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Review
An extraordinarily delicate achievement - The New York Times Book Review
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
An extraordinarily delicate achievement - The New York Times Book Review
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is worth reading for the account of Ricci's memory system alone. The way the Jesuits used the power of the sensory imagination to remember texts or chinese characters is inspirational. Spence explains the secrets of creating such a system, though this ain't no self-help book. But more interesting still was the way that Ricci used his imaginative interpretations of chinese pictograms to convey Christian images and ideas to the Chinese; and the way that he performed memory feats to impress and gain access to high chinese circles for his work.
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Jonathan Spence's approach here is so effortlessly engaging, so like a work of historically informed fiction, that you can easily lose sight of just how responsible and convincing it is at the same time. Framing the book with Ricci's own mnemonic imagery gives Spence a complex but perfectly coherent lens through which to write. Spence deftly allows Ricci's own images to define the scope of the narrative as well, so he isn't burdened with scholarly asides attempting to fill in the gaps with a general history.
This is a book of simple genius. I've reviewed several books on Amazon, and never given a five star rating before. This wonderful book rates a five.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The title is misleading, and the blurb doesn't provide much accurate information either. This book is neither a treatise on the ancient and medieval systems of memory, nor a biography, but a meandering series of snapshots of Matteo Ricci, whose life in China at the end of the 16th century was fascinating (or might have been in the hands of a different author). The extracts from his letters are vivid and exciting and provide flashes of insight into Chinese customs and the perils of travel by land and sea, but Spence's own writing is loosely organised and somewhat tedious.
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