Recent work on the Documents classic has led Professor Nylan to return to her initial interests in Chinese history and what propelled her to be a Han historian, and specifically what institutions (domestic and official) are needed for human beings to flourish and for the court to claim legitimacy for most of its subjects? As a scholar of classical learning during the early empires (roughly 323 BC–AD 316), Professor Nylan asks the basic question: what do the Five Classics enjoin as vital to good governance in the way of court culture, court customs, and sociopolitical institutions? (In the early empires, the Documents classic — and not the Analects, Mencius, or Rites classics — was the key repository of authoritative political models.)