Charles Van Tuyl's translation of CHINA ILLUSTRATA is a literary piece of art. It provides the Modern reader in English with a powerful document through which to better understand East-West relations. It offers a thoughtful picture of "old China."

At last! Charles Van Tuyl's translation of Athanasius Kircher's "China Illustrated" reveals the finer nuances of a text almost 400 years of its time. This book not only shows how China appeared to the first European missionaries and travelers, but illuminates how the cultures of Europe and Asia influenced each other from the earliest times . . . most modern scholars and researchers are only beginning to understand these relationships.

This book is an extraordinary example of what is yet to come as more of Athenasius' works are uncovered and translated. This treatment is extraordinarily lucid and shares intimate glimpses of how this man lived his private life and shared his voracious curiosity with the world.

This catalogue, which documents an exhibition held at the University of Chicago Library two years ago, serves as a fine introduction to Kircher, as well as an important constellation of figures at the heart of seventeenth century Baroque Rome. Kircher, one of the most prodigious of seventeenth century polymaths, sat at the helm of the Jesuit Collegio Romano and had connections with the likes of Galileo and Borromini. Kircher created endlessly absorbing, vertiginous works on a variety of topics, including magic lanterns, Chinese wonders, Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Temple of Solomon, the Tower of Babel and music. The catalogue has clear, but reduced, reproductions of the etched illustrations from several of these works. In the accompanying essay, the author does a fine job of illuminating the many strands of Kircher's work, providing numerous insights into Jesuit/Baroque science and politics, as well as seventeenth century art and architecture. The catalogue certainly makes one wish for a full scale study of Kircher in the near future.

Not so much a book as a collection of essays of first-rate quality about the 17th century Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. The range of academic disciplines of the contributors is a testimony to the egregious intellect of Kircher - music, Egyptology, code-writing, Astronomy, acoustics, the kabbala and hermetic knowledge, medicine - the range is astonishing. It was the synthesis of all these disciplines made possible in a colossal intellect inspired by the Jesuit doctrine that God can be found in all things which made Kircher so unique in his time and in these times of excessive specialisation so unlikely to be found again. The book is hughly recommended.