations, En Li places the history of Chinese weixing, or surname guessing, for civil service examinations in a larger context. Li traces institutional revenue innovations surrounding lottery regulation and depicts an expansive community stretching among Guangdong, Southeast Asia, and North America.

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Book SynopsisIn Betting on the Civil Service Examinations, En Li places the history of Chinese weixing, or surname guessing, for civil service examinations in a larger context. Li traces institutional revenue innovations surrounding lottery regulation and depicts an expansive community stretching among Guangdong, Southeast Asia, and North America.

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Book SynopsisThe Making of China’s Post Office traces the origins and early development—and the political maneuverings and economic imperatives—of the institution. Using Chinese archives, Tsai illustrates the extent to which local agency shaped the design and development of the first nationwide modernization project to directly impact people’s daily lives.

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Book SynopsisTo convey modern China's history and the forces driving its economic success, rail has no equal. From warlordism to Cultural Revolution, railroads suffered the country's ills but persisted because they were exemplary institutions. Elisabeth Köll shows why they remain essential to the PRC's technocratic economic model for China's future.Trade ReviewKöll…has done a rare thing, and done it magnificently. She has written a book that will inform historians and economists of China, but also curious new readers, who will get a brainful of China’s development from the last emperors to the current president-for-life, Xi Jinping… She is adept at showing the impact of railways on all aspects of Chinese life. -- Jonathan Mirsky * Times Higher Education *Köll’s book could lead to the emergence of a field of Chinese railroad studies just as the First Transcontinental Railroad led to the spatial magnification of America… Many topics we thought we knew—gender, machines, space, capitalism, social stratification—are connected and expanded through the fresh lens of railroad history. -- Elya J. Zhang * Business History Review *A sweeping account of the railways themselves as well as the impact of railway expansion on multiple dimensions of Chinese life…Wide-ranging and insightful. -- Thomas G. Rawski * China Quarterly *Required reading. It is an exhaustively sourced analysis of how geopolitics, business organization, and social relations influenced the development of one of China’s most important industries. -- Matthew Lowenstein * PRC History Review *Offers a powerful lens for understanding twentieth-century China…Köll’s work offers an important new perspective on the development of China’s rail network. The conclusions that she draws from the case of the Jin-Pu line speak broadly to scholars interested in infrastructure, technology, economy, and the power of the modern state. -- Judd C. Kinzley * Journal of Asian Studies *As the first comprehensive history of China’s railroad development in any language, Elisabeth Köll’s well-researched account addresses issues of interest to historians of technology…Not only offers perspectives from the non-Western world, underrepresented in the histories of transportation and mobility; it also highlights the deep history behind the managerial innovation and adaptability that prompted policy makers to place railroads at the heart of China’s One Belt, One Road initiative. -- Ying Jia Tan * Technology and Culture *Fills a long-standing gap… Valuing the railroads as one of the most important transportation tools, the Chinese are continuing to build their high-speed train networks. Thus, Köll’s book is a timely contribution to our understanding of modern China through the lens of the ongoing railway expansion. * Choice *So far the most comprehensive survey of China’s railroad history…The detailed studies relying on primary sources and in-depth discussions on how China’s railroads as institutions with wide social, economic, cultural, and political functions make this book the most reliable reference for anyone who is interested in understanding China in the modern times. -- Xiansheng Tian * Frontiers of History in China *Köll is clearly a master of archival diplomacy, for she has over time found materials accessible to no other foreign scholar, resulting in one of the richest studies in the evolution, management, finances, and labor politics of any Chinese enterprise. It gives nuanced and sustained attention to the intersection of business and politics that remains to this day a critical factor for the success or failure of business in China. -- William C. Kirby, coauthor of Can China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and GrowthThe history of Chinese railroads is a topic so important, it is surprising we have had to wait so long for a book like this—the most comprehensive history of Chinese railways in either Chinese or English. Based on previously unused archives and interviews, Elisabeth Köll gives readers a picture of the building and development of what has become one of the largest railway networks in the world. At the same time, Köll provides a new perspective on a broad sweep of Chinese history from the final years of the Qing dynasty, through war and revolution in the twentieth century, and into China’s economic rise since the 1980s. -- Brett Sheehan, author of Industrial Eden: A Chinese Capitalist Vision

