A keeper of the royal archives watched the Zhou court rot from the inside, packed what he owned, and rode west to leave China for good. The story goes that the guard at the mountain pass would not open the gate until the old man wrote down what he knew. He set down eighty one short chapters, rode on, and was never seen again.
What he left is not a book of comfort. It is a book about power: how it is gathered, how it is spent, and why the man who grabs at it ends up with nothing in his hands. Water is the softest thing there is and it takes the mountain down. The hub of a wheel is empty and that is the part that makes it turn. The commander who wins without a battle has done the hard thing. The ruler his people barely notice is the one whose country runs.
Twenty five centuries later it is one of the most translated books in the world, and it still reads like it was written for a man who has to hold something together on Monday morning.
This is the Civil Savage Society edition of James Legge's translation of 1891, the first serious English rendering and still one of the plainest. Complete in all eighty one chapters, with Legge's section numbering kept, newly typeset in a 6 by 9 inch US Trade format, 102 pages. Every chapter stands on its own page under its numeral. Twelve new brush and ink plates stand at the chapters that name their images: the empty vessel, the valley, the water, the wheel, the uncarved block.
Paperback: perfect bound on cream stock. A workhorse copy, meant to be carried, dog-eared, and marked up.
Hardcover: casewrap edition built for the shelf and the long haul.
E-Book: instant download, delivered to your email at purchase.
Print editions are produced on demand. Nothing warehoused, never out of print.
