A History of Chinese Civilization

by Jacques Gernet

In my ongoing quest to gain a general knowledge of China and its history I trudged my way through this exhaustively, comprehensive and scholastic tome. I’m sure the last sentence seems a criticism, when, in fact, I intend it as, well, a statement of fact. I found it full of them. Enough that I imagine that it would serve well as a graduate program text book.

For my purposes, it provided such a detailed look at the trees, I got completely lost in the forest, and sometime forgot I was in a forest – the very thing I was looking for. It is clearly a book that is designed for those who already are conversant with the names and concepts of all of the times and places and peoples of China, without explaining what they refer to. This was hard for me to get my mind around.

Thus, its a good scholastic work – but not for the uninitiated or faint of heart.