"A major contribution to the fields of Chinese intellectual history and religion. To my knowledge it is the first work in a Western language that attempts an overall picture of the place of the Yijing in Chinese history and culture." -- Joseph A. Adler, Kenyon College, author of Chinese Religious Traditions

"A very substantial contribution to the field of Chinese studies. The scholarship is prodigious. There are similar works in Chinese, but in the West this book stands very much alone." -- Edward Shaughnessy, University of Chicago, author of Rewriting Early Chinese Texts and translator of I Ching: The Classic of Changes

"Picking up from where he left off with his important volume entitled Fortune-tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society (1991), Richard Smith continues with his stout defense of traditional cosmology in late imperial China in this new volume demonstrating the scope of the Yijing in enabling Chinese at all levels of society to voice their opinions through its complexities and mysteries. Especially important is Smith's documentation of the widespread use of the Changes in Qing (1644-1911) times for divination. Equally significant is Smith's presentation of its ongoing place as one of the Classics during an era when "evidential studies" and its philological "toolkit" had poked historical holes in the classical canon." -- Benjamin A. Elman, Princeton University