Wang Books

This cook book is centered around the use of a food processor, but the recipies work without one. Covers a large range of dishes. Best part is the use of common ingredients, not requiring specialty items.

If you are contemplating the construction of a Chinese garden, or are just interested in their history or development, this is an excellent, concise introduction to the topic. It presents the history, philosophy, and guidlines for construction in a clear way. It condenses a large number of references down to a readable form. The bibliography of related works in Chinese and English is worth the price of the book.

I received the item earlier than the posted date (though Amazon usually ships early anyway so I had high expectations - which were met).

Well illustrated and very interesting... I passed the title along to all the members of the Antique Purse Collectors Society

My father who was from Haiti did translate this book into French before he died in Sept.1999 and got the author's family the right to publish this French version of the book. Toussaint Louverture was one of his favorite heroes since he fought against slavery with much success. But so far no editor in France that he contacted ever accepted to publish it. I've started to type all the French text into my computer and I have in mind to publish it over the Internet. Is there any means to get any formal acceptance from Ralph Korngold's descendants? Please email me any info that could help make Toussaint and Haiti, the first black republic, more widely known worldwide and go on with my father's work. Thanks.

In this wonderful book by Birkhauser/editors we become aware of Siza's spectacular drawings. This ones are just about cities. With a few lines and also in very few minutes Siza "catches" the spirit and structure of the spaces habited by him. Siza is a very good architect, of course. He is also someone who loves to draw; almost anywhere and anytime.

Joseph Needham's "Science and Civilization in China" (SCC), multi-volume project is ongoing even though he died in 1995. At a time when the Chinese were making advances in science and technology, Western knowledge stagnated, provoking the question of why Europe industrialized and China did not?

Needham's education was in science. His interest in the religion, philosophy, and history of China heightened during World War II when he served as the director of the Sin-British Science Co-operation Office in unoccupied China. The SCC is acclaimed as a factual synthesis of Chinese Civilization. Some critics argue that Needham's "diffusionist stand" toward inventions, such as with the escape mechanism in clockwork and the development of the steam engine, neglect the factor of independent invention. Needham's chapters on these subjects demonstrate a shared development.

Each chapter is a published lecture. Utilizing newly discovered or translated material, Needham shows the "slow but massive" migration of technical inventions from the east to west during the Christian era. His focus goes beyond the inventions of paper, printing, gunpowder, and the magnetic compas (already well attributed to the Chinese) to the discussion of other Chinese inventions such as iron-casting (-1 in China/+14 in Europe) deep drilling, the development of the paddle-wheel for a ship's propulsion, and many others. China, he argues, was greatly advanced technologically over Europe until +15.

Ideas traveled from China and Europe through Central Asia, along the silk trade routes. The Chinese government financed cultural expeditions to East Africa by sea. The Chinese navigated by the stars and magnetic compass. The ships hulls were designed with a bulkhead and used a hinged axial rudder. But support for the navy faded, obviating any further development of sea power, when domestic concerns rose from invading hoards across the steppes. Only fifty years later the Portuguese, privately financed and motivated by trade and religion, arrived in the late 1400s. What a difference it would have made historically if the Portuguese and Chinese had converged on the sea!

Given Needham's overwhelming fascination with Chinese science and technology, he speculates on why modern technology did not develop in China. As concisely put as possible he says "China was fundamentally an irrigation-agricultural civilization, as contrasted with the pastoral navigational civilization of Europe."(82) Because monsoon rainfall patterns were limited to certain months and the amounts of rain were unpredictable, a large bureaucracy grew to manage irrigation. This bureaucracy contributed to Chinese civilization's continuity (3000 years) along with a common language, strict laws as a method of control, and a shared culture through printing.

Geography is another reason offered as to why China did not develop technologically. In contrast to the continental character of China, Europe had a peninsular structure. Needham hypothesizes China's centralized agricultural bureaucracy is unlike the city-state structure in Europe which fostered a mercantile economy. In China merchants were restrained from gaining power, while in Europe merchants prospered, fostering technological innovation.

Needham, writing from the perspective of a Western scholar, offers a provocative and controversial study. Perhaps one day a Chinese scholar will reply with an equally erudite synthesis, hopefully translated to English!

The 1940s saw the outbreak of the Yili rebellion, which led to the collapse of Chinese state authority over a wide area of Xinjiang in the chaotic years of the later 1940s. In Clouds Over Tianshan: Essays On Social Disturbance In Xinjiang in the 1940s, David Wang looks not just at the ethnic and religious dimensions, both of which had many international ramifications. Politically, there were three external actors in the affair: the Chinese Nationalist government, the Chinese communists, and the Soviets. As World War II came to an end and the Chinese civil war gathered pace, the dynamics between these three actors altered and those alterations had a major impact on the course of events in Xinjiang between 1944 and 1949. Clouds Over Tianshan is an important and much appreciated contribution for students of Chinese history and help to explain the similarity of the events of the 1940s with those of today in the region.

The book is very interesting. I have never seen a power system book with so much discussion on the application of parallel/distributed processing in control center analyses. It covers certain topics which are of interest to power engineers who would like to learn more about issues that are being discussed by FERC, NERC, and independent system operators. It is certainly a blend of distributed processing applications and power system communication issues. The book could have covered more examples. On the other hand it may be difficult to assign numerical values to the topics covered by the book. The chapter on DG covers a lot of interesting stuff. I recommend the book.

Dr. Aixue Wang's book, A Comparison of the Dramatic Work of Cao Yu and J.M. Synge, is the best one you can find in comparison of these two famous authors and their dramas. In this book, Aixue convinced us that Cao Yu's dramas are not simply copied from western culture and translated into Chinese. Indeed, Cao Yu created his original works based on his deep understanding of Chinese society and culture, plus the spirit of western culture.