From Rural China to the Ivy League

About this book

"A leading authority in Chinese Studies and hailed as the most important living Chinese historian of our times, Professor Ying-shih Yu received the John W. Kluge Prize for achievement in the Study of Humanity in 2006 and the first Tang Prize international award in Sinology in 2014. These awards represent a recognition of his more than sixty-year contribution to the fields of Chinese history, thought, politics, and culture during which he published more than thirty books, forty-one monographs, and hundreds of articles. Over the years his works have had great influence throughout the Chinese-language world where he has been hailed as a paradigm of Chinese humanism. The book covers Professor Yü's life and times from his childhood in rural China to his tenure as a professor at Harvard University, with relevant discussions of later events. This book is an invaluable record of a history of our times, witnessing the cultural, political, and social transformations of what Professor Yu notes as the period of most violent turmoil and social upheaval in modern Chinese history. His record of this complex period is now made accessible to English-language readers with this book."--