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Book SynopsisIn an age when few ventured beyond their birthplace, André Palmeiro left Portugal to inspect Jesuit missions from Mozambique to Japan. A global history in the guise of biography, The Visitor tells the story of a theologian whose travels bore witness to the fruitful contact—and violent collision—of East and West in the early modern era.Trade ReviewAndré Palmeiro (1569–1635) is one of the forgotten men of Jesuit history… Liam Brockey’s major interpretative biography deserves to achieve a reversal of this neglect… Brockey’s colorful and meticulously researched travel narrative takes us with him to South India and Sri Lanka, Macau and Beijing, as well as to other fields for which Palmeiro had responsibility but never visited in person… In his extended discussion of the principle of accommodation in the Chinese context, Brockey is at his most original and controversial… This is a book with the potential to redraw the historical map of Christian missions in Asia. It is the product of exhaustive archival and library research in Rome and Lisbon. It is also beautifully illustrated and engagingly written. Liam Brockey has reminded us that the most significant Christian missionary enterprise of early modern times depended for its stability and survival on ecclesiastical bureaucrats. André Palmeiro, God’s mandarin, deserves his place in historical memory alongside the more charismatic figures of Xavier, de Nobili and Ricci. -- Brian Stanley * Times Literary Supplement *An account of the fascinating life of [Andre] Palmeiro, a Portuguese appointed by his superiors in Rome in 1617 to inspect Jesuit missions around the world. -- Mark O’Neill * South China Morning Post *A substantial, scholarly biography of a figure who has hitherto only been a footnote in Jesuit history. -- Thomas Tallon * The Tablet *This story transcends Palmeiro’s life… Indeed, it is Palmeiro’s own letters and his lively accounts of his journeys, along with other sources, that Brockey puts to excellent use in his account of Jesuit enterprise in the Portuguese Empire in maritime Asia… In crafting Palmeiro’s life story Brockey brilliantly accomplishes his goal of shedding light on different historical contexts as well as the problems and questions of the early modern world… This well-written and enjoyable book illustrates how Palmeiro’s final days until his death marked the end of a generation of Jesuits whose dreams materialized in the expansion of Christianity in Asia. -- Ana Carolina Hosne * Times Higher Education *This excellent book describes the Jesuit Asian missions at a crucial time through the eyes and reports of André Palmeiro (1569–1635), a Portuguese Jesuit… Brockey offers many insights in good evocative prose. Telling the story of the missions and disputed matters through Palmeiro is very effective, not least because it enables readers to see how the Asian missions functioned on a personal and practical level. -- P. Grendler * Choice *A richly colored baroque portrait of a philosophy professor turned world traveler, the Portuguese priest André Palmeiro. Its subject spent two decades as a plenipotentiary ‘visitor’ representing the highest authorities of the Jesuit order in mission areas extending from Mozambique and Ethiopia through Goa and Malabar to China and Japan. The political and cultural challenges that Palmeiro faced in that vast and varied space are treated extensively. The Visitor is a display of rigorous and inventive historical scholarship, founded in a mastery of the archives. Brockey writes with imagination, scope, and style. -- J. S. A. Elisonas, Indiana UniversityLiam Brockey does what an excellent scholar should in a pioneering work. He helps us understand Palmeiro’s work and its importance for the history of the world. He also achieves what seemed impossible from the evidence available: vividly and convincingly, he evokes much of Palmeiro’s spiritual and intellectual life. -- Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of Our America

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Book SynopsisNatasha Heller offers a cultural history of Buddhism through a case study of the Chan master Zhongfeng Mingben. Monks of his stature developed a broad set of cultural competencies for navigating social and intellectual relationships. Heller shows the importance of situating monks as actors within wider sociocultural fields of practice and exchange.

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Book SynopsisInvesting Japan demonstrates that foreign investment is a vital and misunderstood aspect of Japan’s modern economic development. This study investigates the role played by foreign companies in the Japanese experience of modernization, highlighting their identity as key agents in the processes of industrialization and technology transfer.Trade ReviewA brilliant treatise in economic history. -- Jerry Bowyer * Forbes *A major contribution to the literature on Japanese financial and economic history, this work is the first comprehensive study in English of foreign involvement in Japan’s modern economy through both loans and joint ventures. It challenges notions of Japanese economic development as a largely ‘autonomous’ process by highlighting the long history of foreign investment in modern Japan. The book richly documents the enormous inflow and multifaceted use of some ¥4 billion in foreign capital prior to World War II and places in compelling historical perspective the growing foreign presence in Japan’s postwar economy. -- Steven Ericson, Dartmouth CollegeAn accessible and illuminating account that demonstrates the crucial and often neglected role of foreign investment in Japan’s capital formation and economic activity from the mid-19th century up to the present. Simon Bytheway’s book will become standard reading for all those interested in Japan’s financial and monetary history, and the country’s economic development as a whole. -- Janet Hunter, London School of Economics and Political ScienceIn this new major contribution to international financial and economic history, Simon Bytheway covers a lot of ground, from Japan’s market-opening shock in the mid-1800s, to the origins of the Japanese gold standard, to present-day globalization. Bytheway is one of the rare foreign scholars based in Japan and writing in Japanese. He knows the subject intimately, and he has now brought his history of the critical role played by foreign investment in Japan to an international audience. -- Mark Metzler, University of Texas at AustinBytheway’s study is a tour de force. He has delved into multiple archives and an extensive array of Japanese and English-language sources to come up with a masterly description of Japanese foreign borrowing over a century and a half. His command of the Japanese sources is particularly impressive. -- Richard Smethurst, University of Pittsburgh

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Book SynopsisInk landscape painting is a distinctive feature of the Northern Song, and Song painters created some of the most celebrated artworks in Chinese history. Foong Ping shows how landmark works of this era came to be identified first as potent symbols of imperial authority and later as objects by which exiled scholars expressed disaffection and dissent.

