“Opportunity for high office is a matter of fate” -Tseng Kuo Fan advising Li Hung Chang. Tseng was instrumental in crushing the Taiping Rebellion. He…
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Tag: Chinese History (Books)
Liu Hung-Chang and China’s Early Modernization
“Opportunity for high office is a matter of fate” -Tseng Kuo Fan advising Li Hung Chang. (Page 21) Li was a son of a Chin-Shih…
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Introduction to Western specialists on China’s history (Part 3)
Jonathan Spence is the doyen. Formerly a Brit, now an American, his book output on China is prolific. One of his best is Treason by…
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Introduction to Western specialists on China’s history (Part 2)
Jacques Gernet is a French sinophile. Long before the Americans, he had written highly acclaimed books on China’s history. Buddhism in Chinese Society was written…
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Introduction to Western specialists on China’s history (Part 1)
Joseph W Esherick is an expert on Chinese History. In Ancestral Leaves, he gives us a human history of China from the 14th century to…
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Mao: The Man Who Made China
This is arguably the best one-volume biography on Mao. Revised in 2017, Philip Short has written a very readable book backed up by tremendous research.…
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A Critical Introduction to Mao
This is not an introduction to Mao. It is a deep dive. In this 2010 book comprising 14 essays by 15 scholars the subjects covered…
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Mao Tse Tung (Part 1)
All biographies of Mao focus on his failures and foibles. They magnify his disastrous Hundred Flowers Campaign of Feb 1957, and the Anti-Rightist Movement that…
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Buddhism in China
This 2003 book by John Kieschnick (born 1964) is to my knowledge the latest book on Buddhism in China. It’s an excellent book. John has…
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China & The Age of The Opium War
Rutherfurd’s China is one of my rare forays into Fiction. Published in 2021 it is a grand saga of several characters swept up by the…
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