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57
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
32/100Critics
50/100Scholars
89/100Author:
Timothy Brook
Publisher:
Harper
Date:
March 17, 2020
Timothy Brook analyzes the last eight centuries of Chinaâs relationship with the world in this history that brings together accounts from civil servants, horse traders, spiritual leaders, explorers, pirates, emperors, migrant workers, invaders, visionaries, and traitorsâcreating a multifaceted portrait of this highly misunderstood nation.
What The Reviewers Say
Scattered across the maps and paintings that Brook invokes, his 13 encounters take in pirates, merchants, soldiers, traders, explorers, emperors and spiritual leaders – characters in China’s complex trade, military, spiritual and political relationships down the centuries. Brook unravels the threads of these relationships across a canvas of war, friendship, savage struggles for power, lethal epidemic disease, triumph and calamity. It is a dizzying and exhilarating journey.
Mr. Brook...has written a work that is less a history of China than a kaleidoscope of fragmentary images conjured from equally fragmentary historical sources.
...excellent.
These days, historians of China and foreign correspondents usually focus on a particular period or a single figure. What a pleasure to read a significant, original book that covers millennia of Chinese history in an informal, often chatty, but always learned style.
