Perspective

"When China Ruled the Seas" is written by Louis Levathes, a staff writer for the National Geographic for ten years. She has written articles for the New York Times, Washington Post and other publications. Levathes certainly has the background and credentials to have penned the account of China's maritime dominance during the Ming Dynasty. She is an expert on Chinese history and served as a visiting scholar at The Johns Hopkins Center for Chinese and American Studies at Nanjing University in Jiangsu, China.

As evidenced by the material, Levathes has written with the detached manner and style of a teacher. Her goal, quite obviously, was to encompass the thousand year history of China's dominance on the high seas into one tome. Levathes based her book on eyewitness accounts, official Ming historical documents, as well as on African, Arab and Indian resources.

No person better than Levathes could have...