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Zheng He (Discovery) | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Yamashita
Creator: Gianni Guadalupi
Publisher: White Star
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $30.36
You Save: $9.59 (24%)
New (7) Used (6) from $25.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 692330
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 504
Shipping Weight (lbs): 5.1
Dimensions (in): 10 x 9.9 x 1.5
ISBN: 8854401641
Dewey Decimal Number: 770
EAN: 9788854401648
ASIN: 8854401641
Publication Date: October 17, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 5 weeks
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Product Description
Before the legendary explorations of Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Ferdinand Magellan, Admiral Zheng He sailed from Ming-dynasty China, and in 28 years, made seven voyages visiting 30 countries. With his fleet of hundreds of junks, he traveled from Southeast Asia to Africa, from India to the Middle East, gathering riches, scientific knowledge, fame, and power for his emperor. He came close to conquering the world, until the Ming Dynasty's power shriveled and the explorer's accomplishments were all but forgotten. More than six centuries after his first voyage, acclaimed photographer Michael Yamashita restores the deeds of the "Forgotten Admiral" to their rightful place in history. In this compelling tribute to Zheng He, Yamashita traces each of his journeys and pays homage to the impressive achievements of this explorer whose feats equal or surpass those of other better-known explorers. In a meticulous visual recreation that has become his signature style, Yamashita presents the details of each voyage, chronicling the interactions and commercial exchanges, and documenting, through his exceptional photographs, the diverse locales Zheng He discovered in nearly three decades of intense exploration.
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| Customer Reviews:
Great Pictures, not much content August 5, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I bought the book because I had only recently learned of Zeng He's major voyages. I was expecting not just excellent moden photographs, but also recovered ancient Chinese prints illustrating the expeditions and boat design. No shipwrite pictures of the plans or design of the ships were included. Moreover, the book fails to answer how such huge ships managed to sail without tipping over? How deep was the ship's draft? This is not a trivial issue because the ships as illustrated sailed "high" and some sort of deep hold or large keel had to stablize these ships. The only glimpse of this is a picture of a large rudder. Perhaps all these details were lost due to the demise of the Chinese fleet after the death of Zeng He's patron, the emporor. Nevertheless, that issue should have been addressed and it wasn't.
The narrative is part history, part colloquiual culture, part legend, part 'tall tales' (some stereotyped) about the customs of the lands visited by Zheng He and part personal observations and reminiscences by the author. Very little reference material was provided.
Zeng He clearly was a major explorer and his acocmplishments must have been sizeable given the terrain he visited BEFORE the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British arrived in the Indian and western and southestern Pacific oceans. In my view, this book trivilizes his remarkable accomplishments.
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