The Ming dynasty was the last great Chinese dynasty before the Manchu conquest in 1644. During that time, China, not Europe, was the center of the world: the European voyages of exploration were searching not just for new lands but also for new trade routes to the Far East. In this book, Timothy Brook eloquently narrates the changing landscape of life over the three centuries o...(展开全部)

The scholarly culture of Ming dynasty China (1368–1644) is often seen as prioritizing philosophy over concrete textual study. Nathan Vedal uncovers the preoccupation among Ming thinkers with specialized linguistic learning, a field typically associated with the intellectual revolution of the eighteenth century. He explores the collaboration of Confucian classicists and Buddhist...(展开全部)

What was sex like in China, from imperial times through the post-Mao era? The answer depends, of course, on who was having sex, where they were located in time and place, and what kind of familial, social, and political structures they participated in. This collection offers a variety of perspectives by addressing diverse topics such as polygamy, pornography, free love, eugenic...(展开全部)

According to imperial edict in pre-modern China, an elementary school was to be established in every village in the empire for any boy to attend. This book looks at how the schools worked, how they changed over time, and who promoted them and why. Over the course of the Ming period (1368-1644), schools were sponsored first by the emperor, then by the central bureaucracy, then b...(展开全部)

In Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body, Xing Wang investigates the intellectual and technical contexts in which the knowledge of physiognomy ( xiangshu) was produced and transformed in Ming China (1368-1644 C.E.). Known as a fortune-telling technique via examining the human body and material objects, Xing Wang shows how the construction of the physiognomic body in m...(展开全部)

The story of globalization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as experienced by ordinary people in the Chinese river town of Zhenjiang. Fear swept Zhenjiang as British soldiers gathered outside the city walls in the summer of 1842. Already suspicious of foreigners, locals had also heard of the suffering the British inflicted two months earlier, in Zhapu. A wave of ...(展开全部)

Throughout much of history, imperial China has exhibited a seemingly capricious relationship with the sea. At times, it has welcomed commerce and travel across its vast waters with open arms, yet at others, it has sought to completely cordon off the littoral and the waters beyond. This intermittent approach has fostered a maritime community that, over time, has become increasin...(展开全部)

卜正民（Timothy Brook），1951年生，享誉世界汉学界的史学大家，师从孔飞力教授，毕业于美国哈佛大学，历任多伦多大学、斯坦福大学等校教授，英国牛津大学邵氏汉学教授，美国亚洲学会前任会长。现为加拿大英属哥伦比亚大学圣约翰学院历史系教授，兼圣约翰神学院院长。学术视野广阔，主要从事亚洲历史和文化的研究，研究领域涉及明代社会和文化史、“二战”时期日本在中国的占领等。 主编六卷本“哈佛中国史”丛书，并撰写其中第5卷《挣扎的帝国：元与明》，首次从气候这一环境史的新视角解读元明两大帝国的兴衰，呈现出第一个连贯的生态历史。 已翻译为中文的作品多达十几种，在海峡两岸拥有庞大的读者群。其他主要代表作品有：《秩序的沦陷》、《杀千刀》、《纵乐的困惑》、《明代的国家与社会》、《维梅尔的帽子》等。其中，《纵乐的困惑》获得2000年美国“列文森中国研究最佳著作奖”，《...(展开全部)