Tuesday, August 10, 2004

China, General works

Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (eds.), The Cambridge History of China (1978 - ), will be the standard multivolume reference work for all aspects of Chinese history when it is completed. The following are comprehensive works: John K. Fairbank, China: A New History (1992), covering the span from paleolithic cultures to the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989, with an excellent bibliography; Wolfram Eberhard, A History of China, 4th ed. (1977, reissued 1987; originally published in German, 1948); John K. Fairbank and Edwin O. Reischauer, China: Tradition and Transformation, rev. ed. (1989); Otto Franke, Geschichte des chinesischen Reiches, 2nd ed., 5 vol. (1948 - 65); Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization (1982; originally published in French, 1972), a detailed survey of China's intellectual, social, and economic history from the neolithic cultures up to the Cultural Revolution of 1966; Charles O. Hucker, China's Imperial Past: An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture (1975), to 1850; and John Meskill (ed.), An Introduction to Chinese Civilization (1973), which includes a survey of Chinese history and ten essays on such aspects of Chinese civilization as anthropology, economy, geography, and religion, among others.