Description: These writings, representing over a generation of work by one of our most acute commentators on Chinese history, are collected here for the first time and introduced with a masterly prologue. Benjamin Schwartz brings all of the complexity surrounding modernity to his analysis of the millennial political, social, and cultural history of China.
Brief description: Benjamin I. Schwartz was Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science, Emeritus, at Harvard University.
Review Quotes: These essays were published over a quarter century of time, the earliest appearing in 1966, the latest in the early 1990s. Diverse in content--ranging from fairly esoteric explorations of aspects of the Chinese philosophical tradition to ruminations on the thought of Mao to observations about the progressive degeneration of Marxism-Leninist ideology to close analysis of such commonly encountered categories as tradition, modernity, society, and party to critical discussions of issues in the Western intellectual tradition (as formulated, for example, in Rousseau and Hannah Arendt)--they are as fresh and relevant today as they were when first written.--Paul A. Cohen, Wellesley College