1587, A Year of No Significance

"Unusual and thoughtful. . . . Takes the poet’s or the novelist’s joy in turning a commonplace detail to the angle at which it reveals its glint of meaning."—David Lattimore, New York Times Book Review "This is a superb book, one that answers many questions about the Chinese, past and present."—Srully Blotnick, Forbes Magazine "1587, A Year of No Significance, for all its scholarship, has the surreal visionary quality of Kafka’s beautiful and frustrating story 'The Great Wall of China.'"—John Updike, The New YorkerWinner of the American Book Award for History Paperback in 1983"No book of this kind in any language exists for the entire Chinese history field. Its most remarkable quality is the skill with which is conveys the texture of life, imparting to the reader a sense of having been inside the environment of Chinese politics and of seeing the complexities of another world as immediate and intelligible matters."—Frederick W. Mote, Princeton University"It is top-hole, full of information, and a first-rate argumentation as to how China got the way it did. I know of none better."—L. Carrington Goodrich, Columbia University"Excellent both as history and as a piece of literature."—Lien-sheng Yang, Harvard University"Imaginative and resourceful. . . . Informed both by humanistic concern and a broad knowledge of technology and economics."—Edward L. Farmer, University of Minnesota"Analytical and innovative. . . . It will galvanize our thinking for many years to come."—Hoklam Cham, University of Washington