This is a compilation of famous Chinese classical essays. This aims to be a good textbook for schooling in Qing Dynasty. Similar book recommendations can be seen in the essay 《书目答问》 by Zhang Zhidong (张之洞).
Name of the book: - 古文:先秦两汉流行的质朴自由、以散行单句为主的文风 - 观止:所收录的文章代表文言文的最高水平,学习文言文至此观止矣,类春江花月夜之“孤篇横绝全唐诗”之评价。
There is few I can comment, since almost each essay is a very good read, both for literary writing and for the ideas behind.
1) Beautiful proses: - 卷七 六朝 唐文 - 卷十一 宋文 - 卷十二 明文 Many of them are worth to be recited :).
2) Most are argument essays on history and politics. The reason might be 科举 (605-1905), the election of officials by exams on political essays, literary writing, comprehension of classic Confucius books, etc. For these essays, they can be good as some common sense of Chinese history, but for real world decision-making, it is better to take formal political science courses, and do not simply make analogy by the events described the essays here. The signal-to-noise ratio is low, because many facts are lost or inaccurate since they are really old, the key reason for success/failure are usually only known to the core people but not to the mass, the history that are kept has been filtered through many dynasties, and, more importantly, similar events occur everywhere and at any historical moment, so we can find substitutes in the news in recent decades, or modern history in the recent hundreds of years.
This book is a pearl at the heart of Chinese literature, and a river that carries bits of thoughts which make up the Chinese philosophy. It shines richly without the time-worn muffled edges, and purifies our souls still. Scattered pieces of history shall guide us through our forests, in the sense that, as Jorge Luis Borges said, every writer creates his own precursors.