Where does Neo-Confucianism - a movement that from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries profoundly influenced the way people understood the world and responded to it - fit into our story of China's history?This interpretive, at times polemical, inquiry into the Neo-Confucian engagement with the literati as the social and political elite, local society, and the imperial state during the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties is also a reflection on the role of the middle period in China's history. The book argues that as Neo-Confucians put their philosophy of learning into practice in local society, they justified a new social ideal in which society at the local level was led by the literati with state recognition and support. The later imperial order, in which the state accepted local elite leadership as necessary to its own existence, survived even after Neo-Confucianism lost its hold on the center of intellectual culture in the seventeenth century but continued as the foundation of local education. It is the contention of this book that Neo-Confucianism made that order possible.

本书对士之转型的梳理，直接继承和发扬了美国宋史学界关注“士人”的学术创变，而更为难能可贵的是，它在此基础上，积极地探索了深入理解唐宋思想转型的新方法与新道路， 它不依循理学的惯常叙述思路，而是从唐宋思想史的内部出发，揭示其起伏转折的轨迹。唐宋思想许多为人忽视的重要内涵，得到丰满的呈现，而理学的兴起这一前人论之甚多的问题，也因从唐宋士人转型和思想转型的大背景来观察，有了别开生面的阐发。书中对思想史的研究，综合了政治史、社会史、文学史等诸多领域的观察 ，其中从“文”的视角切入思想史，将文学史与思想史结合起来观察 ，既令人耳目一新，又深有所见。

《宋代研究工具书刊指南(修订版)》在1990年初版和1996年第二版的基础上增补了条目200多条，收录了与有宋一代社会各个方面研究相关的包括中、日、韩、英、法、德等6国文字的参考资料，共分为综合性工具书、思想、宗教、社会、经济、政治、法律、文学、芸术、史籍、地理、宋代版本、石刻文献、拓本、宋代研究会等11个主题，先按主题、再按参考书种类编排，主题之下，条目按用途范围与出版时间排列；每条目首列条目名称，其后分列：责任者、发表（出版）单位或部门、发表（出版）时间或起止时间等。附《美国国会图书馆标题表内有关宋代内容资料标题》。