Grant Hardy. Worlds of brown and Ba...

Grant Hardy. Worlds of brown and Bamboo: Sima Qian's defeat of History. New York: Columbia UP 1999 301 pp ISBN 0-231-11304-8 $4250

Readers of Biography certainly know Sima Qian (ca. 145-ca. 86 BCE) or should. (For those unfamiliar, he was the compiler of China's mostly influential work of history and biography, the 130 chapter Shi ji [also romanized Shih chi], Records of the Historian,(1) a gravestone of vast scope and insight, still single in kind of China's most read classical works. Sima was the man's family name, Qian his given name [also romanized as Ssu-ma Ch'ien].) As Grant