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BRINGING THE WORLD HOME: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China. By Theodore Huters. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. ix, 370 pp. US$55, cloth. ISBN 0-8248-2838-0.
My first thought upon receiving Bringing the World Home was: how unfortunate that most people will encounter it only through a library edition. The cover is a delight to behold. Made up of a patchwork of colorful 1890s woodblock images, it shows Chinese and foreign Shanghai, residents using imported objects (e.g., bicycles) and observing curious spectacles (including a circus) . Had I picked up a copy lacking these interest-piquing scenes, which spill over onto its back cover as well in a nicely chaotic way, I would not have been as excited about discovering what Theodore Huters had to say inside about the period that fascinates him, lasting from the mid-1890s through 1919.
Halfway through the introduction, I did begin to feel that the cover had created false expectations: the images suggested that the book's tone might be fanciful, while its opening pages are carefully considered and searching, their tone far from playful. In the end, however, this is not another case of a disjuncture between packaging and content validating the old adage about books and their covers. Yes, Bringing...