Witchcraft and the Rise of the First Confucian Empire

Contests long-standing claims that Confucianism came to prominence under China's Emperor Wu. Finalist for the 2015 Best First Book in the History of Religions presented by the American Academy of Religion Winner of the 2014 Academic Award for Excellence presented by Chinese Historians in the United States When did Confucianism become the reigning political ideology of imperial China? A pervasive narrative holds it was during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty (141–87 BCE). In this book,