Reviews

Clement's 'Brief History of China' is definitely just what it claims to be: An incredibly fast-paced skim through China's history in its entirety, and it attempts to cover important events, figures, weather, economics, politics, art, literature, music, legends and religion all in one book. As someone who is still somewhat new to Chinese history, this provided me with a good overview as well as a list of things I want to do further research into. However, as a reference book, I'd recommend something more like Buckley-Ebrey's 'The Cambridge Illustrated History of China' over this, as Clement's book summarises everything way too shortly for anyone to get a more detailed understanding of any of the eras. Additionally, there were some random pictures in the middle of chapters that had nothing to do with the topics on hand, and there were a couple of unprofessional mistakes in the text itself. I would recommend this book to anyone and looking to gain only a rough overview of China, and afterwards further investing some more time and money in some more specialised books on certain areas of Chinese history that interest them.

blueoranges's review

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adventurous informative medium-paced

4.0

mswm36's review against another edition

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A solid introduction to a vast topic. Those unfamiliar with the earlier dynasties will find it informative. Treatment of more recent history does feel a bit uneven: there is a fair bit about the fall of the Qing and Mao, but relatively little about the Warlord Era and only a sentence or two on the Sino-Japanese wars. Despite this, it’s a good read overall. The author does need to fire his editors, though - the book is littered with spelling and grammatical mistakes, and goodness knows how the map of modern China in chapter 11, in which two of the ‘Stans are placed squarely within the borders of the PRC, got approved.

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