This 1970s scholarly book provides a lot of information about the history of Jinan between 1890 and 1949, much of it in English for the first time. As a source for facts and research ideas, it is very good. It has drawbacks in other areas, however.

First, the entire point of the book seems flawed. Buck wanted to take a Chinese city that had all the ingredients needed to turn itself into a modern Western-style city, and see whether such a transformation could have taken place, and if not, why not. The entire premise is that the Western-style city is the natural course for a city to take, and China is somehow lacking for failing to develop in the same way as the West. In reality, might it not be Western cities that are the anomalies?

In addition, Buck's conceptual framework, while dealing with Western ideas of the city, makes only a passing reference to the work of Skinner, as though Buck was rushed for time and could not fully incorporate Skinner's economic ideas into his thesis. Although the title of the book claims that the book goes through 1949, in reality it stops somewhere in the early 1930s, with a vague later section which merely repeats then-current Communist rhetoric about turning "consumer cities" into "producer cities." This rhetoric is not subjected to critical scrutiny.

I wished for more maps and other visual material, as well as for more stories, non-scholarly sources such as novels and plays, and other materials that would have given a more vivid sense of the city. If one compares this book to the later 2-volume work on the city of Hankow by Rowe, Buck's book does seem lacking; nevertheless, it remains a valuable resource for students of Shandong province.