Serious study of the art of India began only in the nineteenth century. This small volume provides a masterly overview of the scholarship of the past century and a half.

Mr. Chandra's purpose is twofold: to help present–day students understand their scholarly heritage, and to encourage them to re-examine their own methods and assumptions. His histographical approach enables him to pay tribute to the great achievements of the pioneers in the field and also to notice the manner in which errors of fact and method have crept into some of the contemporary thinking and writing on the subject. Rather than attempt to discuss the writings of every scholar of note, he restricts himself to a few whose work, in his opinion, clearly represents the various stages of the development of the discipline. In analyzing their contributions, he concentrates on the broad methodological thrust of their work and not on the details of their conclusions.

The study of architecture is considered first, because it was regarded by the ancient Indians as the most important of the visual arts and was the earliest of the arts to receive careful, analytic treatment in modern times. Sculpture is taken up second, and last the study of Indian painting, the area in which the most remarkable progress has been made in the last twenty–five years. In the course of the discussion many topics of broad interest are touched upon, including the relation of art history to the other disciplines, problems presented by various methods of classification, iconography and iconology, the relevance of style, the meaning of form, and the connection between artists and patrons.

Among the many artistic events of 1985 and 1986 devoted to the history and culture of India, one of the most notable is the exhibition of Indian sculpture organized by Pramod Chandra for the National Gallery of Art. It comprises more than one hundred choice sculptures in stone, ivory, and bronze from all regions of the subcontinent, many from very remote locations. Approximately half of them have never left India before. Several are familiar masterpieces of the highest quality; others are newly discovered works of great interest and beauty. Collectively they epitomize the richness of India's artistic heritage.

The exhibition catalogue has been written by Chandra, one of the world's leading experts on Indian art. He provides an introductory survey of Indian sculpture over the ages—its various styles and schools and diverse idioms—followed by illuminating analyses of the individual works. His descriptions are accompanied by stunning photographs, most of them taken in India, in situ, especially for this volume. Beyond its visual appeal, the catalogue, which includes a glossary and bibliography, makes a significant contribution to the understanding of Indian art.

The title of this book, Supermadre, is ironic. It means, not that women have begun to exercise real power in Latin American political life, but that their participation is mostly confined to roles that are extensions of their roles as mothers—health, education, welfare, for example—and then only on the lower levels of policy-making.

Elsa Chaney begins her study with an examination of various attempts to explain women's virtual absence from decision-making councils not only in Latin America but also world-wide, concluding that their motherhood role has had the profoundest effect on the nature of their political activities. She then analyzes the images and realities of women in Latin American society from colonial times to the present.

The remainder of the book is a detailed study of women in politics and government in Latin America, with emphasis on the contrasting cases of Peru and Chile. In conclusion, Chaney suggests that women will make only slow progress toward full participation in public life until they themselves stop seeing their role in politics as that of the supermadre.

Americans look to China with fascination and fear, unsure whether the rising Asian power is friend or foe but certain it will play a crucial role in America’s future. This is nothing new, Gordon Chang says. For centuries, Americans have been convinced of China’s importance to their own national destiny. Fateful Ties draws on literature, art, biography, popular culture, and politics to trace America’s long and varied preoccupation with China.

China has held a special place in the American imagination from colonial times, when Jamestown settlers pursued a passage to the Pacific and Asia. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Americans plied a profitable trade in Chinese wares, sought Chinese laborers to build the West, and prized China’s art and decor. China was revered for its ancient culture but also drew Christian missionaries intent on saving souls in a heathen land. Its vast markets beckoned expansionists, even as its migrants were seen as a “yellow peril” that prompted the earliest immigration restrictions. A staunch ally during World War II, China was a dangerous adversary in the Cold War that followed. In the post-Mao era, Americans again embraced China as a land of inexhaustible opportunity, playing a central role in its economic rise.

