This book includes brief lives of the Greek writer Herodotus (famous as the historian of the Greco-Persian War) and the Chinese scholar Sima Qian , author of the first great history of China from legendary times to the early Han dynasty (translated by Burton Watson as Records of the Grand Historian) . Since I was young, I have enjoyed reading Herodotus for his fund of lively anecdotes,and I have admired Sima for his decision to submit to castration in order to survive and complete his history (the custom of his day was that officials sentenced to castration normally committed suicide to escape the shame). There is nothing so dramatic in Herodotus's life, but his history as a whole may be more readable, as he incorporated stories he heard during his travels. This book is unusual in that includes one the the chronological tables Sima included in his history. The extracts from Herodotus include the story of Croesus, the customs of the Egyptians and other foreign peoples, the stand of the 300 at Thermopylae and the story of Artimisia. The extracts from Sima include hs famous letter explaining his decision to live, the basic annals of the Qin Dynasty, the legendary origins f the Han founder, the power of Empress Lu, the story of an assassin who narrowly failed to kill the First Emperor of Qin, and the customs of the Xiongnu (Huns). ( )