This welcome new collaborative volume tells a story that has not been investigated adequately:the rise and spread of literacy in ancient China.While there is a large bibliography of studies of the writing system itself,few scholars have addressed the question of literacy,that is,how writing was used in society,how people were taught to read and write,and how the practice advanced both geographically from the center to the periphery,and socially from the elite to what one of the contributors calls the lower orders. Feng Li and David Prager Brarmer are to be applauded for bringing together eleven engrossing articles representing the finest scholarship in English and immensely clarifying these crucial phenomena.Constraints of space preclude consideration of each chapter in this long and carefully annotated book;1 in what follows,I shall attempt to sketch what the book accomplishes and the evidence on which it relies.