Geography Books

This photographic atlas is simple to read, yet detailed enough to provide a good geographic overview of the entire timeline in the Bible. Text is well-written, and maps are clear and comprehensive. It is great for children, but also provides a two-page historical summary and map for each event that is a perfect overview for adults and teachers as well. This would be a valuable reference resource for any church library

This is an excellent Atlas. It is user friendly and an great choice for use in the classroom!

This is a treasure trove for anyone who leads children's groups: scout leaders, camp counselors, Sunday school teacher, etc. The games are timeless, and many require no equipment. Children love the games, and enjoy the connection they feel with the children of another time and place.

Useful and interesting facts and figures on different aspects of modern China presented alongside many colour photographs.

Areas covered include: Daily Life, Landscape, Education and leisure activities.

Target Audience: 8-12yr olds. Would make a good school resource..

This exciting recent publication is a compilation of Chinese maps from the archives of the Beijing Library and many Chinese libraries and museums, as well as the British Museum. The fine pictures of the maps show that the ancient Chinese not only made the world's first maps, but they also had laid a foundation for mapping techniques far ahead of other existing civilizations.

The first map entry in the book dated around 300 BC was a bronze-plate map inlaid with gold and silver threads from Hebei. It was unearthed from the mausoleum of King Xi of Zhongshan between 1974-78. The second entry in the book was a set of seven Qin kingdom maps dated around 299 BC made of lines drawn on pinewood boards. They were unearthed in 1986 in Tianshui Fangmatan at Gansu showing villages, hills, streams, valleys and passes. Other early maps were those of the Western Han Dynasty, including a topographic map in silk, a military map in silk, an astronomic map in woodcut, and a city map carved in brick.

The development of Chinese cartography can be divided into four stages; viz. Primary map stage before 476 BC, Territory map stage from 475 BC to 265 AD, the stage of Mapping by Girding from 265 to 1600 AD and the stage of Field mapping by latitude and longitude measurements. The beautiful pictures of the Chinese maps from the second stage onwards, with interesting explanations, make this book worthwhile to read and to keep. This is a book for both the lay-man and the expert.

Refreshing to find a book that goes beyond the bare facts. A new angle on the Tokugawa era that I found quite fascinating.

(This book has been republished with the title, "The Rise of Civilization in East Asia: The Archaeology of China, Korea and Japan." Somehow it's not available yet on Amazon, but I already bought a copy here in Korea.)

I did not expect to enjoy this book, but surprisingly it sucked me in and I found myself reading most of it on a night that I really needed to sleep.

Even so, we don't buy archaeology books for entertainment. Most of us, anyway. The information in this book is great. If you are not a scholar of archaeology, I recommend trying this one before more detailed explorations.

The regional perspective is one of the book's greatest strengths. There were so many interactions between the cultures of China, Korea and Japan that I recommending beginning by studying the cultures broadly. After you have the bigger picture, you can explore the details more closely with books like Sarah Nelson's The Archaeology of Korea (Cambridge World Archaeology).

The breadth is another. Not only are settlement patterns and diets explored, but also architecture, symbolism, trade, and the exchange of ideas. Barnes considers textual evidence when it's available, and unlike some of the nationalistic scholars in this field, she does not simply take the texts at their word. The book reads so smoothly as it traces the development of the region from nomadic paleolithic cultures to large iron age states--it's almost as if it has a plot.

According to information on the back page, she wrote this to use as a textbook at Cambridge University, which probably explains why it's so readable. Unlike most academic books, this was written for students, not other scholars. If you are a scholar, surely you're familiar with the most recent discoveries and interpretations, and you'll get little from this book. But if you are new to the field, this is almost certainly the best book you'll find on the topic.

A beautiful introduction to the landscapes of China. Brimming with photographs, the reader gets a tour through the different topographies of this enormous country. Information is given in short paragraphs with bold headings. The text is very easy and accessable. The author addresses topics of politics, food and the multiculural nature of China. An informative and enjoyable read for adults and a great survey for young readers.

This book is great to teach children in short form different aspects of Chinese Culture. The many craft projects are written so a schoolage child could do them with little help from an adult. This is a good teacher present. Any parent like myself with a daughter from China needs it in their library.

Every student of Chinese fiction, or rather, Chinese literature, should own this book. I started out using a copy in the library, but this is really something that you would want to own after reading.

This great work by Patrick Hanan focuses on the genre of the Chinese short story, and attempts to break through an impasse in literary scholarship¡ª providing inspiring insights into the dating, authorship and composition of the Chinese short story. Using stylistic criteria with extreme care, he studies 149 extant and accessible short stories, dividing into three periods: Early (ca.1250-1450), Middle (ca. 1400-1575) and Late (ca. 1550-1627). This is an important breakthrough in the scholarship of this genre, as it is only after this work that we can have a clearer idea of how to place the individual story in history.

This book provides all the essential information and argument and prepares a reader to enter his another great work, THE CHINESE VERNACULAR STORY published seven years later. I will recommend this book even to people outside the study of Chinese literature. Hanan¡¯s scholarly passion and cautious attitude in research is best presented in this work, and it will benefit any serious reader.