Paul R. Katz, 2014, Religion in China and its Modern Fate, 242 pages, Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press.

This study explores processes of change that shaped the fate of Chinese religion during the last decade of the Qing dynasty and the entire Republican era. It endeavors to place religion at the core of understanding modern Chinese history by assessing three forms of change: 1) Mutations of communal structures of religion; 2) Innovative productions of religious knowledge; 3) New types of elite religiosity. The first of these analytical frameworks level is macro-social, and looks at the entirety of Chinese communal life. The second focuses on smaller institutions, in this case religious publishing houses and the associations that supported them, while the third deals with individuals. The above three frameworks are united by a common research agenda, namely to trace the ways in which the vast religious resources that circulated throughout Chinese society during the late imperial period were reconfigured in new ways during the modern era.