Customer Reviews

A Short History of Asia: Stone Age to 2000 AD

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I picked up this book whilst searching for texts for an Asian Studies course I plan to teach this fall. Nolan's treatment is quite sensitive to Asian perspectives, and careful to highlight and correct traditionally held but erroneous beliefs: Gutenberg invented moveable type printing (Koreans did 400 years prior); zero was invented by Arabic mathematicians (they got the idea from Indians). The writing is concise and comprehensive without being exhaustive - I'd almost call it a page-turner. What it lacks in pictures, maps, or graphs it makes up for in tight yet readable text. Of special note are the latter chapters dealing with modern Asia - incredibly understandable and helpful. The only offense I take is the (typical) brief treatment of smaller nations (e.g. Korea, the Philippines), and the space given Japan, China, and India. In fairness, though, Mason DOES go into more detail on the smaller countries than most comparable books, and in 300 pages, to expect more is probably unrealistic. All of you who wish you'd paid more attention during the lectures on Vietnam and China's Cultural Revolution, anyone wanting to know why Southeast Asia is as it is, anyone simply fascinated by the East must read this book.

This introduction to Asian history made me realize I knew almost nothing about what is, both in terms of geography and population, the majority of our planet. Living in Indonesia, I can say that Mason's observations are profound and accurate.

The author divides the material into three parts, pre-colonial, colonial, and modern. He cycles through each region in each of these sections.

Mason strives for objectivity throughout, and attains it to a commendable degree. He both praises and condemns communists, Christian missionaries, westerners, Buddhists, and dictators carefully.

This edition was published just before 9/11, but his treatment from prehistory to 2000 gives such a good overview that this seems almost a minor detail 11 years later. Hopefully the publishers will release the 2nd ed. (published 2005) for kindle.

I would give the text 5 stars, but I must give 4 for this Kindle edition. One of the links in the TOC was broken, and I found a dozen or so typos as I read. There were a few minor words that were hyphenated for an unnecessary break, and a few funny space, but I would say that such textual errors were less than 2% of the book. Definitely worth the cost!

The first book anyone should read about Asia

James Bradley Author FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS jbradley@JamesBradley.com