'The Politics of the Past in Early China is an elegantly written book, and Leung's pithy summations provide food for thought and allow readers to easily follow his claims … offering both sophisticated readings and highly approachable overviews, Leung has managed the difficult task of writing a bridge-spanning book that will interest specialists as well as students just starting to explore early historical rhetoric and, indeed, Warring States and early imperial thought more broadly. I look forward to Leung's further considerations of these and other topics.' Luke Habberstad, Journal of Chinese History
Introduction; 1. Time out of joint: uses of the past from the Western Zhou to the early warring states; 2. A parenthetical past: deep history and anti-history in the late warring states; 3. Specter of the past: bureaucratic amnesia under the Rise of the Qin Empire; 4. The rehabilitation of antiquity in the early Han Empire; 5. Sima Qian's critical past; Epilogue.