The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (Cambridge Illustrated Histories) Paperback – 25 Jan. 2010

Patricia Buckley writes clearly and weaves this incredibly complex story together with insight and dexterity. The unavoidable, in a book of this length, lack of detail, is sometimes frustrating but I found it really helpful in grasping the broad sweep of Chinese history and the key epochs such as the Han, The Song the Mongol incursions etc etc. Professor Ebrey's tendency to focus as much on social history as on successions of emperors brings ancient China to life. A deeply impressive achievement for less than 400 pages.

This book is different from other books on China. It provides a broad and deep understanding of the evolution of the main elements of Chinese culture, something which is had to find in other books. Most books either sum up 'historical facts' or provide view on 'the rise of China and where it will go etc.', but there often lack a true frame for understanding what has driven China over millennia to where it stand now. For what it's worth: I lived and worked about 7 years in China and believe it's good to have quality resources available for better understanding this - in my view often misunderstood - country and its people.

This book gives you an in-depth history of China up to the end of 20th century. It enables you to get a feel for the society and the technological advances made by that society well before the Europeans, It goes through the history of the various dynasties in sufficient depth to understand the why they succeeded or failed. For anyone who wants to get a good grounding in the development and history of China this is a fine book to start with and many be sufficient for all your needs.

I was looking for a basic history book to provide some insight into modern China.Just read Patricia Buckley Ebrey's 'Cambridge Illustrated History - China' (2nd Edition). Would recommend this to anyone looking for an outline history. Not that one reading of 360 odd pages makes for an expert on China. But it certainly helps in trying to understand some of the background to what is modern China.Reminds me of how little I learned about China during my school days. And how we were programmed to measure China's progress in terms of how it imitated Western culture. Wrong approach.Interesting to walk through the different dynasties - their rise and fall (Tang, Song, Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming, Qing) - through to Mao and modern China.

Fantastic history of China. Just the correct level of detail and analysis - not filled with tiny details that you will quickly forget and not so summarized that you'll feel the need to search for additional books. Perfect for a good introduction or overview.

A very interesting book, well written and illustrated. Given the complexity of China's history, it is relatively concise while covering all the relevant detail. "Concise" histories of China are often so concise as to be meaningless, "complete" histories can be boringly long, but this one was exactly what I wanted.

Having recently visited China on holiday, I was more impressed by this book which details the history of the Chinese people, clear and helpful, with sufficient detail to be extremely interesting

great book that i needed for my uni course. very interesting read