Book Review Van Auken, Newell Ann: Spring and Autumn Historiography: Form and Hierarchy in Ancient Chinese Annals. New York: Columbia University Press, 2023, 352 pp, ISBN 978-02-31-5565-14. Reviewed by Yuri Pines, Department of Asian Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel, E-mail: yuri.pines@mail.huji.ac.il https://doi.org/10.1515/asia-2023-0040 Spring and Autumn Historiography is a useful book, even though it is also somewhat of a missed opportunity. It is useful because the author excels in deciphering the formulaic language of one of the most enigmatic early Chinese texts, making this text more accessible to students and scholars. It is disappointing, because the author could have advanced our understanding of this text much further, had she opted for a more nuanced historical approach and had she paid more attention to previous and current research. The text under discussion is Chunqiu 春秋, which I prefer to translate as the Springs-and-Autumns Annals; Van Auken opts for a singular “Spring and Autumn” (to avoid confusion, I shall hereafter refer to the text as Chunqiu). As Van Auken acknowledges, the first time she looked at the text she “thought it was boring” (p. xiii), and this is the impression shared by the overwhelming majority of modern readers. The dry chronicle of major events in the life of the state of Lu 魯 and its neighbors and allies between 722 and 481 (or 479) BCE is surely not engaging reading. For two millennia, however, the text was a must for any educated man of letters, because it was widely believed that its formulaic language contains the “great meaning in subtle words” 微言大義 allegedly embedded there by Confucius 孔子 (551–479 BCE) himself. In the early twentieth century, however, as the traditional examination curriculum was abolished, while Confucius lost his position as China’s “utmost sage” 至聖, the interest in Chunqiu receded dramatically. 1 An attempt to re-engage the text from a post-Confucian perspective is therefore highly welcome. Van Auken’s book is based on her PhD dissertation, “A Formal Analysis of the Chuenchiou (Spring and Autumn Classic)” completed back in 2006 (University of Washington, under the supervision of William G. Boltz). That seventeen years separate the dissertation and the current monograph may reflect the publishers’ 1 Throughout the twentieth century, scholars who addressed Chunqiu did it primarily at sidelines of the studies of one of its commentaries, primarily Zuozhuan 左傳 (Zuo Tradition) and Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳 (the third commentary, Guliang zhuan 穀梁傳, merited much less scholarly attention). In the twenty-first century, signs of renewed interest in Chunqiu abound, including a new journal, Chunqiu studies 春秋學研究, the inaugural issue of which was published by Shanghai guji chubanshe 上海古 籍出版社 in May 2023. ASIA 2023; 77(3–4): 801–811