The seven great states of the Warring States Era stood at attention. Each state had the ambition to swallow up the sea, the whole world, and all directions. In troubled times, evils would arise, and when heroes emerged, the protagonist of this book would rise to prominence in the Warring States Era!

The Ancient Highlands of Southwest China offers a vivid account of the history of warrior polities occupying the southwestern frontiers of early China. Placing the archaeology of the "Dian" and its Bronze Age neighbors in dialogue with anthropological theory, Alice Yao shows how local histories of kingship come to challenge and resist imperial governance as well as the production of historiography.

A central rhetorical strategy of Ephesians involves the portrayal of Christ as an ideal king who reunites a fractured cosmos and humanity through his reign. In this comprehensive study, Julien Smith shows how this literary characterization unifies the letter's major themes: reconciling humanity with God, uniting Jew and gentile, establishing ecclesiastical harmony, and defeating hostile powers arrayed against the church. The author grounds his analysis in a thorough account of the kingly ideal's powerful contemporary cultural resonance, which was rooted in the widespread yearning within both Greco-Roman and Jewish thought for a golden age inaugurated by a divinely ordained monarch. For Ephesians' author and audience, only Christ the ideal king has power to form identity and transform behavior.

For almost fifty years, Sources of Japanese Tradition has been the single most valuable collection of English-language readings on Japan. Unrivalled in its wide selection of source materials on history, society, politics, education, philosophy, and religion, the two-volume textbook is a crucial resource for students, scholars, and readers seeking an introduction to Japanese civilization. Originally published in a single hardcover book, Volume 2 is now available as an abridged, two-part paperback. Part 1 covers the Tokugawa period to 1868, including texts that address the spread of neo-Confucianism and Buddhism and the initial encounters of Japan and the West. Part 2 begins with the Meiji period and ends at the new millennium, shedding light on such major movements as the Enlightenment, constitutionalism, nationalism, socialism, and feminism, and the impact of the postwar occupation. Commentary by major scholars and comprehensive bibliographies and indexes are included. Together, these readings map out the development of modern Japanese civilization and illuminate the thought and teachings of its intellectual, political, and religious leaders.

China’s Warring States era (ca. 5th–3rd century BCE) was the setting for an explosion of textual production, and one of the most sophisticated and enduring genres of writing from this period was the military text. Social and political changes were driven in large part by the increasing scope and scale of warfare, and some of the best minds of the day (including Sunzi, whose Art of War is still widely read) devoted their attention to the systematic analysis of all factors involved in waging war. Conquer and Govern makes available for the first time in any Western language a corpus of military texts from a long neglected Warring States compendium of historical, political, military, and ritual writings known as the Yi Zhou shu, or Remainder of the Zhou Documents. The texts articulate concretely and vividly the relationship between military conquest of an enemy and incorporation of conquered territories into one’s civilian government, expressed dynamically through the paired Chinese concept of wen and wu, the civil and the martial. Exploring this conceptual dyad as it evolved across the Warring States era into the early Western Han (ca. 2nd–1st century BCE) provides an alternative view of the social and intellectual history of classical China—one based not primarily on philosophical works but on a complex array of ideological writings concerned with the just, effective, and appropriate use of state power. In addition, this study presents a careful reconstruction of the poetic structure of these texts; analyzes their place in the broader discourse on warfare and governance in early China; introduces the many text historical problems of the Yi Zhou shu itself; and offers a synthetic analysis of early Chinese thinking about warfare, strategy, and the early state’s use of coercive power. Conquer and Govern will find a ready audience among specialists and students of Chinese philosophy and history, particularly those interested in the history of military thought and practice, and comparative philosophy.