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Book Review: Philip Ball. The Water Kingdom: A Secret History Of China, Robert Bedeski
Book Review: Philip Ball. The Water Kingdom: A Secret History Of China, Robert Bedeski
Comparative Civilizations Review
Over centuries scores of sinologists have sought to define the essence of China. Philip Ball addresses and goes well beyond the materialist paradigm of Karl Wittfogel’s hydraulic thesis, which described the role of water management in China as stimulating state development. In his theory, government emerged as the central institution to manage transportation, flood control and irrigation. Ball also sees water management as critical in Chinese civilization and injects his description with spiritual and moral content, drawing on poetry, art, biography and extensive reference to historical events. His book is an exploration of the role of water in China’s culture, …
Michael Scott. Ancient Worlds: A Global History Of Antiquity, Leland Conley Barrows
Michael Scott. Ancient Worlds: A Global History Of Antiquity, Leland Conley Barrows
Comparative Civilizations Review
Michael Scott, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick in England, who has written prolifically on Ancient Greece and the Greco-Roman world, has broadened his scope in writing the book under review to include consideration of the ancient histories of selected societies in the Near East, India, Central Asia, and China. Scott is motivated by the thought that, scholars, particularly in the West, have been provincial, treating the designation, ancient worlds or ancient history, as if Greece, Rome, and the peripheral areas with which they interacted constituted the sum total of the ancient world. Or, if …