Kenneth M. Swope is Professor of History and Senior Fellow of the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is also a board member of the Chinese Military History Society and the book review editor for The Journal of Chinese Military History. His publications include A Dragon's Head and a Serpent's Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592-1598; The Military Collapse of China's Ming Dynasty, 1618-1644; On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger: War, Trauma and Social Dislocation in Southwest China During the Ming-Qing Transition.

Introduction; Part One: Institutions; Chapter One: Mapping the Background: The Uncertain Influence of the Ming State and Imperial Leadership by Thomas Nimick; Chapter Two: Nanjing's Longjiang Shipyard Treatise and Our Knowledge of Ming Ships by Sally Church; Chapter Three: How Yongle Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gun: Perspectives on Early Ming Military History by Tonio Andrade; Chapter Four: The Paradoxical Effect of Autocracy: Collective Deliberation in the Ming Official Merit-Evaluation System by Yang Wei; Chapter Five: Deserts and Islands: Politics and Border Control, 1547-49 by Roland Higgins; Part Two: Ideas; Chapter Six: Cartography in the Ming by Ken Hammond; Chapter Seven: Gender & Religion in the Ming by Ann Waltner; Chapter Eight: Adopting an Orphan: Theater and Urban Culture in Ming China by Yuming He; Chapter Nine: Theater and Society in the Ming World by Hsiao Li-ling; Part Three: Identities; Chapter Ten: The Han-ness of Ming China by Leo Shin; Chapter Eleven: The Hall of Supreme Harmony as Simulacrum of Ming Dynasty Construction by Aurelia Campbell; Chapter Twelve: The Confucian Ideal Friend by Ying Zhang; Chapter Thirteen: The Lineage Organization in Ming China: A Case Study of Haining by Ivy Lim; Chapter Fourteen: Soaring Dragon Amid Dynastic Transition: Dates and Legitimacy among the Post-Ming Chinese Diaspora by Xing Hang; Part Four: Individuals; Chapter Fifteen: The Legend of Tang Saier by Kenneth M. Swope; Chapter Sixteen: Wang Yangming in Chuzhou and Nanjing, 1513-1516: "I Have only two words to say: "Be Truthful!"' by Larry Israel; Chapter Seventeen: Zhang Dai's Musical Life by Joseph Lam; Chapter Eighteen: The Making of an Empress in Life and Death: Empresses Xiaoduan's and Xiaojing's Burial Goods in the Ding Mausoleum by Yu-ping Luk; Chapter Nineteen: From Peasant Rebel to Loyalist: The Career of Li Dingguo by Kenneth M. Swope; Part Five: Interactions; Chapter Twenty: The Ming as a Eurasian Power by Edward L. Farmer; Chapter Twenty-one: Contested Histories of Ming Agency in the Java Sea, Straits of Melaka and Bay of Bengal Region by Kenneth R. Hall; Chapter Twenty-two: Dai Viet & The Ming World by John K. Whitmore; Chapter Twenty-three: Korean Eunuchs as Imperial Envoys: Relations with Chosôn Through the Zhengde Reign by Wang Sixiang; Chapter Twenty-four: War and Commerce in the Sino-Korean Borderland of the Late Sixteenth Century by Masato Hasegawa; Selected Chinese Character Glossary; Bibliography; Index