A review by apatrick
Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern by Jing Tsu

4.0

I knew very little about the Chinese writing system before reading this, and though I still have a lot to learn, this was pretty informative. If you have ever wondered how China (and other countries that use Chinese characters) adapted to modern printing, then computer-based communication, this is a great source. It's pretty accessible, and I learned a lot about Chinese history over the past several hundred years, with a special focus on political history of the 20th century.

There's such a huge gap between alphabetical and ideographical writing systems that this is probably going to be a tough read if you have zero background on the subject, but I'm not subtracting a star for that, because I think this is still aimed at a popular audience; at least, it's not so technical or academic that it's tough to understand.