Good book on China

[Delta]

I was wondering if anyone could recommend to me a good book on China. I'm woefully ignorant of the historical events in China and how they led to China's present reality. Please mention the perspective of the author when listing the book. Thanks in advance comrades :D

[SandyAnon]

Meisner's Mao's China and After

K. S. Karol's The Second Chinese Revolution

Jean Dubier's History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Wheelright and McFarlane's The Chinese Road to Socialism

Hunter's Shanghai Journal

Hinton's Turning Point in China

These are some good books to start with. They have various problems and some of the views conflict.

[Delta]

Thanks for your reply. I looked at some reviews and decided to buy the first one :)

[Janus]

I was wondering if anyone could recommend to me a good book on China.
You need to be a lot more specific than that; China has over 4,000 years of history.


I'm woefully ignorant of the historical events in China and how they led to China's present reality.
So are you looking for books that have more to do with the modern period i.e. China's history during and following the collapse of the Qing dynasty?

[Delta]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13, 2007 07:40 pm

I was wondering if anyone could recommend to me a good book on China.
You need to be a lot more specific than that; China has over 4,000 years of history.


I'm woefully ignorant of the historical events in China and how they led to China's present reality.
So are you looking for books that have more to do with the modern period i.e. China's history during and following the collapse of the Qing dynasty?
Yes, I should have been more specific. I meant modern history.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

This is one of the best:

http://www.marxists.de/china/harris/index.htm

[MarxSchmarx]

I was wondering if anyone could recommend to me a good book on China. I'm woefully ignorant of the historical events in China and how they led to China's present reality. Please mention the perspective of the author when listing the book. Thanks in advance comrades :D

Edgar Snow's "Red Star Over China." A (depressing, IMHO) classic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_Over_China

My personal favorite on modern Chinese history is:
"Thread of Silkworm" by Iris Chang.
http://www.irischang.net/press_article.cfm?n=12

This amazing book tells the story of how cold war paranoia in the U$A helped the "Communist" Chinese build nuclear weapons to take out San Francisco and LA.

Finally, anything by Arif Dirlik is worth reading. My personal (biased) favorite is:

Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/5678.html

which is also his most readable take on the events of 1911.

Sadly, a lot of the commentary on current affairs lacks a unified treatment, but some steps in that direction are in:

Holding China Together: Diversity and National Integration in the Post-Deng Era

http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalog...isbn=0521837308 (http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521837308)

I don't buy most of their arguments, but it does delve into some of the history behind why things ended up the way they did. Yang's work in general is refreshing, and he summarizes many of his current results in chp. 6.