China Books

This one definetly one of the best books available with regards to the history of the Jews of Kaifeng. Pollak writes a convincing and yet entertaining piece of history that is sure to educate all its readers.

* Me: I'm someone interested in serious, semi-academic books about Jewish history. I'm not someone looking for a James Michener book, but I'm not some equipped to critique Pollak's scholarship. * The book: This is a wonderful, well-written book that seems to discuss every old reference to the Jews of China in just about every language. It seems to give every known detail about the lives of China's Jews. Because China's Jews were one of the peoples of the "Silk Road" (the collection of ancient trade routes that linked China with Europe for many centuries), the book is also a pretty good introduction to the history of the Silk Road. * Who for: I think this book might be especially useful to anyone interested in Central Asian history; Jewish history; or extreme Jewish genealogy (i.e., the DNA testing folks). It could also be the basis for a pretty fine martial arts movie.

All of his major books are exceptional reading and extremely informative. They aren't for someone who wants a casual understanding of Manichaeism, but they are never unreadably obtuse or so loaded with jargon as to be incomprehensible. I used them extensively in university and was sad when I had to return them to the library.

If you're interested in Late Antique religion of the Roman Empire and Syria, early Christianity, or Manichaeism, you must hunt this book down. It is not only the best introduction to Manichaeism available to date, but every page drips with the astounding erudition and expertise of the author. Thus, it is inspiring academically as well as an invaluable historical reference work. I paid $100 for this book, and, after having read it, I think every penny was well spent.

As a novice trying to learn Tibetan, I have purchased a few books on the subject, and I'm currently enrolled in a Tibetan class. I avoided this book at first because of the high price, but, "you get what you pay for" rang true in this situation. The charts are especially valuable, the explanations are clear, and the dialogues are useful. It also has a healthy content relevant to Tibetan Buddhism and culture. This edition also contains 2 CDs containing all the dialogue, absolutely neccessary in order to capture the correct pronounciation of the Lhasha dialect. An appendix in the back contains a useful bridge between Standard and Classical Tibetan. Simply put, I am extremely pleased with this book and totally "geeked out" by its content!!! It's a beautiful thing, so get it!

Since I've hesitated a long time between Hopkins' "Fluent Tibetan" with tapes and Tournadre's "Manual of Standard Tibetan," I thought it would be helpful to write a comparative review. I ended up getting both, and I find they complement each other quite well.

Tournadre's Manual is amazingly comprehensive, quite sufficient, it seems, to keep a student busy trough four semester courses or so. This text is useful to lay a strong foundation to build on later on. Prior to the forty-one Lessons, over forty pages present the reader with a thorough introduction to the alphabet, pronunciation and a clever system of transcription of the author's devising. The latter is helpful in precisely describing the pronunciation of the words introduced at each lesson. I counted about 2000 words in the glossaries at the end, which makes quite a rich vocabulary.

The book is also replete with cultural notes, maps and descriptions of the different Tibetan dialects. Another nice touch is the amount of supplementary material, including videos of the dialogues, exercise answer keys and supplementary exercises, all available on the web at the University of Virginia's Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library website.

On the down side, I found the lessons very hard going. One sometimes gets lost in detail, that is to say, each topic is examined extremely thoroughly (e.g. the spelling variations of the word for "one" and other numbers). Those details are not always essential at the beginnning. This is probably the typical experience of a self-learner like me, while in a classroom situation the teacher would know when to instruct students to skip over the extra details. It is quite apparent that each lesson needs to be expanded and developed in a classroom situation, with perhaps ten times as many exercises, drills and dialogues as are provided in the book, in order to bring out all that it has to offer. I therefore decided that this book was hard to use as a primary text by a pure self-learner, but is probably the best of its kind for classroom instruction. I use it as a reference and will probably go back to it more methodically when I am done with the "Fluent Tibetan" set.

"Fluent Tibetan" is based on the unsurpassed method devised by the Foreign Service Institute, which aims at developing fluency in a short period of time. The tapes are quite audible and provide an extensive set of oral drills, something I haven't seen elsewhere. Some reviewers have complained about the amount of repetition, but I think being bored with repetition in an indication that one is becoming fluent with the material, i.e., the course is delivering the goods. Drilling is quite important when a language has a very different grammar (from my experience with Hebrew). On the other hand, the vocabulary is rather sparse at about 500 words. I find the main strength of the set is in the drills and in the fact that it is mostly, but not exclusively, based on audio material. The set aims at the low-intermediate level. This can keep you busy for about three months if you keep a good pace.

The "Fluent Tibetan" CD-ROM, available separately, does not have any drills, and in summary is quite useless.

