About this item
Thanks to Salem sea captains, Gilded Age millionaires, curators on horseback and missionaries gone native, North American museums now possess the greatest collections of Chinese art outside of East Asia itself. How did it happen? The China Collectors is the first full account of a century-long treasure hunt in China from the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion to Mao Zedong's 1949 ascent.The principal gatherers are mostly little known and defy invention. They included "foreign devils" who braved desert sandstorms, bandits and local warlords in acquiring significant works. Adventurous curators like Langdon Warner, a forebear of Indiana Jones, argued that the caves of Dunhuang were already threatened by vandals, thereby justifying the removal of frescoes and sculptures.
About the Author
Wikipedia EntryKarl E. Meyer is a third generation journalist. His grandfather, George Meyer, was the editor of the leading German language newspaper in Milwaukee, the Germania; his father, Ernest L. Meyer, was a columnist for The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin) and then The New York Post.Karl Meyer was born in Madison, Wisconsin. His career in journalism began while as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During his junior year, he became the editor of The Daily Cardinal, the student newspaper, while serving as the campus correspondent of the Milwaukee Journal. During his senior year, he edited the university literary magazine, The Athenaean.He received his MPA (Master of Public Affairs) from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. After being awarded a Proctor Fellowship, he earned a Ph.D. (Politics) , also from Princeton University.After graduation in 1956, he became a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post, which began his career in foreign affairs. He also wrote a weekly column from America for The New Statesman. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his coverage of Latin America, and during the Cuban revolution he interviewed Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra.From 1965-70, he was the Post's London Bureau Chief where he became a weekly regular on the BBC and a character in the humor magazine Private Eye. In 1968, he covered the Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia. Returning home in 1970, he headed the Post's New York Bureau.He was a television columnist and contributing editor of The Saturday Review (1975-79) and also a contributing editor of Archaeology (1999-2005) . He joined The New York Times Editorial Board in 1979 where he served until 1998 as the senior writer on foreign affairs and a frequent contributor to the Arts and Ideas section.After his retirement from the Times, Meyer became editor of the World Policy Journal, published quarterly by the World Policy Institute, which was a position he held until 2008 when he became editor emeritus.He has been a visiting professor at Yale University, Tuft University's Fletcher School, Bard College, and the McGraw Professor of Writing at Princeton. He is a fellow of Green College, Oxford University, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute of Advanced Studies, Berlin) , and of Davenport College, Yale. He has served as judge for the Peabodys, the Pulizer Prize, and the Arnold Toynbee History Prize. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Association.Meyer is married to Shareen Blair Brysac with whom he has co-authored three books.
