During his long reign, the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661–1722) established many of the spaces and practices that defined the Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1644–1911) as both a continuation of the Chinese imperium and a new multiethnic and multicultural empire. The main site where the emperor himself carried out this endeavor was his summer palace: the Mountain Estate to Escape the Heat (Bishu Shanzhuang 避暑山莊), in the city of Rehe (today known as Chengde), in Hebei province approximately 150 miles northeast of the Forbidden City. Built in the early eighteenth century, the estate was rebuilt by Kangxi's grandson, the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–95), whose later imprint has dominated both the site and studies of it. As the jacket description rightly notes, Stephen H. Whiteman's Where Dragon Veins Meet is the “first monograph in any language to focus solely on the art and architecture of the Kangxi court,” and thus it is also inherently the first to focus exclusively on the Mountain Estate during the Kangxi period. This book therefore fills a monumental gap in the art, architectural, and landscape histories of the early modern world, providing a long-overdue interdisciplinary discussion of the Qing emperor whose reign and works overlapped with those of better-studied contemporaries such as the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707), the Russian czar Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725), and the French king Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715).Established in 1702 and constructed over several years, the Mountain Estate was strategically located at a node through which, Kangxi argued, the empire's geomantic energy flowed down along the empire's “dragon veins” (longmai 龍脈). These eponymous veins of the book's title refer to traditional Chinese beliefs about the geomantic topography of the empire. To reduce an extremely complex topic to a brief explanation: these veins of geomantic power originate in certain mountains and ranges, and their auspicious energy flows down to and is dispersed across the empire by its waterways. However, the Manchu homeland of the Qing emperors lay well north of the Great Wall; although that region had been periodically incorporated into empires led by nomadic conquest dynasties (most famously the Mongols), both conceptually and geographically it lay well outside the traditional historical borders of the Han Chinese empire. Through paintings, prints, maps, poetry, prose, architecture, and the landscape itself, Kangxi worked to integrate the Mountain Estate into the empire and to craft a new site through which to negotiate and represent Qing imperial ideology.Whiteman's introduction, “Historicizing the Early Qing Landscape,” and conclusion, “The Landscape of the Emperor,” together best demonstrate the integration of interdisciplinary methodologies in the book. The linked histories of gardens, landscapes, art, architecture, poetry, and prose are viewed through the lens of early modern global history and historical geography, with digital spatial humanities used to filter out the diachronic identity of the site. The tools and methods of digital and spatial humanities supportthe author's argument, and the twenty-one original maps created with geographic information systems (GIS) technology are unquestionably this publication's most compelling illustrations. These maps are a major contribution to the topic and to the field, and their clean, straightforward presentation elegantly highlights the combined historical and technical work involved in their creation.The introduction and conclusion bracket the book's unusual quadripartite division of six chapters. Part I, “Recovering the Kangxi Landscape,” begins with a translated excerpt of a key primary source, a court official's “Record of Traveling at the Invitation of the Emperor,” which literally lays the groundwork for chapter 1, “Reconstructing Kangxi.” Part II, titled “Allegories of Empire,” includes chapters 2 and 3, respectively titled “Mountain Veins” and “Only Here in Rehe,” which are also punctuated by a translated excerpt of the primary source “Record of the Mountain Estate to Escape the Heat,” written by Kangxi himself. In these first two parts and three chapters, Whiteman focuses on reclaiming the Kangxi landscape of the Mountain Estate and uncovering its ideological foundations that were later buried by Qianlong's additions.Parts III and IV focus on pictorial works that represent the garden. Titled “Space and Pictoriality,” part III includes chapter 4, “Painting and the Surveyed Site,” and chapter 5, “Paper Gardens.” Part IV, “The Metonymic Landscape” consists of one chapter, chapter 6, “Touring the Rear Park.” In the second half of the book, therefore, Whiteman analyzes extant painted and printed works depicting the sitethat were commissioned by Kangxi, and demonstrates how they promoted his vision of the site as well asbroader Qing imperial ideology. A number of digital visualizations illustrate the various Chinese modes of looking at and representing the landscape, which offered clear alternatives to European linear perspective as equally powerful ideological tools for representing early modern empires.The multiplicity of media involved in both Kangxi's endeavor and this book itself is remarkable. A significant scholarly challenge is inherent in the material, linguistic, temporal, and representational diversity of Whiteman's resources. These include the physical landscape itself, printed and painted pictorial representations of the historical landscape, both historical and modern bespoke cartographic representations of the historical landscape, multiple cartographic and representational techniques that are often at odds with each other (bird's-eye views with linear perspective, for example), and poetry and prose descriptions. The range of skills that the author needed to develop, first to conduct the research for this project and then to present it in a single volume, is extremely impressive.By including the extended excerpts of translated prose essays together with Kangxi's poetry about the site, Whiteman draws us into the narrative and stimulates our curiosity about the original Chinese texts. Contrary to standard practice, however, these original texts are not available to consult in the book itself, either in the print edition or in the electronic version. Thus, readers are unable to compare the original and translated texts quickly and easily. Instead, the “Note to Readers” states that the Chinese texts are available online, yet at the time of this writing (May 2021), those texts were still not available for consultation. The URL given for the Chinese texts connects readers of the book to the website of the Art History Publication Initiative (AHPI), which works with the University of Washington Press and three other publishers to provide the online content for books supported under the AHPI program. As of this writing, the website states only that “supplementary materials including maps and original Chinese texts will soon be available on this site.”1 The site features some of the volume's images and one very useful map collating the Kangxi- and Qianlong-era structures that is not included in the published book. For these primary Chinese sources to remain unavailable so long after the book's publication is entirely mystifying, especially given their essential importance for the author's argument and the significant space devoted to their translations in the book. At a time of global pandemic, when library access is restricted and budgets (both personal and institutional) are tighter than ever, the continued absence of these primary sources contradicts the author's and publisher's generous intentions of making them freely available online.Ultimately, Where Dragon Veins Meet is a complex book distinguished by clear writing, innovative maps, and subtle argumentation, all of which interact in the same multimedia manner as the Kangxi emperor's own products. The book is a major contribution to multiple fields and convincingly demonstrates “the potential of a connected history of Qing art in the early modern world” (10). In addition to expanding the histories of Chinese art, architecture, and designed landscapes, Whiteman contributes to the diversification of the spatial humanities with his focus on late imperial China. This book accomplishes a great deal, but, more important, it lays a firm foundation for future scholarship on Kangxi and the global early modern landscape.