Chinese Calligraphy: From Pictograph to Ideogram: The History of 214 Essential Chinese/Japanese Characters

Beautiful written characters combined with excelent text and funny image. Good for both students and teachers !

I was ecstatic to find this book! It is more than just a dictionary reference with cut-and-dry Pin Yin to English translations. For each of the 214 radicals, you get a nice story explaining the history of the radical along with illustrations of the character's evolution from ancient pictographs to its current form. There is also a step-by-step demonstration on how the strokes are arranged including what order and what stroke (if they do not already come naturally to you). And if all that weren't enough, each page has short list of characters that use a particular radical so you can see the radicals in action. This book is definitely useful if you are fascinated by the cultural depictions in traditional Chinese writing. You will be learning things even literate Chinese folks don't know. However, this book probably won't help you much if you are an absolute beginner. For best results, you should at least have a working knowledge to build off of.

Chinese Calligraphy by Edoardo Fazzioli provides a complete history of all 214 essential Chinese and Japanese calligraphic letters. Highly recommended for a specialized audience of college-level students in either language or art.

If you respond to the beauty of Chinese calligraphy then this book is an enlightening introduction. Having no formal background in the subject, I can't debate the merits of Fazzioli's scholarship, but for aesthetic reasons I give it five stars.