The Odyssey of China’s Imperial Art Treasures is a master narrative of the political life of art objects in China, from early Shang-dynasty bronze vessels to the “remnant collections” of the last Qing emperor now belonging to the National Palace Museum in Taiwan and the Palace Museum in Beijing. While much of what Jeannette Shambaugh Elliott and David Shambaugh have to say about the relationship between art and authority is familiar, the study is the first to present an extended account in English of the travails of creating, compiling, and protecting a national patrimony in tumultuous twentieth-century China. The book, in other words, tells the story of a gradual but seamless development of imperial collections from the first dynasty through the last, mapping the subsequent dispersal and rescue of the Qing court collection against international military incursions, diplomatic fracas, and civil war. It is organized into six chapters and an epilogue. The first two chapters provide anecdotal accounts of the function of particular objects as emblems of the court’s legitimacy and strength throughout the history of the imperium (roughly 1500 BCE–1911 CE). What was valued at court changed over time. The authors observe, for instance, that “as the older symbols...