Timothy Brook is Professor of History at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China (1993), and Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement (1992), and the coeditor of Nation Work: Asian Elites and National Identities (1999) and China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge (1999).
"The book looks at changing attitudes to the inter-relationship of commerce and culture or leisure activities over the course of the Ming dynasty. . . . One of the strengths of the book . . . is the way in which much of the story is told through the words of contemporary, often little-known, observers, whose sometimes quirky views are skillfully translated. The vividness with which these distant figures and their world are presented to the reader, in the author's very readable style, should make this book accessible to non-China specialists and indeed to anyone who is interested in the ways in which a traditional, agricultural society-then or now-reacts to dramatic economic change."--"China Quarterly
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