Here are 3 excellent books on life in wartime China from Western perspectives. Based on diaries and letters, the literature here transports us vividly to…
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Tag: Historical China Biographies
Sunday Book Haul
Last Sunday I bought 3 excellent books at Kinokuniya KLCC. The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials by Telford Taylor is a memoir by one of…
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The Box with the Sunflower Clasp
Reading this sad memoir of a Jewish family in Vienna and a Jew in Berlin trying to stay alive and flee their homelands reminds me…
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Zhou En Lai A Life – Part 3
The Xian Incident, (12–25 Dec 1936), is a major turning point in Chinese history. The incident refers to the arrest of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang…
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Zhou Enlai
There are 5 substantial biographies on Zhou Enlai in the English language. A Political Life was published in 2006 by the Chinese University of Hong…
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Emperor Huizong – Part 2
This magnificent 661- page biography of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty is a wonderful synthesis of the life of Prince of Duan from birth…
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Emperor Huizong – Part 1
This is a magnificent 661- page biography of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty. Published in 2014 this is the only full-length biography in English.…
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As Equals: The Oei Women of Java
As Equals: The Oei Women of Java is a pace- driven narrative of three independent Chinese women living in a male-dominated society of the fin-de-siècle…
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Remembering China
Remembering China 1935-1945 is a memoir by an American teacher who went to Tientsin to teach in the year 1935. She was young having just…
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The Unfinished Revolution
This biography of Sun Yat Sen published in 2017 is a wonderful read. It is a useful addition to the corpus as the last substantial…
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