A groundbreaking ethnography of the Yi, 7 million of whom live in China's Yunnan province. It's also an illuminating study of the wages of communism on China's minority peoples. "The age of wild ghosts" is how, in popular parlance, the Yi refer to the last 40-odd years, from the Great Leap Forward of 1958 (and the resultant famine) to the present day. The author, a professor of anthropology, focuses his discussion on the Yi's collective sense of loss, guilt and sadness.  (CHN168, $25.95)