In the past two decades or so, there has been a widespread interest across the disciplines in the contingent and mutable forms of public memory. Much of the specialized literature is devoted to the analysis of crucial, oftentimes traumatic, moments in the recent past and the policies of remembrance articulated by different states to secure that such event and its actors are not forgotten. K. E. Brashier explores a less conventional aspect of public memory, namely the constitution of venerable figures within and without the lineage sacrifices as part of post-mortem remembrance in the early Chinese traditions. Through an informed analysis of a variety of textual sources, including transmitted texts, excavated materials, mortuary stelae, and ancestral tablets, Brashier offers a stimulating discussion of how name, age, and kinship functioned as markers of status for the deceased ancestors and reveals how tangible and intangible tools came to play to secure their continuous existence in the afterlife. Each of the book's five parts deals with these different aspects of the mechanisms of public memory.

The introduction opens with a paradox, namely, that the most effective way for an individual to ensure that his spirit would not be neglected after his departure from this world was by dissolving his individual traits and becoming part of a larger group of family forebears and cultural heroes. Brashier suitably describes this process as “pouring new ancestors into prefabricated molds” (p. 5). Next, he turns to a discussion of the methods and institutions for the diffusion of a memorial culture in the Han dynasty.

Part 1 deals with names and how they functioned as markers positioning the deceased within larger networks of kin and associates. Brashier demonstrates that the names conferred to an individual in the course of his life (courtesy, tabooed, and posthumous) carried information about his ancestral territory, his relative status within the family cults as well as in the larger community, and about probable and improbable blood ties to illustrious figures. For example, he aptly notes that the genealogy of a western Han official surnamed Zhang could include a list of illustrious figures who shared the surname, but no proven lineage connection.

Part 2 makes a case for the early Chinese perceptions of lifetime as a continuous increase in social value, against the Western European notions of an individual's lifespan as an arc in which social value reaches an apex of physical and intellectual maturity, and wanes as the body and mind begin to decay. Brashier adds that not only did common practice assign a privileged place to the elderly, but also the successive imperial dynasties in China contributed to maintaining and enforcing the social value of old age, through the conferral of symbols of status and taxation policies.

In part 3, Brashier analyzes how the networks of kinship sacrifice functioned to dilute the agency of the individuals and to connect each of them to a larger collective. He finds one excellent example of this in the rhetoric of ritual communications, which subordinated the actions of each member of this network to the established authority of the ancestors and deities. On the other hand, he is careful to show that relations implied more than mere subordination, as the accomplishments of the descendants could “pull-up” or “drag-down” the ancestors' status in the collective memory.

The next two parts deal with the tangible and intangible means employed to remember the dead. Tangible means included artifacts such as grave stelae, ancestral tablets, and commemorative portraits, while the intangible were for the most part structures of discourse that facilitated remembering the recently departed by assimilating them with venerated figures already existing in the collective memory. After a thorough treatment of these components of public memory, the conclusions are concise and straightforward, mostly highlighting how cultural values and practices of remembrance operated in tandem to reinforce the individual's insertion into larger networks.

Brashier's study makes many interesting comparisons between practices of remembrance in China and elsewhere. His concern with situatedness, albeit illuminating, seems at times to overemphasize the connections between the Greco-Roman traditions and those of the contemporary North Atlantic societies, hence reproducing the sort of reifications that comparative approaches ought to avoid. This is particularly the case with the distinction between the Western practice of identifying individuals versus the Chinese positioning of the deceased as part of larger networks, and the conventional understanding represented in the “ages of man” schema presented in part 2. Despite these minor points, Public Memory in Early China is a valuable contribution to the study of Han memorial culture. It adds one more solid knot to the net of scholarship on the matter, and it will continue to be of use for future generations.