Timothy Brook

Sapient Sinophile

Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China

By

Viking 316pp £20 order from our bookshop

I bought my first volume of Joseph Needham’s monumental series, Science and Civilisation in China, from a street vendor in Rangoon in 1976. How Volume IV, Part 1 (Physics) got to Burma is anyone’s guess. Several years into my training as a sinologist by then, I knew that Needham’s books defined the history of Chinese science, and that they could be read for pleasure as well as profit. I also knew that I would never have another chance at a volume of SCC for £2. It sits today on my bookshelf alongside the seventeen of its siblings that I have managed to acquire in the intervening years. 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'One of the reasons for its longevity is that it has virtually nothing to say about science and technology at all,… ,
    • 'The characters in many of these stories are trapped in the obsessive present tense of their own thoughts; in the m… ,
    • 'Libraries, for much of their existence, have embodied in microcosm many of the characteristics of the totalitarian… ,
    • 'Moss and Cynthia buy several properties through which to launder their ill-gotten gains, take lots of drugs, have… ,
    • 'Never mind the imperial cult. This is the cult of Boris. What happened to Rome?' From the LR archive:… ,
    • Thirty-two years ago this month, we published Muriel Spark's short story, 'A Playhouse Called Remarkable' Read it… ,
    • Time travel, bicycles and white horses populate @WomackPhilip's roundup of children's books by @marcussedgwick,… ,
    Follow Us