“ Confucius and Opium contains surprises sure to both delight and annoy any potential reader….Cook’s audacity is shaming.”-John Grant Ross, author of Formosan Odyssey “An offbeat, erudite work of China-centered literary criticism….adeptly drawing out common themes or compelling threads that hint at larger trends in Chinese history.”- Kirkus Reviews In these book review essays by Isham Cook, foreign devils, old China Hands, eccentric expatriates, and a few Chinese tell an offbeat history of China’s last two centuries, with a backward glance at ancient China as told by Western mummies. Have foreigners shaped China’s history to a greater extent than has previously been acknowledged, reaching back possibly millennia? Was Confucius’ most famous book, the Analects, inspired by entheogenic medicines imported from abroad, possession of which in the 1930s brought one before the firing squad in the name of Confucius?
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