A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FAR EAST

Kenneth Scott Latourette, MacMillan 3^rd Edition, 1959.

This is quite an in-depth book, and a weighty tome, 754 pages long. The book is split into two parts, Pre-Occidental South and East Asia, and India and the Far East Revolution.

There are eight chapters in the first part; Pre-British India, Ancient China, Imperial China, Chinese Civilization, The Development of Japan, Old Japan, and The Lesser Lands. Part Two has; Introduction to Change, Subject India, White Rule in the Lesser Lands, The Twilight of the Old China, Emergent Japan 1853 – 1893, Changing China 1894 – 1930, Japan Becomes A World Power 1894 – 1930, Into The Storm, Aftermath and Continuation of Storm, The Mounting Tides of Nationalism, and A Pause For Perspective.

On the down side, this is an ex library copy, there is no dust jacket and the covers are quite rubbed and worn at the extremes, especially the spine, which is frayed both top and bottom. There is a fair amount of movement in the boards as the spine glue has dried out, and the gutter line is split on the front board, although the pages are still tightly bound.

There is the remains of a ticket on the fep, together with several library stamps on the first few pages and the customary reference number at the base of the spine. There is a little creasing, mostly in the margins, to the first few pages, and some light staining to the bottom (margin) tips of others, together with some tip creases to the same.

Although this is a slightly battered copy, it has a lot of merits, not least of which is a serious and business-like approach to the subject matter. If you like pristine books with glossy pictures, this is not the book for you. If you like serious, well written and well researched books that have some character, then this will make an ideal reference copy for anyone studying the Far East.

What I particularly like about books of this nature is the fact that it was published 45 years ago and so becomes a piece of history itself. Authors of this period generally seem to be much better informed than they are nowadays and sometimes recent productions, especially in this genre, seem to rewrite events. As I say, the book is a heavy item and so parcel or surface mail might be a consideration.