Change: Eight Lectures on the "I Ching"

During the dark days of 1943 in Japanese occupied Peking a small community of German speaking people who didn't associate in any way with the remainder of the German community there congregated occasionally in the home of Wilhelm Haas, explains Hellmut Willhelm in the preface of this book. The members of the group were almost entirely unfamiliar with the I Ching. In their midst, however, was one of the foremost non-Chinese I Ching scholars alive, Wilhelm. Hass asked him to give a few lectures to the group to help them understand the history, use and concepts behind the I Ching. As an introduction to the Book of Changes by a master these eight lectures cover an enormous amount of ground in an easy, understandable way. The translations from German to English by Cary F. Baynes are, as always, excellent. I'd recommend this book as an accompanyment to the Baynes or Richard John Lynn translations of the Book of Changes, certainly. But for anyone using the I Ching in any translation, whatever the level of scholarship, this book will probably be a source of useful information you didn't have before.