Arthur F. Wright (1913–1976)

I cannot see this book as a satisfactory survey of Buddhism in China. First off, it's very vague. Often the author makes sweeping comments about Chinese culture, the role of Buddhism, Confucianism etc without adequately backing them up. Secondly, it's dated: the copyright of 1959 says it all. In fact, about half of the sources cited are French books and articles written on China in the '50s. The last chapter on Modern China is especially anachronistic, where the author posits the show more impossibility of a Buddhist revival in China (p. 122), something, I would think be proven wrong by today's developments. show less

A collection of translated articles mostly from the 1940s and 1950s. That might not sound too promising, but there are many insights here that are neither esoteric nor outdated. The author nicely portrays the unique aspect of Chinese imperial government: "rule by scholars". Good chapters on Chinese historiography emphasize the dominance of the scholarly perspective in official histories and the inability of western sinologists to bypass this perspective. The later essays deal mostly with show more specific Chinese philosophers, so they are probably of less interest to the general reader. But this is in any case a very informative supplementary work if you're reading up on Chinese history. show less

Easy to read framework for thinking about its topic in more depth; it doesn't provide that depth, of course. But the framework is valuable.

The only book I know that really does justice to the considerable achievements of the Sui Dynasty in reuniting China and building the Grand Canal, though
its failure in Korea is a warning against imperial overstretcfh