Sima Qian c. 100 B.C.E. was China's first historian--he was known as Grand Astrologer at the court of Emperor Wu during the Han dynasty--and, along with Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, was one of the creators of imperial China. His iShijii published for Columbia in a translation by Burton Watson as iRecords of the Grand Historiani not only became the model for the twenty-six Standard Histories that the historians of each Chinese dynasty wrote to legitimize the dynastic succession, but also has been an enormously influential resource to historians, literary scholars, philosophers, and many others seeking an understanding of early Chinese history. In iWorlds of Bronze and Bamboo, i Grant Hardy presents convincing evidence that the iShijii is quite unlike such Western counterparts as the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, for, Hardy argues, Sima Qian's work seeks not only to represent but to influence the world in a manner based on Confucian concepts of sageliness and the rect