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{DOWNLOAD} Oracle Bones: a Journey Through Time in China ORACLE BONES: A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME IN CHINA PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Peter Hessler | 491 pages | 17 Aug 2011 | HarperCollins Publishers Inc | 9780060826598 | English | New York, NY, United States Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present by Peter Hessler It combines soulful story-telling with a journalist's keen eye for detail resulting in a story that transcends cultural divides and puts a human face on history as it unfolds today. Product Details Price. Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program. Become an affiliate. About the Author Peter Hessler is a staff writer at The New Yorker , where he served as the Beijing correspondent from to , and is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. Oh well, I will let Peter come first! View all 3 comments. Nov 24, Piotr rated it liked it Shelves: reviewed. This is a book written by a journalist. He doesn't hide it, writing about his reporting experience in China, so it's not a surprise. But the effect is that it feels like a lot of reporting packaged together, some of it pursuing a historical theme, but much of it quite random. If you overlook this clipped-together feel, the book is very informative, maybe even too detailed the author obviously had tonnes of notes to work with. It gives you insights into bits and pieces of China's ancient This is a book written by a journalist. It gives you insights into bits and pieces of China's ancient history, in particular the development of its writing, but also provides many glimpses of modern China, in the early s. This is ostensibly its concept, to weave history with modernity, but it feels a bit like a journalistic tool to bring together many disparate narratives that were sitting on the author's desk. The book weaves together several themes. One is Chinese archeologists, historians and their work uncovering the country's ancient history while contending with pressures of war, the Cultural Revolution and modernity. Another is the history itself, the oracle bones, the ancient inscriptions, the dynasties. Still another is the author's life in China in the late s and early s working as an American journalist in Beijing. The fourth is his friendship with an Uyghur in Beijing who becomes a key to the world of China's ethnic minorities and migrants, and who later emigrates to the US. And the fifth are the lives of his former students of English, who keep in touch with him through letters for many years afterwards, while struggling to adjust to living in booming coastal cities. Altogether, an interesting book, especially for someone like me who is fascinated with China and hungry to read anything about its people, language and history. It does feel a bit too long, too detailed at times and not as coherent as it could have been. Jan 04, Bob Reed rated it liked it. I loved Peter Hessler's first book, River Town. In fact, it was the first book I gave a 5-star rating. Oracle Bones fits into the same genre, but for me it fell somewhat flat. What made River Town so appealing to me was the personal stories of the people in Hessler's life. Oracle Bones has some of that, but it is set within a larger context. Hessler tries to superimpose his various experiences and the experiences of the Chinese people he knows onto the canvas of China's history. This obviously appealed to a lot of people, because the book got great reviews. However, it didn't work for me. I felt like the book was attempting to do too many things, and as a reader I felt pulled in too many different directions. Maybe the problem is me. I know that Hessler was trying to pull all these different vignettes together so that the sum was greater than the parts. Maybe I'm just too thick, because I didn't get how the pieces connected. For me, the sum substracted from the whole and produced something less than the parts. Nevertheless, Hessler is an outstanding writer and this book will be of interest to anybody who finds contemporary China as fascinating as I do. Aug 29, Brian Griffith rated it it was amazing Shelves: china , cultural-social-change , history-general. This book seems informal, without pre-set plan or structure. The author seems to wander around, hanging out with ordinary people. He follows a number of friendships over several years, switching back and forth between people and places. And slowly I realized this is the finest sort of journalism I've seen. The loose net of stories explores China from dozens of viewpoints--of Uighur traders, migrant teachers, aging archaeologists, factory girls. Gradually themes of investigation arise--into the This book seems informal, without pre-set plan or structure. Gradually themes of investigation arise--into the fate of an archeologist who died in the Cultural Revolution, or the story of China's script. There's no central theme. Just a world of lives and experiences spread across China, captured with unpretentious art. Apr 05, Alexis rated it really liked it Shelves: personal-narrative , china-general. This was an excellent narrative of Peter Hessler's time in China as a correspondent for various American newspapers and magazines. I thought overall it was a worthwhile read and a great audiobook for work. There wasn't anything groundbreaking in the format, but the personal stories there a three or four "main" Chinese storylines were interesting and well-framed. Would recommend to anyone interested in China or human-interest stories from China. Aug 26, Troy Parfitt rated it really liked it. Oracle Bones, Peter Hesslers second effort, or Part II, as it were, of his China trilogy, chronicles, mainly, the lives of various Chinese people, from archeologists and intellectuals to the authors friends and former students. Many of the narratives seem to be more detailed and more rewarding versions of his newspaper and magazine articles. Themes and characters recur and are given a sort of chronological treatment. The glue that binds the book together, the oracle bones, is also a sort of loose symbol for the volume in total. The oracle bones convey meaning; their messages and the stories surrounding the people who excavate, study, and try to make sense of them attempt to tell us something about Chinese culture. The people Hessler writes about, and the yarns pertaining to his effort to do so, also try to tell us something about Chinese culture. Oracle Bones is a long book, about pages of text. Some of the topics are interesting; others are not. But what was not interesting to me would be interesting to someone else. Readers like me are going to criticize no matter what you do, so you may as well scribble about your own interests. And Hessler is a good writer. His sentences are crisp, his paragraphs economical. His writing is better than in his first book, River Town, even if River Town is a better, or at least more coherent, story. And Peter deserves credit in general. In the sea of China experts, i. He dug deeply, he researched, he became a journalist, and he travelled extensively sometimes at considerable risk to talk to people and record what they had to say. He got published, and his China trilogy continues to sell. That said, I wish the book were a bit more passionate. He removes himself from the stories, but in the places where he inserts himself, i. But again, this is a matter of personal taste. As there is in any China book worth its salt, there are heaps of send-ups and bucketfuls of criticism, though they are rendered in a flat, ironical fashion. Oracle Bones did what it was supposed to; it made me want to read his third book, Country Driving. In total, a very good read. And, among the dozens of intriguing and memorable stories, there are excellent tips for would-be journalists and aspiring writers. Oracle Bones works as a starting- point for neophytes or a refresher for old China hands. I recommend it. Several years ago, Beth and I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to chaperone a Study Abroad trip to China. The lead faculty member on that trip required her students to read a number of pre-trip books. Since I had never been to Asia before, I grabbed the reading list too and soaked up as much of it as I could. One of the books on her list was Peter Hessler's "River Town. It was one of the best of a very good batch of stories about China. I so enjoyed that memoir that I decided to read another of Hessler's books. In the various chapters and sections he describes different ways in which he tries to keep his visa up-to-date, make enough money to stay alive in Beijing and legitimize himself as a journalist. Some of the assignments he gets seem dangerous, others are just silly, but all are fascinating. He also keeps in touch with some of his former students and travels around the country to see them. And in still another sub-plot, he befriends a Uighur man who traffics in black market goods of many types but is really just trying to get to America somehow. The book has a picaresque and episodic quality to it. But although this is ostensibly a memoir, the book isn't really about Hessler himself. He frames the stories of his own life with a series of vignettes about Chinese archeology.
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