Xunzi: The Complete Text

Printed book. legible.

Of all my books on eastern philosophy, this is my favorite. The translation is thorough and accurate in a contemporary English, but without taking too much freedom in the translation or interpretation. In other words, I feel if it was written today, this is how it would be done. The body of work itself is fascinating to read. It is much less cryptic than the Tao de Ching, with thoughts clearly presented and reasoned on. Other works such as Zhuangzi are more stories and fables, albeit with wonderful teachings, but the Xunzi clearly addresses its topics, providing the good side as well as the bad of thingd, leaving the reader the opportunity to dwell upon its words and come to their own conclusions on how to apply it in everyday life. The book is full of footnotes and explanations on translation, people and places, cross references and other bits of knowledge for better understanding. I included a picture of the cover, because when I bought the hardcover version, I thought I was getting a Chinese-bound edition, but the appearance is simply printed on to the cover. So even though the quality of the book itself is very good, don't be mislead into thinking you are getting something extraordinarily produced. I love this book so much, I wish it were available half its size, just for carrying around.

The book is bigger than I thought. I haven't read it yet, but i'm excited about it!

While the book content is amazing the book cover is not traditional hand-bound style. It is disappointing as the image clearly shows the book hand bound. While soft copy clearly indicates a stock image on the back cover, hardcopy does not indicate it is a copyrighted image at all. The price difference is not justifiable. Totally disappointed.

A very thoughtfully done translation of the work. The physical book is a pleasure to read (I got both the Kindle and print editions though, so I always have Master Xun's words handy).