China Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties: 2 (History of Imperial China) Paperback – 1 April 2011

A very interesting history of China in a fascinating period of its history, between the end of the Han Dynasty and the rise of the Sui. This is perhaps not a book for the general reader, but anyone who is interested in China apart from a cursory overview will find it invaluable.

I am engineer by profession and passionate for history in my day to day life, especially, that history that can explain why humanity and the society where we are born was shaped by our past. Then "China between Empires" gives us an explanation of how China was crossing the road from the dissolution of the Han empire until the dawn of reunification with the Tang empire, describing the geography of north and south China , the enthronement of Buddhism, the habits of the common man and the literati. There is not superficial presentation of facts, but neither reaches a profundazacion of events that take us away from the objective of knowing how a people was forging its destiny othe moment they needed the domain and administration of agriculture and water. An excellent book.

In this second volume of a six volume series on the history of imperial China the roughly 400 years between the decline of the Han dynasty and the emergence of the Tang dynasty are covered. Politically, these were rather turbulent times, during which China was divided into various kingdoms, which themselves were governed by successive regimes. In the Northern part of China, most of these regimes were coming from non-Han groups, which assimilated into the Han main culture in different degrees, which is complicating the political and cultural history even further.For this book Mark E. Lewis has chosen the same structure as in his other two contributions to the series -  The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (History of Imperial China)  and  China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (History of Imperial China) , i.e. he is only giving a rather short narrative of the political history, and then covers the development of various aspects like urban and rural society, religion, literature and family during the period in question. Due to the complexity of the political history with its many short-lived states and governments, however, this set-up of the book does not work as well as in the other books. Consequently, for me a lot of re-checking with the time table in the attachments was required in order to keep on track while reading the various chapters.Nevertheless, the book is still (comparatively) nice to read and informative, and it shows how certain differences between Northern and Southern China started to develop. Under consideration that there is hardly any other work on this period available, the book still fully deserves four stars. The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (History of Imperial China)China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (History of Imperial China)

This is a broad overview of the political and cultural changes in the period. The book is clearly and well written, with good maps and useful illustrations. The reviewer who says there is nothing new here is off the mark, at least for the non-specialist.

Very good.