A New History of Korea (Harvard-Yenching Institute Publications)

The first English-language history of Korea to appear in more than a decade, this translation offers Western readers a distillation of the latest and best scholarship on Korean history and culture from the earliest times to the student revolution of 1960. The most widely read and respected general history, A New History of Korea (Han'guksa sillon) was first published in 1961 and has undergone two major revisions and updatings.

Translated twice into Japanese and currently being translated into Chinese as well, Professor Lee's work presents a new periodization of his country's history, based on a fresh analysis of the changing composition of the leadership elite. The book is noteworthy, too, for its full and integrated discussion of major currents in Korea's cultural history. The translation, three years in preparation, has been done by specialists in the field.

I find it impossible to believe that one reviewer found this book "neither too skimpy nor too detailed." How else do I know that this book is truly too detailed and inaccessible for most readers? One of the translators, Edward Wagner, concedes in another book ("Korea: Old and New") that this book was, in fact, too detailed.