Reading Critiques of The Genesis of East Asia - Book Report/Review Example

Critique of “The Genesis of East Asia 221 B.C.-A.D. 907” Author’s biasness is considered to have a substantial impact over the details presented and the manner in which those are presented in the thesis. In this regard, the author of “The Genesis of East Asia 221 B.C. – A. D. 907”, i.e. Charles Holcombe has long-term experience as the faculty in the Department of History at University of Northern Iowa. He also possesses a degree of Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He has been long associated with researches concerning the historic bibliography of East Asian countries, especially China and Japan.

Possessing such intense knowledge and experience, it is quite likely that special focus has been provided towards his biasness affecting the contents. For instance, the author tends to rationalize each and every fact regarding the subject with due reference to the prior literatures and other authenticated sources. The author also ensures a proper acknowledgement to the parties involved in the entire process of this research. Through a comprehensive preface, the book also expresses to be peer reviewed which in turn depicts that there was minimal effect of author’s biasness in this writing. . Notably, this was a similar methodology exhibited in his writing, “A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-First Century”.

In his later discussions, Charles Holcombe tends to focus on every particular country included in this region, namely China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. The discussion begins with the birth of China which later expanded to Korea and Japan along with Vietnam due to the chronological impact of power wars and invasions. This methodology can be regarded to be appropriate in this context as it proves to be of great assistance in documenting the series of happenings that took place in creating the today’s East Asian region.

The methodology through which the paper has been presented also supported the intention of the author to develop a proper synoptic for the writing widening the scope for appropriate theoretical propositions. For instance, he names the second chapter as “E Pluribus Sericum” (Holcombe, C., “The Genesis of east Asia 221 B.C. – A. D. 907”: 8) meaning ‘from many, silk’ which depicts the notion focused on in the later discussion describing China to be the first and foremost country to emerge and become the initiator of the East Asian region.

With the enclosure of additional theoretical propositions, the writing effectively and interestingly reveals many facts that directly contribute to the ‘revisionist’ perspective of the author. The revisionist notion of the author can be well observed with reference to this excerpt below, “Even this Central Plain core itself also had multiple origins, how-ever. It has been speculated that what we may call the ancestral Chinese language was originally spoken only toward the western end of the Central Plain, where writing and the