| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Michael J. Puett. To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China. (Harvard Yenching Institute Monograph Series, number 57.) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University East Asia Center, for the Harvard-Yenching Institute; distributed by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2002. Pp. xv, 358. $49.50.

This book aims to explore early theories of the "theomorphic potential" of humans, outlining the "crucial claims concerning the ability of humans to divinize themselves and thus gain control over natural phenomena" (p. 3). In Michael J. Puett's view, divinization and sacrifice designed "to manipulate ... propitiate or placate" the divine powers gradually gave way to actions through which the "adept becomes a spirit directly and appropriates ... [divine] powers" (pp. 3–4). State suppression naturally followed.

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