But given the substantial amount of other evidence about the Ming Dynasty, a more useful framing device would have helped locate the figures Clunas chronicles, and made their analysis seem less iconoclastic. Clunas persuades the reader that these particular figures saw the way that a home or a garden was organized paralleled the way that a human mind and life should be organized. But can a relatively small number of intellectuals seem to represent an era? Another way of looking at this technique is to ask that if one were analyzing Europe of this period, could one construct a historiography simply of an analysis of Machiavelli and Michelangelo? Probably not -- there must be some greater historical...

Especially for someone who is not well-versed in the period, this book may seem to be on shaky ground, with many of the blanket assumptions it makes regarding life during the period, and the ways that material organization and the value of objects reflected the view of human life.
Works Cited

Clunas, Craig. Superfluous Things: Social Status and Material Culture in Early Modern

China. Chicago: Illinois University Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2004.

Craig Clunas." University of London: SOAS. Faculty Biography. 2006. [2 Dec 2006] http://www.soas.ac.uk/art/clunas.html