The 16 chapters translated herein continue the biographies of individuals in pre-Han China presented in volume seven of The Grand Scribe's Records. The reader is introduced to the major supporters and rivals of the founders of the Han Dynasty: the generals, advisors, strategists, and ministers who helped to shape the foundations of the first sustained empire in Chinese history. Although these men were often of common stock, they influenced the development of many aspects of the Han culture, a culture which in turn served as a model for subsequent eras. Based on oral and written accounts as well as on administrative records, these biographies range stylistically from anecdotal tales to repetitious reports of achievements in battle. The failure of the first five Han emperors to trust the loyalty of their subordinates is a leitmotif in many of these chapters. But the individual motifs that echo other sections of the Grand Scribe's Records unrecognized heroes, both loyal and disloyal retainers, broken friendships, and faithless lovers also appear in these pages."

The Grand Scribe's Records, Volume XI presents the final nine memoirs of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's history, continuing the series of collective biographies with seven more prosopographies on the ruthless officials, the wandering gallants, the artful favorites, those who discern auspicious days, turtle and stalk diviners, and those whose goods increase, punctuated by the final account of Emperor Wu's wars against neighboring peoples and concluded with Ssu-ma Ch'ien's postface containing a history of his family and himself.

A comparative study of what the most influential writers of Ancient Greece and China thought it meant to have knowledge and whether they distinguished knowledge from other forms of wisdom. It surveys selected works of poetry, history and philosophy from the period of roughly the eighth through to the second century BCE, including Homer's "Odyssey," the ancient Chinese "Classic of Poetry," Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War," Sima Qian's "Records of the Historian," Plato's "Symposium," and Laozi's "Dao de Jing and the writings of Zhuangzi." The intention, through such juxtaposition, is to introduce the foundational texts of each tradition which continue to influence the majority of the world's population.