This is a textbook from the Cultural Revolution and gets into how a socialist (socialist as in 1949-1976, dictatorship of the proletariat) economy can work, can lead away from opression and can pave the road for communsim, in a scientific way. Accompanied by Lotta's brilliant intro and afterword, this makes for an excellant piece for understanding why communism was not a failure but is a great success. Difficult reading but well worth it. (The socialist economy is a planned economy is an economy that works)

Occasionally some propositions made in earnest can be so far off the wall that we find them quite entertaining rather than bizarre. The Shanghai Textbook is one such work. The author does a decent job explicating some ideas of Marxian economics. Having never read the economic writings of Lenin, Stalin, or Mao, his only sources for 20th century economics (except some bureaucrat in one article mentioned in passing), I cannot comment on the author's treatment of them. However, one has to wonder what sort of terrifying conditions lead the author to write that all natural barriers to production can be overcome by human will based upon one relative exception in the middle of nowhere. Indeed, written at the height of the cultural revolution in no less than Shanghai, this piece of Maoist propaganda is, simply put, comical. Except when he sticks strictly to Marx, the author committs virtually every fallacy in a first year economics course imaginable on every page. Needless to say the style is highly politicized and reads like a Pravda article during the Stalin days. The treatment of the Sino-Soviet split and the maelstrom into Capitalism by Khruschev is somewhat informative, if nothing else but to hear the hardline Stalinists defending the disaster that was mid-20th century Bolshevism. Nevertheless, the utter lack of economic sophistication makes this book hillarious and I highly recommend it to anybody out for some good laughs.

Good photos and details. Purchased as a gift for my wife and she is totally pleased

Very facinating. I've always been interested in Marco Polo, as has the author. He really leads you through the journey and makes you wonder at the courage Marco Polo had for his travels.

How nice to read another student's rerview. The author was a very fine teaccher, but by 1960 the class syayed at the Y with no field trips. We learned from an expert cook and my family enjoyed home-cooked Chinese food because of her fine technique. It IS a GOOD cookbook.

Mrs. Sia was my chinese cooking teacher at the Honolulu Y. in 1958. She was a wonderful teacher and we all adored and respected her. Interestingly, Mrs. James Michener( I think her name was Mariko) was studying with us. Our teacher would take us on field trips to noodle factories, grocery stores and a big restaurant Wo Fat's. I have used this book almost exclusively and want to purchase copies for my daughters and daughters-in-law.I highly recommend this book as easy to read and follow with delicious results.

I got to flip through this book thanks to my art teacher, who brought it to my seminar on traditional Chinese art, and had it passed around among the students. When my turn came, I simply sat spellbound for about 20 minutes, forgotten about the class, forgotten about everything excelt the amazing paintings that unveiled themselves before me. Unquestionably, Bada Shanren is one of the greatest artists that ever lived; moreover, his paintings simply do not age - I've asked many people, and most of them, even those who were familiar with Asian art, put Bada's paintings in the 20th century, in this way he's even superior to the great masters of the Renaissance.

This book is an excellent catalogue of Bada Shanren's works, one that does the godlike skill of the artist justice. The reproduction quality is uniformly excellent, and the accompanying text is a very informed and interesting analysis of the works.

If you're going to buy one art book, this should be it... if you can find or afford it, that is!

Exhibit catalog with brilliant and interesting text about an enigmatic artist, of noble lineage with a style which appears contempoary but of it's time. A wonderful experience.

this book make me understand what is tantric and buddhisem is!

Ably translated and edited for a western readership by Jeffrey Hopkins, Kensur Lekden's Meditations Of A Tibetan Tantric Abbot: The Main Practices Of The Mahayana Buddhist Path describes in detail the attitudes cultivated in meditation as experienced by practitioners of the Mahayana Buddhist Path. Readers will be treated to Kensur Lekden's blend of compassion, wisdom and wit on a variety of issues ranging from turning away from cyclic existence to developing love and compassion for all beings, to understanding the profound view of emptiness. Meditations Of A Tibetan Tantric Abbot is a welcome and very highly recommended addition to Buddhist studies collections and reading lists.

Excellent! A great multicultural family story. This book shows life in modern China through a little girl's eyes. The book shows the loving relationship between kindergarten-aged Mei-Mei and her grandfather. In it, we see that loving family relationships truly transcend cultural boundaries. Mei-Mei and her grandfather share many activities that American children may share with their grandparents: eating meals together, going to the park, caring for pets. But their breakfast is rice, not cereal; their pet is a beautiful songbird, not a dog or cat. In their everyday activities, we see their love for each other. A great multicultural family story!

This beautifully written and illustrated book describes a typical Chinese child's morning. Mei-Mei eats a breakfast of rice porridge with grandfather while mommy and daddy sleep. Then she helps her grandfather care for his songbird, rides with him on his bike to the park where they practice Tai Chi with their friends and drink tea, and rides home again, visiting one of the local street vendors to buy pancakes. It's a lovely story with beautiful illustrations and has quickly become one of our 4-year old daughter's favorite books. We also love it because it teaches her about life in another country in such a nice way.

This is an invaluable book for the Meissen porcelain collector. It is very well written with excellent photos of Meissen Royal as well as other Meissen blue and white patterns. I highly recommend it to all appraisers and lovers of Meissen.

Nicholas Zumbulyadis's MEISSEN'S BLUE NAD WHITE PORCELAIN packs well over 300 color photos of dining services, vases and more created by the Meissen porcelain manufactory, displaying pieces from rare, early 19th century museum pieces to 19th century easily-found plates. A history of porcelain painting accompanies the values and survey of pieces available.