24 Hours In Ancient China

24 Hours in Ancient China brings the everyday actions of ancient Chinese Han citizens vividly to life.

Walk a day in a Roman's sandals. What was it like to live in one of the ancient world's most powerful and bustling cities - one that was eight times more densely populated than modern day New York?

During the course of a day we meet 24 ancient Athenians from all levels of society - from the slave-girl to the councilman, the fish-seller to the naval commander, the housewife to the hoplite - and get to know what the real Athens was like by spending an hour in their company.

Along China's Yellow River, a mighty and technologically advanced civilization grew and flourished for thousands of years without any contact from the rest of the world. Life in Ancient China explores the daily lives of early the Chinese people, profiles the great dynasties that ruled China over the centuries, and introduces important religious and philosophical contributions, such as Confucianism, Daosim, and Buddhism. Enduring Chinese innovations, such as writing, papermaking, and The Great Wall are also featured.

This book employs textual and archaeological material to reconstruct the various features of daily life in ancient China.

This richly illustrated book provides a glimpse into the belief system and the material wealth of the social elite in pre-Imperial China through a close analysis of tomb contents and excavated bamboo texts. The point of departure is the textual and material evidence found in one tomb of an elite man buried in 316 BCE near a once wealthy middle Yangzi River valley metropolis. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of cosmological symbolism and the nature of the spirit world. The author shows how illness and death were perceived as steps in a spiritual journey from one realm into another. Transmitted textual records are compared with excavated texts. The layout and contents of this multi-chambered tomb are analyzed as are the contents of two texts, a record of divination and sacrifices performed during the last three years of the occupant’s life and a tomb inventory record of mortuary gifts. The texts are fully translated and annotated in the appendices. A first-time close-up view of a set of local beliefs which not only reflect the larger ancient Chinese religious system but also underlay the rich intellectual and artistic life of pre-Imperial China. With first full translations of texts previously unknown to all except a small handful of sinologists.

Ancient China: A History surveys the East Asian Heartland Region – the geographical area that eventually became known as China – from the Neolithic period through the Bronze Age, to the early imperial era of Qin and Han, up to the threshold of the medieval period in the third century CE. For most of that long span of time there was no such place as "China"; the vast and varied territory of the Heartland Region was home to many diverse cultures that only slowly coalesced, culturally, linguistically, and politically, to form the first recognizably Chinese empires. The field of Early China Studies is being revolutionized in our time by a wealth of archaeologically recovered texts and artefacts. Major and Cook draw on this exciting new evidence and a rich harvest of contemporary scholarship to present a leading-edge account of ancient China and its antecedents. With handy pedagogical features such as maps and illustrations, as well as an extensive list of recommendations for further reading, Ancient China: A History is an important resource for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Chinese History, and those studuing Chinese Culture and Society more generally.

What does it mean to be a hero? The ancient Greeks who gave us Achilles and Odysseus had a very different understanding of the term than we do today. Based on the legendary Harvard course that Gregory Nagy has taught for well over thirty years, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores the roots of Western civilization and offers a masterclass in classical Greek literature. We meet the epic heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but Nagy also considers the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, and the dialogues of Plato. Herodotus once said that to read Homer was to be a civilized person. To discover Nagy’s Homer is to be twice civilized. “Fascinating, often ingenious... A valuable synthesis of research finessed over thirty years.” —Times Literary Supplement “Nagy exuberantly reminds his readers that heroes—mortal strivers against fate, against monsters, and...against death itself—form the heart of Greek literature... [He brings] in every variation on the Greek hero, from the wily Theseus to the brawny Hercules to the ‘monolithic’ Achilles to the valiantly conflicted Oedipus.” —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

Join the Binkertons, twins Josh and Emma and their little sister, Libby, as they return to the Good Times Travel Agency -- and end up knee-deep in an ancient Chinese rice paddy! Adventures in Ancient China is an engaging mix of adventure and historical information about life in China during first century A.D. Kids will learn about Chinese society, inventions, medicine, the Silk Road, the Great Wall, nomadic warriors and much more. They'll love the book's contemporary comic-book look, while parents, teachers and librarians will appreciate the well-researched story line and solid factual information.