Customer Reviews

Everlasting Flower: A History of Korea

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Wonderful Resource on Korean History

I had been looking for a good history book on Korea that could give an overview of Korea's history and culture without being overly dry and especially without being overly nationalistic. This is the book that I had been looking for and that I wish I could have read before going to live in Korea for a few years.

The book is very well organized and each chapter gives a small paragraph "abstract" on the forthcoming chapter. Interspersed within the text are various "pictorial essays" which at first I feared would be irrelevant and distracting. Instead they are absolutely fascinating and really complement the text. The author uses them, as well as many other references to present Korea not just from a historical list of happenenings but also from the impact of music, cultual diffucion, and other issues that impacted the people, and therefore the history. This is in addition to his easy-to-read style of writing that doesn't bog down with pseudo-intellectualism... it reads quick and clean and is very interesting without being dry.

Being a fairly small overview, he does cover some material, especially modern topics, in a good general way without a lot of depth or time. A glance though the rear of the book gives up his sources and a way to get further depth though.

Being a very handy size, this book can be tucked away for travel quite easily for anyone going to Korea for fun, work or martial arts. I'd highly recommend this book for Global Studies/World History teachers, Korean style martial arts enthusiasts, travellers to East Asia and anyone interested in Korea. Excellent reference book!

This book is very well written but it is a bad place for beginners to start. The author clearly expects the reader to have a working knowledge of East Asian history and culture. This was my first book on East Asian history and I was frequently confused by the many vague references to Chinese and Japanese history. I had to get online and look up about 20 different people or events in Japan or China that were used by the author, but were not explained at all. Every facet of Korea is 'similar to' something from China or Japan that I've never heard of. Korean art, for example, is described by saying 'Like Chinese art, except for these three little differing details.' For someone who hasn't studied Chinese art, this is not very illuminating. Now the ONLY thing I know about Korean art is those three little details. It would have been great if I had studied Japan and China and just wanted to know how Korea fit in with the rest of Eastern Asia, but this book is not for East Asian beginners.

I'd bought this book just before a trip to Korea this autumn.

The good piont is that it gives you a good idea of Korea's fascinating history from ancient times to presentday and if you're travelling to the country you will feel like you have a lot more context (if you visit any tourist sites, you'll notice that a lot of the explanations assume you already have this background)

The bad points are two: one is that the author seems rather defensive about the nastier bits of Korean history which I think is a bit patronizing at best and also takes away from the credibility. The other is that because it's trying to cover so much ground at times it feels like a big list rather than a coherent narrative, but that I guess is normal given the breadth to cover in just a couple hundred pages.