It is easier to conquer a country than to rule it. Napoleon learned it the hard way after he conquered vast stretches of Russia. The…
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Tag: World History (Books)
Yellow and two recent books on China
These 2 recent books were bought by me to understand how far China has progressed since 1949. China Resurrected (2025) is a political history from…
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The Empire’s Last Crime Scene
A British girl was murdered in Peiping (now Peking) around midnight next to the Tartar City walls in January 1937. Her face was brutally mutilated,…
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The Hidden Power of Yongzheng
Silas H.L. Wu wrote two excellent books back in the 1970s, published by Harvard University Press, on two topics not duplicated in any books since…
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Yongzheng
There are no English biographies on Emperor Yongzheng as far as I know. To the uninitiated, he is an unimpressive emperor compared to his father,…
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The Economic Rollercoaster – Part 2
More: The 10,000 Year Rise of the World Economy by Philip Coggan is a tour de force. This 2020 book surveys how the world economy…
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The Steep Trail of Reform
Never Turn Back by Julian Gewirtz, published 2022, is a history of China in the 1980s. Julian using Chinese sources shows a China that was…
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The Economic Rollercoaster – Part 1
More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy by Philip Coggan is a tour de force. Published in 2020 this excellent book surveys how the…
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The Fragile Strength of the Qing Dynasty – Part 2
It is a fallacy to think that the Chinese emperors made decisions arbitrarily. Since the time of the Northern Song, the emperors felt compelled to…
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Rediscovering China Through French Lenses
The strength of The Republic of China 1912-1949 by Xavier Paules [ published 2019 ] is his many citations of French historians’ works. This is…
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