Confucius and Opium: China Book Reviews

“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

“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

 “Candid, edgy, fearless, and unsparing, Isham Cook writes as though with a sword in this oddly titled compendium of book reviews. Books and China are clearly life passions for him—Cook is embedded in both—making him ideally placed to comment on other writers grappling to understand and provide insight into the country, its culture, and its people.”—Graeme Sheppard, author of A Death in Peking

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? 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.