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Book SynopsisCatherine L. Phipps examines a largely unacknowledged system of “special trading ports” that operated under full Japanese jurisdiction in the shadow of the better-known treaty ports. Phipps demonstrates why the special trading ports were key to Japan’s achieving autonomy and regional power during the pivotal second half of the nineteenth century.

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Book SynopsisSarah M. Allen explores the tale literature of eighth- and ninth-century China to show how written tales of the Tang canon we know today grew out of a fluid culture of hearsay in elite society. The book focuses on two main types of tales, those based in gossip about recognizable public figures and those developed out of lore concerning the occult.

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Book SynopsisMatthew Fraleigh examines the life and works of Narushima Ryuhoku (18371884): Confucian scholar, world traveler, pioneering journalist, and irrepressible satirist. This is the first book-length study of Ryuhoku in a Western language and one of the first Western-language monographs to examine Sinitic poetry and prose composition in modern Japan.Trade ReviewJapan’s preeminent poet and social critic in the two decades leading up to the advent of the modern novel, Narushima Ryūhoku is today sadly relegated to the backwaters of literary history. Fraleigh’s beautifully written and precisely documented history of the writer’s turn from samurai to official ‘field’ journalist leads the reader to consider how literary discourses would come, albeit briefly, to inform the political and economic realities of late nineteenth-century Japan. Highly recommended for all students of classical and modern Asian culture. -- Robert Campbell, University of TokyoJust as Narushima Ryūhoku was one of the preeminent writers of his era in the realm of Sinitic Japanese literature (kanshibun), so has his biographer Matthew Fraleigh become a leader among the growing number of scholars working to revive this once vibrant literary space. Plucking Chrysanthemums and its companion work, New Chronicles of Yanagibashi and Diary of a Journey to the West, at once compellingly elucidate kanshibun texts and vividly describe the culture in which they were created and received. -- H. Mack Horton, University of California, BerkeleyWith Matthew Fraleigh’s new book, a great oversight in the tale of Japan’s early road to modernity is now finally being remedied. His study demonstrates the importance of kanbun as a written language of nineteenth-century modernization and drives home the forgotten truth that, if we wish to grasp more fully the mindsets of Japanese caught in the transition toward the modern age, we must also read the vast output of Sinitic poetry and prose of the Meiji period. Narushima Ryūhoku is indeed an emblematic figure in this process. -- Ivo Smits, Leiden UniversityA work of enormous erudition that brings to readers in vivid detail the remarkable and varied life of this significant but often neglected figure of Japan’s late nineteenth century. Ryūhoku’s life, and Fraleigh’s recounting of that life, suggest the rich complexity of this period. -- Jonathan Zwicker * Monumenta Nipponica *

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Book SynopsisThe History of Akbar, by Abu’l-Fazl, is one of the most important works of Indo-Persian history and a touchstone of prose artistry. It is at once a biography of the Mughal emperor Akbar that includes descriptions of his political and martial feats and cultural achievements, and a chronicle of sixteenth-century India.Trade ReviewOf all the great monarchs to have ruled over India—a land whose history is richer and more turbulent than that of almost any other—the one who most retains our modern-day attention is Akbar, Mughal emperor from 1556 to 1605…[The History of Akbar] includes accounts of his court and his governance, as well as of the wars, alliances and intrigues of his time…Thackston’s translation is the first complete rendition into English of Abu’l-Fazl’s Persian text since Henry Beveridge, a British orientalist and imperial civil servant, completed his version in 1921…Thackston’s English is modern and…[his] translation…is impressively meticulous. -- Tunku Varadarajan * Wall Street Journal *At a time when Hindutva historians are eager to distort the history of Muslim invasions in order to deepen religious cleavages and consolidate vote banks, [Abu’l-Fazl's] elaboration of Akbar’s legacy as a tolerant Muslim ruler of a non-Muslim majority is an important reminder of how Indian society has evolved. -- Pragya Tiwari * India at LSE blog *The [Murty Classical Library of India] aims to make Indian literature accessible to a wide audience, so that ever larger circles of individuals can discover the history, philosophy, and drama of India. As the volume of this library that I read, The History of Akbar (Volume 1) proved, the Murty Library has succeeded in its goal of sharing valuable knowledge and providing interesting insights on India…This particular volume provides valuable insight into both the history and historiography of the Mughals. -- Akhilesh Pillalamarri * The Diplomat *We can only welcome an undertaking like the Murty Classical Library of India, which intends to inject fresh blood directly into the circulatory system of the English language. Any intelligent reader cannot fail to be favorably impressed in the presence of the variegated offerings of the series’ first titles…The Murty Classical Library offers a surprising array of texts that are in any case capable of broadening the all-too-restricted horizons of the average Western reader. -- Roberto Calasso * New York Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisThe first full-length biography of a premodern Japanese nun, The Princess Nun is the story of Bunchi (16191697), daughter of Emperor Go-Mizunoo and founder of Enshoji. The study incorporates issues of gender and social status into its discussion of Bunchi's ascetic practice to rewrite the history of Buddhist reform and Tokugawa religion.

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