Through portraits of entrepreneurs, missionaries, academics, artists, diplomats, and activists, Chang demonstrates how ideas about China have long been embedded in America’s conception of itself and its own fate. Fateful Ties provides valuable perspective on this complex international and intercultural relationship as America navigates an uncertain new era.

K. C. Chang approaches the civilization of ancient China from the point of view of an anthropologist as well as from an archaeological perspective. He brings to bear on his subject familiarity with the Chinese materials and with the related data essential to placing the Chinese experience in context.

This volume of nine studies deals with the Shang (1766-1122 BCE) and Chou (1122-221) civilizations and the prehistoric cultures from which they sprang. Chang summarizes what is known about ancient crop cultivation and examines evidence concerning the transition from a food-gathering to a settled food-producing society. He discusses the origin of Chinese urbanism; the structure of Shang and Chou towns and the kinship and lineage system of this period; the preparation and serving of food in ancient China; the possibility of a coherent dualistic system in Shang society; and Shang and Chou mythology. One essay is published here for the first time; the others have been revised for this book. An extensive bibliography is appended.

Between 1751 and 1784, the Qianlong emperor embarked upon six southern tours, traveling from Beijing to Jiangnan and back. These tours were exercises in political theater that took the Manchu emperor through one of the Qing empire's most prosperous regions.

This study elucidates the tensions and the constant negotiations characterizing the relationship between the imperial center and Jiangnan, which straddled the two key provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Politically, economically, and culturally, Jiangnan was the undisputed center of the Han Chinese world; it also remained a bastion of Ming loyalism and anti-Manchu sentiment. How did the Qing court constitute its authority and legitimate its domination over this pivotal region? What were the precise terms and historical dynamics of Qing rule over China proper during the long eighteenth century?

In the course of addressing such questions, this study also explores the political culture within and through which High Qing rule was constituted and contested by a range of actors, all of whom operated within socially and historically structured contexts. The author argues that the southern tours occupied a central place in the historical formation of Qing rule during a period of momentous change affecting all strata of the eighteenth-century polity.

In this wide-ranging book, one of the boldest thinkers in modern neuroscience confronts an ancient philosophical problem: can we know the world as it really is?

Drawing on provocative new findings about the psychophysiology of perception and judgment in both human and nonhuman primates, and also on the cultural history of science, Jean-Pierre Changeux makes a powerful case for the reality of scientific progress and argues that it forms the basis for a coherent and universal theory of human rights. On this view, belief in objective knowledge is not a mere ideological slogan or a naïve confusion; it is a characteristic feature of human cognition throughout evolution, and the scientific method its most sophisticated embodiment. Seeking to reconcile science and humanism, Changeux holds that the capacity to recognize truths that are independent of subjective personal experience constitutes the foundation of a human civil society.

The world that Alexander remade in his lifetime was transformed once more by his death in 323 BCE. His successors reorganized Persian lands to create a new empire stretching from the eastern Mediterranean as far as present-day Afghanistan, while in Greece and Macedonia a fragile balance of power repeatedly dissolved into war. Then, from the late third century BCE to the end of the first, Rome’s military and diplomatic might successively dismantled these post-Alexandrian political structures, one by one.

During the Hellenistic period (c. 323–30 BCE), small polities struggled to retain the illusion of their identity and independence, in the face of violent antagonism among large states. With time, trade growth resumed and centers of intellectual and artistic achievement sprang up across a vast network, from Italy to Afghanistan and Russia to Ethiopia. But the death of Cleopatra in 30 BCE brought this Hellenistic moment to a close—or so the story goes.

In Angelos Chaniotis’s view, however, the Hellenistic world continued to Hadrian’s death in 138 CE. Not only did Hellenistic social structures survive the coming of Rome, Chaniotis shows, but social, economic, and cultural trends that were set in motion between the deaths of Alexander and Cleopatra intensified during this extended period. Age of Conquests provides a compelling narrative of the main events that shaped ancient civilization during five crucial centuries. Many of these developments—globalization, the rise of megacities, technological progress, religious diversity, and rational governance—have parallels in our world today.

