A review by nemuruyuu
A Brief History of China: Dynasty, Revolution and Transformation: From the Middle Kingdom to the People's Republic by Jonathan Clements

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.