Book Review - The River at the Center of the World : A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time by Simon Winchester

Disappointing...
Simon Winchester's journey up the Yangtze river is often poetic and overruns with historical detail every eddie of the way up the river. If anything, this is an incredible historical text of China. The author's research is impeccable and undeniable. However, every word of the way through this book I couldn't help but feel a profound disappointment in what could have been, but clearly is not, one of the the most epic journeys of our time. Mr. Winchester's timing was perfect, a trip up the Yangtze before the Three Gorges dam would change it forever and as the country is experiencing a rebirth that will soon make it the largest economic superpower in the world where it is destined to stay for the next century.

Yet with all his research, all the planning, and all the help he received along the way, we're left with only a few hundred pages of text. Where are the thousands of pictures? Where are the video clips of his journey? Where is the interactive website? He mentions in the opening pages that he packed a Leica M6 camera but, at least in the paperback edition, there is not a single picture in the book. From a man who successfully sued the Defense Department over the Freedom of Information Action in order to get the Pentagon's most detailed maps of the river, I expected more. Instead, we are left with a very long-winded account of the author's journey, but not a deserving account of China's journey.

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