About This Site
What this is
The Mozi Bookshelf (book.themodel.be) is a book guide for people who want to read Mozi (Mo Tzu) — the fifth-century-B.C. philosopher of universal love and the case against aggressive war — and are unsure which door to take: a short selection, a teaching anthology, the 944-page complete translation, or a scholarly study. This English edition selects five titles currently available on amazon.com and lays them out in a reading order that won't defeat you — from Watson's accessible selection and Van Norden's introduction, through the Readings anthology, to Johnston's complete translation and Fraser's modern study. A Japanese edition is also maintained, alongside sister shops such as The Philosophy Bookshelf.
The editorial room runs a family of philosopher bookshelves and a section-by-section reading archive of the primary texts (in Japanese). Every review and reading-order recommendation on this site rests on that first-hand reading and on explicit bibliographic checking.
A note on the English edition
The Japanese edition of this shelf is built around three classic Japanese translations of the Mozi (by Mori Mikisaburō, Asano Yūichi, and Kanaya Osamu) — editions with no counterpart in English. Rather than force those onto a shelf where they do not exist, the English edition substitutes the closest respected works from established academic publishers: Burton Watson's and Ian Johnston's translations and Chris Fraser's study (Columbia University Press), and the Ivanhoe–Van Norden anthology and Van Norden's introduction (Hackett). The role each book plays — selection, complete text, anthology, introduction, or study — is stated plainly in every review.
How books are chosen and rated
- Judgements about the works themselves rest on the editorial room's first-hand reading. Star ratings are our own; no Amazon customer reviews are reproduced.
- Where a book is a primary selection, a complete translation, a teaching anthology, an introduction, or a scholarly study, the review says exactly what it is and what role it can honestly play. A guide is scaffolding, not the building — and we say so.
- All descriptions are written by us; no publisher copy is reproduced.
- We favour editions currently in print and available on amazon.com (Columbia University Press, Hackett, and the like), and we are explicit about which edition a review is based on.
- Cover images are jacket-style images of our own design and differ from the actual covers.
- Prices and availability change, so we do not print them; always check the Amazon product page.
Amazon link disclosure
As an Amazon Associate, this site (The Mozi Bookshelf) may earn from qualifying purchases.
Book links on this edition go to product pages on Amazon (amazon.com). If a purchase is made through them, this site may receive a commission at no additional cost to you. Commissions never influence the ratings — recommending books you will actually finish, rather than books that merely sell, is in the end what serves readers best.
Privacy policy
This is a static site; no personal information is collected server-side. The browser's localStorage is used solely to count link clicks (to improve the ranking's accuracy); that data stays in your browser and is never transmitted. Once you follow a link to Amazon, Amazon.com's privacy policy applies.
Contact
For corrections and inquiries, please use the contact address on our sister site soqdoq.com.