Amazon.com Review
The subject-titles include English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and other transliterations of Chinese, whatever most corresponds to the Western reader's probable encounter with a word; this informality is helpful and refreshing. The encyclopedia's usefulness would be immensely increased by including Chinese characters, however, especially as Chinese is a language of homonyms. A decade ago this omission would have been excusable, but the editorial work required for simple one- or two-character entries would not have been prohibitive, and today's software makes the typesetting easy. Everyone has his own ideas on the relative importance of entries, but this reviewer found the space given to Western Communist sympathizers excessive (Sidney Rittenberg surely merits less space than the whole of Chinese agriculture). More illustrations would be welcome, as would bibliographic references at the end of important entries. Despite these comments, Encyclopedia of China is strongly recommended to the student and general reader for its wealth of easily accessible facts. --John Stevenson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