A leading neuroscientist argues that the peripheral nervous system, long understood to play a key role in regulating basic bodily functions, also signals the onset of illness.

The central nervous system, consisting of the brain and the spinal cord, has long been considered the command center of the body. Yet outside the central nervous system, an elaborate network of nerve cells and fibers extends throughout our bodies, transmitting messages between the brain and other organs. The peripheral nervous system, as it’s known, regulates such vital functions as heart rate, digestion, and perspiration and enables us to experience the barrage of sounds, tastes, smells, and other sensory information that surrounds us. But beyond these crucial roles, the peripheral nervous system might do even more: it might warn us of diseases in our future.

As Moses Chao argues in Periphery, from Parkinson’s disease to autism to dementia, many neurological conditions emerge not in the brain but rather within the peripheral nervous system, in the dense network of nerves that wrap around the gastrointestinal tract. What’s more, dysfunctions of the peripheral nervous system can signal the onset of disease decades before symptoms like tremor or memory loss occur. Fortunately, unlike nerves in the brain and spinal cord, peripheral nerves can heal and regenerate in response to injury and aging. The therapeutic implications are remarkable. Chao shows how, with a better understanding of the peripheral nervous system, we could not only predict and treat neurological diseases long before their onset, but possibly prevent them altogether.

Full of new ideas and bold interpretations of the latest data, Periphery opens exciting avenues for medical research while deepening our understanding of a crucial yet underappreciated biological system.

This is a dictionary of single characters which almost does the job of a dictionary of compounds. It gives the student of the Chinese language translations which translate and do not merely explain, and it offers the linguistic scholar a faithful record of current spoken Mandarin.

A comprehensive introduction on pronunciation, the system of radicals, and grammatical categories precedes the main body of the dictionary, which is arranged by radicals. An index, arranged by sounds, is included. Significant points of dialectal pronunciation, especially in Cantonese and the Wu dialects, are indicated for comparison. Neutral tones in compounds and sentences are marked throughout. The main features of dialectal pronunciation are given for each word where they differ from Mandarin.

Selection of characters is based upon authoritative frequency lists and long teaching experience. They appear in regular form, but differences between written and printed forms, together with important popular cursive variations, are also indicated. Warnings and cross-references are given to characters which are easy to confuse or hard to locate. Both National romanization and the Wade-Giles forms are given side by side. This is the first dictionary to give a full extended treatment of all the grammatical particles. The grammatical function of each word is clearly defined, and the stylistic class of each entry is either marked or implied in the translation which corresponds in style to the word translated. Important derivative words (for example, words with diminutive suffixes) and contextual words (including common synonyms and antonyms) are supplied and compared.

Why read Kant’s Critique of Judgment today? Does this classic of aesthetic theory still possess the vitality to prompt those of us engaged with art and criticism to think more deeply about issues that move us, issues such as the force of aesthetic experience, the essence of art, and the relationship of beauty and meaning? It does, if we find the right way into it.

Michel Chaouli shows us one such way. He unwraps the gray packing paper of Kant’s prose to reveal the fresh and fierce ideas that dwell in this masterpiece—not just the philosopher’s theory of beauty but also his ruminations on organisms and life. Each chapter in Thinking with Kant’s Critique of Judgment unfolds the complexity of a key concept, to disclose its role in Kant’s thought and to highlight the significance it holds for our own thinking.

Chaouli invites all who are interested in art and interpretation—novice and expert alike—to set out on the path of thinking with the Critique of Judgment. The rewards are handsome: we see just how profoundly Kant’s book can shape our own ideas about aesthetic experience and meaning. By thinking with Kant, we learn to surpass the horizon of his thought and find ourselves pushed to the very edge of what can be grasped firmly. That is where Kant’s book is at its most thrilling.

