This book provides a fascinating illustration of how history has been used and abused in attempts to frame national consciousness. Through the nuanced study of a wide spectrum of primary sources and secondary scholarship in many languages, Professor Xu reveals ubiquitous slippages from scholarly inquiry to political ideology. Although she trains her focus on the Korean case, her findings are paradigmatic. The importance of this book therefore goes far beyond the field of Northeast Asian historiography: it deserves the attention of a broad readership of historians and social scientists.