For the first time in any modern language, a female scholar and translator reimagines The Art of War.Sun Tzu’s ancient book of strategy and psychology has as much to tell us today as when it was first written 2,500 years ago. In a world forever at odds, his rules for anticipating the motivations and strategies of our competitors never cease to inspire leaders of all kinds.Michael Nylan, in her provocative introduction, sees new and unexpected lesso...

Michael Nylan and Thomas Hahn open up new vistas for thinking ecologically in this introduction to ancient and modern thought in China.Together they explore the environment in the Chinese philosophical tradition and contemporary China through the lens of intergenerational justice. Nylan's analysis of lesser known texts from ancient China changes our thinking of Chinese political philosophy and legal antiquity codes. Hahn's comprehensive overview of recent data from...

Written by the eminent sinologist Michael Loewe, and edited for publication by T. Corey Brennan and Michael Nylan, this book gives an overview of the considerations and practices of two major world empires that together ruled half of the earth's population in the first centuries BCE: ancient Rome and Han China**.** Approaching the historical material with a comparative perspective, Loewe examines the strengths and weaknesses, and the successes and failures, which can be se...

An early commentary on one of the Chinese Five ClassicsThe Documents classic (Shangshu) was central to the political life of imperial China. This owed much to the lively commentarial activity surrounding the text in the first two centuries BCE. The Great Commentary serves as a lens on this commentarial work and reveals how the Documents classic was used to provide answers to pressing societal questions of the time.In this...

Sima Qian (first century BCE), the author of Record of the Historian (Shiji), is China’s earliest and best-known historian, and his “Letter to Ren An” is the most famous letter in Chinese history. In the letter, Sima Qian explains his decision to finish his life’s work, the first comprehensive history of China, instead of honorably committing suicide following his castration for “deceiving the emperor.” In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, some scholars have queried the au...

The definitive translation of a masterpiece in ancient Chinese historiographyIn the early eighth century, frustrated with the authorities but still hoping to gain immortality through his future oeuvre, the Tang court historian Liu Zhiji set out to write Shitong, in which he would rigorously explore the tradition of historical writing in China. Liu scrutinized hundreds of texts from antiquity to the early Tang dynasty (618–907) and evaluated their authors a...

This book takes up one of the most important themes in Chinese thought: the relation of pleasurable activities to bodily health and to the health of the body politic. Unlike Western theories of pleasure, early Chinese writings contrast pleasure not with pain but with insecurity, assuming that it is right and proper to seek and take pleasure, as well as experience short-term delight. Equally important is the belief that certain long-term relational pleasures are more easily sustained, as we...

The first concerted attempt to analyze how the histories Shiji and Hanshu described the technical arts as they were applied in vital areas of the administration of pre-Han and Han China.While cultural literacy in early China was grounded in learning the Classics, basic competence in official life was generally predicated on acquiring several forms of technical knowledge. Recent ar...

The Five Classics associated with Confucius formed the core curriculum in the education of Chinese literati throughout most of the imperial period. In this book Michael Nylan offers a sweeping assessment of these ancient texts and shows how their influence spread across East Asia.Nylan begins by tracing the formation of the Five Classics canon in the pre-Han and Han periods, 206 B.C.A.D. 220, revising standard views on the topic. She assesses the impact on this canon of the inve...

Confucius—“Master Kung” (551–479 BCE), the Chinese thinker and social philosopher—originated teachings that have deeply influenced Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese thought and life over many centuries. His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, justice, and appropriateness in social relationships. In time these values gained prominence in China over other doctrines, such as Taoism and even Buddhism. His thoughts later developed into a system of philosophy known ...

For the first time in any modern language, a female scholar and translator reimagines The Art of War.Sun Tzu’s ancient book of strategy and psychology has as much to tell us today as when it was first written 2,500 years ago. In a world full of surprising turns, his rules for anticipating the motivations and strategies of our competitors never cease to inspire leaders of all kinds.Michael Nylan, in her provocative introduction, sees new and unexpected lessons to be learned ...

In 221 BC, the First Emperor of Qin unified the lands that would become the heart of a Chinese empire. Though forged by conquest, this vast domain depended for its political survival on a fundamental reshaping of Chinese culture. With this informative book, we are present at the creation of an ancient imperial order whose major features would endure for two millennia.The Qin and Han constitute the “classical period” of Chinese history—a role played by the Greeks and Romans in the W...