© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/22105018-12340118 INner Asia 21 (2019) 105–123 brill.com/inas Inner ASIA Book Review Forum ∵ Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS) Book Award Author-Critic Forum, Qazaqlïq, or Ambitious Brigandage, and the Formation of the Qazaqs: State and Identity in Post-Mongol Eurasia, by Joo-Yup Lee. Boston, Brill, 2016; xiv+238 pp., ISBN 978-90-04-30648-6 1 Introduction1 Jesse Driscoll University of California at San Diego, USA jdriscoll@ucsd.edu For the fourth consecutive year, the Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS) Book Award committee held an author-critic forum to discuss the winner of the previous year’s CESS book prize. 2017’s winner was Dr Joo-Yup Lee, for his book Qazaqlïq, or Ambitious Brigandage, and the Formation of the Qazaqs.2 It is a clear, concise, and utterly convincing contribution to the field. Lee 1  This forum was held during the 19th annual meeting of the Central Eurasian Studies Society (2018) at the University of Pittsburgh. 2  The 2017 CESS Book Award Committee’s official announcement was as follows: ‘This is the first book to comprehensively cover the emergence of Kazakh identities within the broader cultural and political context of Central Eurasia. It avoids the pitfall of projecting national identity back in time, and shows what early Kazakhs thought made them distinct from other groups. He brings places such as Ukraine through the Cossack Hetmanate into a much larger Central Eurasian world by focusing on a Central Eurasian institution (qazaqliq). Lee’s book is concise, very clearly written, engaging, and easy to read, even though it tackles a vast geo- graphical area, a number of ethnic groups, and a premodern time period with which many people are not familiar. The work is incredibly impressive in terms of the breadth of research and the multilingual nature of the sources, both primary and secondary. It is a true exemplar of Central Eurasian studies, tracing a Central Asian institution (ambitious brigandage) as far west as Ukraine (the Cossack Hetmanate). It is also provocative—and Lee is clear about