Volume 24, Number 15 · September 29, 1977
The Chinese Dream Machine
By Jonathan D. Spence
China and the Search for Happiness: Recurring Themes in Four Thousand Years of Chinese Cultural History
by Wolfgang Bauer, translated by Michael Shaw
Seabury Press, 502 pp., $22.50
Chinese Socialism to 1907
by Martin Bernal
Cornell University Press, 259 pp., $15.00
Chinese Shadows
by Simon Leys
Viking, 220 pp., $10.00
Simple-looking questions make good starting points for books; for simple questions are usually very hard to answer, and if the author is skillful enough he elaborates the simple question until it is overlaid with hovering qualifications, doubts, and complications, and the reader gets caught up with him as he ducks around new corners and comes on new vistas. 'Are the Chinese happy?' 'How have they sought to express or bring about happiness?' These questions look simple enough. But as elaborated in the three books by Bauer, Bernal, and Leys they lead us into some difficult terrain. Cumulatively, despite their utterly different forms, approaches, and coverage, the three books end up elaborating and illuminating one another.
Review, 4085 words
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