Hardy, Grant

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Yale University, Ph.D., 1988.

ADDRESSES: Office—History Department, University of North Carolina, Asheville, Carmichael Hall 108, CPO 1610, One University Heights, Asheville, NC 28804-8505. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer, historian, and educator. University of North Carolina, Asheville, began as associate professor of history, became full professor and department chair.

WRITINGS:

Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian's Conquest of History, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor) Enduring Ties: Poems of Family Relationships, Steerforth Press (South Royalton, VT), 2003.

(Editor) The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 2003.

(With Anne Behnke Kinney) The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China ("Greenwood Guides to Historic Events of the Ancient World" series), Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Grant Hardy is the author of Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian's Conquest of History. The book is a study of Shiji, a 130-chapter record of China written by Sima Qian, a scribe of the Han court who lived from approximately 145 B.C.E. to 86 B.C.E. Reviewing Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo in Biography, Alan Berkowitz wrote that, "at a good number of junctures, Hardy provides insightful comparison between Sima Qian and other historical traditions." Berkowitz concluded that "Hardy's book is ambitious, but it also is carefully argued with a clear rhetorical trajectory and is well documented."

Hardy and Anne Behnke Kinney cowrote The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China for the "Greenwood Guides to Historic Events of the Ancient World" series. The volume includes biographies, primary-source documents, and a bibliography and compares the Western or former Han with Rome and Persia and speculates about post-Han China. School Library Journal reviewer Patricia D. Lothrop noted that, although "information is repeated" at points, "given the complexity of the material, this is rather a bonus."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Biography, summer, 2001, Alan Berkowitz, review of Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian's Conquest of History, p. 600.

MBR Bookwatch, July, 2005, Diane C. Donovan, review of The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China.

School Library Journal, July, 2005, Patricia D. Lothrop, review of The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China, p. 133.