"Stanley ... renders the world of that rebellious woman, Tsuneno, so vividly that I had trouble pulling myself back into the present whenever I put the book down. Stranger in the Shogun's City is as close to a novel as responsible history can be ... What makes the book so captivating are not merely Tsuneno's stubborn attempts at self-determination, but also Stanley's enviable ability to make us feel as if we lived in 19th-century Edo with her." -Washington Post "Absorbing ... A compelling story, traced with meticulous detail and told with exquisite sympathy." -Wall Street Journal "Through Tsuneno, Stanley conjures a teeming world... This sped-up reversal of the city's demise is like a magic trick, the same one Stanley has accomplished over the previous two hundred pages, where a lost place appears to the reader as if alive and intact." -Harper's Magazine "A visit to the past that is a refreshing antidote to the histories of great men-and the occasional great woman-at times of flux...The paper trail Tsuneno left behind is remarkable; it makes clear the obstacles a strong-willed woman faced in trying to make a living in a man's world...a vivid portrait of village life and of the parts of Edo where Tsuneno lived." -The Economist "[A] masterfully told and painstakingly researched evocation of an ordinary Japanese woman's life in Edo on the eve of the opening of Japan ... Stranger in the Shogun's City is the most evocative book this review has read about Japan since The World of the Shining Prince by Ivan Morris." -Asian Review of Books "Revelatory ... deeply absorbing." -The Guardian "A vivid, polyphonic portrait of life in 19th-century Japan ... Stanley evoke[s] the Shogun era with panache and insight." -National Review of Books "Tsuneno's rebellious trajectory, preserved in her family's archive, was unusual, yet even her most commonplace steps are absorbing. Although her squabbles and triumphs (a dispute about a kimono, a new job as maid of all work to a samurai family) can only be glimpsed, Stanley's careful speculation fills the lacunae, evoking Edo's back alleys and law courts, its fashion and food." -The New Yorker "This gracefully written book is mostly concerned with imaginatively reconstructing the life of an ordinary yet extraordinary woman. The author does this by teasing meaning out of fragmentary sources, especially the letters from and about the woman in a family archive." -Los Angeles Review of Books "Carefully archived and catalogued along with the bulk of her family's correspondence, Tsuneno's letters, lists and expense diaries remain as small but important pieces of a mosaic that Stanley has elegantly and expertly reassembled into a life. In fact, the first thing one notices about Stranger in the Shogun's City is that it often reads like a novel or biography, but every turn of phrase remains steadfastly true to historical fact. Nearly 90 pages of notes, bibliography and indexing attest to Stanley's diligent and painstaking research." -Bookreporter "In addition to presenting a portrait of a city on the brink of a major cultural shift ... the work conveys a strong sense of its subject's personality, from her stubborn independent streak to her perseverance and self-described 'terrible temper.' Drawing on letters, diary entries and family papers, Stanley revives both the world Tsuneno inhabited and the 'wise, brillient, skillful' woman herself." -Smithsonian Magazine "An evocative and deeply researched portrait of 19th-century Japan through the events of one woman's life in the decades before Commodore Perry's 1853 arrival and the opening of the country to the West. Japanophiles and readers of women's history will be entranced." -Publisher's Weekly "Historian Stanley brings a deep knowledge of Japanese culture to a vibrant portrait of the Asian nation centered on the struggles of one defiant woman... an absorbing history of a vanished world." -Kirkus "Tsuneno belongs to a vanished world, but histori...