An English translation of Chapa's Historia de Nuevo León, the first history of the region that eventually became Texas and northeastern Mexico.

Winner, Presidio La Bahía Award, Sons of the Republic of Texas

In the seventeenth century, South Texas and Northeastern Mexico formed El Nuevo Reino de León, a frontier province of New Spain. In 1690, Juan Bautista Chapa penned a richly detailed history of Nuevo León for the years 1630 to 1690. Although his Historia de Nuevo León was not published until 1909, it has since been acclaimed as the key contemporary document for any historical study of Spanish colonial Texas.

This book offers the only accurate and annotated English translation of Chapa's Historia. In addition to the translation, William C. Foster also summarizes the Discourses of Alonso de León (the elder), which cover the years 1580 to 1649. In the appendix, Foster includes a translation of Alonso (the younger) de León's previously unpublished revised diary of the 1690 expedition to East Texas and an alphabetical listing of over 80 Indian tribes identified in this book.

Chapa was also an authority on the local Indians, and his Historia lists the names and locations of over 300 Indian tribes. This information, together with descriptions of the vegetation, wildlife, and climate in seventeenth-century Texas, make this book essential reading for ethnographers, anthropologists, and biogeographers, as well as students and scholars of Spanish borderlands history.

At some point in the course of evolution—from a primeval social organization of early hominids—all human societies, past and present, would emerge. In this account of the dawn of human society, Bernard Chapais shows that our knowledge about kinship and society in nonhuman primates supports, and informs, ideas first put forward by the distinguished social anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Chapais contends that only a few evolutionary steps were required to bridge the gap between the kinship structures of our closest relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—and the human kinship configuration. The pivotal event, the author proposes, was the evolution of sexual alliances. Pair-bonding transformed a social organization loosely based on kinship into one exhibiting the strong hold of kinship and affinity. The implication is that the gap between chimpanzee societies and pre-linguistic hominid societies is narrower than we might think.

Many books on kinship have been written by social anthropologists, but Primeval Kinship is the first book dedicated to the evolutionary origins of human kinship. And perhaps equally important, it is the first book to suggest that the study of kinship and social organization can provide a link between social and biological anthropology.

With this sweeping reinterpretation of early cultural encounters between the English and American natives, Joyce E. Chaplin thoroughly alters our historical view of the origins of English presumptions of racial superiority, and of the role science and technology played in shaping these notions. By placing the history of science and medicine at the very center of the story of early English colonization, Chaplin shows how contemporary European theories of nature and science dramatically influenced relations between the English and Indians within the formation of the British Empire.

In Chaplin's account of the earliest contacts, we find the English--impressed by the Indians' way with food, tools, and iron--inclined to consider Indians as partners in the conquest and control of nature. Only when it came to the Indians' bodies, so susceptible to disease, were the English confident in their superiority. Chaplin traces the way in which this tentative notion of racial inferiority hardened and expanded to include the Indians' once admirable mental and technical capacities. Here we see how the English, beginning from a sense of bodily superiority, moved little by little toward the idea of their mastery over nature, America, and the Indians--and how this progression is inextricably linked to the impetus and rationale for empire.

Arguing that health care should be a human right rather than a commodity, the distinguished contributors to this volume call for a new social covenant establishing a right to a standard of health care consistent with society's level of resources. By linking rights with limits, they offer a framework for seeking national consensus on a cost-conscious standard of universal medical care. The authors identify the policy implications of recognizing and implementing such a right and develop specific criteria to measure the success of health care reform from a human rights perspective.

Health Care Reform also offers specific and timely criticism of managed competition and its offspring, the Clinton plan for health care reform. Because health care reform will inevitably be an ongoing process of assessment and revision—especially since managed competition has not been implemented elsewhere—this book will last beyond the moment by providing vital standards to guide the future evolution of the health care system.