East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, Revised Edition [Hardcover]

John Fairbank (Author), Edwin Reischauer (Author), Albert Craig (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1056 pages
• Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing; Revised edition (March 13, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395450233
• ISBN-13: 978-0395450239
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.3 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #457,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brian Wayne Wells, Esquire, reviews "East Asia.", May 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, Revised Edition (Hardcover)

This book, originally published in 1973, is authored by John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig. It has been revised and updated over the years so that it has remained a very popular upper level undergraduate and graduate level text in many college courses on Japan, China and South East Asia.

It is an excellent survey of these countries written by the United States'foremost scholars of East Asian history. The book suffers only from the attempt to cover too much ground. The histories of countries as vast and important to the world economy as Japan and China cannot be adequately told in a combined volume especially when lumped together with the additional nations of Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

Still the volume is familiar old chestnut for an entire generation of history students and looks as if it will remain so for the next generation. The book is extremely well indexed and leads the reader directly to the topic desired, even if the reader will eventually have to go to other volumes to get the whole story on that topic.

1 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Difficult Reading for a 33 yr old Undergraduate, June 23, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, Revised Edition (Hardcover)

I'm reading this book for an lower division undergraduate course in East Asian History. It's better for an upper division course. The book is well indexed, however, there is no bibliography. The only extra is a section that acknowledges the illustrations, which is not very helpful for me. There is a timeline of the dynasties of each country in the back of the book, but it is so tiny it is not helpful. Anyone know of an East Asian wall chart timeline? The topics of each dynasty focus on economics, arts and literature, military, Buddhism and Confucianism, growth and development, declines and failings. East Asian history is interesting. However, there is way too much information in this one book which makes it very difficult to follow, recall, and understand. If instructors choose to use this book, please provide additional optional resources (like a timeline wall chart) because this book does not point the reader to seek other resources. A good book will have a bibliography. Since this book does not, I conclude the authors think this is the only book one needs to read, which it is not.

0 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Romanization System is Now a Serious Problem, May 29, 2003

By 

J Barry (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, Revised Edition (Hardcover)

This is a fine book, one I have assigned for years in my introductory classes along with de Bary's Sources of Chinese Tradition Vol. 1. Now, however, there is a new edition of Sources using the newer pinyin romanization system. Reischauer still uses the old Wade-Giles system. So I can't assign it any longer - I can't expect my students to have the two basic books in the course use different romanizations. Could not Houghton-Mifflin redo Reischauer using pinyin? It could be done with no effort by using a simple replace function on a computer.