The Story of China: The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream - Michael Wood


 About the Book

 

A single volume history of China, offering a look into the past of the global superpower and its significance today.

Michael Wood has travelled the length and breadth of China producing a magisterial new book that combines a sweeping narrative of China's story with the stories of its people, the history of its landscape and commentary from his extensive travel journals. He begins with a look at China's prehistory--the early dynasties, the origins of the Chinese state, and the roots of Chinese culture in the teachings of Confucius. He looks at particular periods and themes that are being revaluated by historians now such as The Renaissance of the Song with its brilliant scientific discoveries. He offers a revaluation of the Qing Empire in the 18th century, just before the European impact, a time when China's rich and diverse culture was at its height. Wood takes a new look at the encounter with the West, the Opium Wars, clashes with the British and the extraordinarily rich debates in the late 19th century as to which path China should take to move forward into modernity.

Finally, he brings the story up to today by giving readers a clear, current account of China post 1949 complete with a more balanced view of Mao based on newly-opened archives. In the final chapter, Wood considers the provocative question of when, if ever, China will rule the world. Michael Wood's The Story of China answers that question and is the indispensable book about the most intriguing and powerful country amassing power on the world stage today.

 

624 pages (hardcover)
Published on November 17, 2020
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My dad was a university professor. When I was a kid, he’d often host students from other countries. I grew up in a house where students from Georgia, Germany, Russia, and China came in and out of my life frequently. Though I was just a kid, often my first real understanding of the wider world came from these visits. I remember, for example, we had some people over at our house from Georgia right around when the USSR was collapsing. The first time I ever heard the word “Stalin” was at that meal, when my dad was discussing the collapse of the USSR and its subsequent fallout with them. 

 

A few years later, my dad got a job teaching at a university in China, and from that point on, he’d spend every summer teaching in China, and then sometime during the year, a group of Chinese students from that university would come to our house. 

 

It was a real eye-opening experience, to be able to talk to these people who were from such different parts of the world. These visits opened up the world for me in a way I don’t think I’ve really appreciated until I got older. My dad would tell me stories about what it was like to teach at universities in other countries, and when people from these far-flung nations and diverse cultures would come to our house, I’d sit at the table while they talked to my parents and soak up everything they said like a sponge. It always fascinated me. 

 

But China is not a place I know very well. I’ve never been there. My dad has told me some things, and I’ve talked to the Chinese exchange students that would come to our house, but I don’t really know China. To be quite honest, the country has always intimidated me because it’s so ancient. There’s just so much of it, where do you start? When I saw this book, I honestly had almost no hope for it. How on earth could someone distill the history of an entire region of the world that spans so much time into one book, no matter how long? 

 

Well, the truth is, you can’t. Not really. There’s just so much there, that all you can expect from a book like this is an overview. Some topics are going to be touched on in more depth than others, but if you want to really get into the details of any specific event, you’ll have to use this book as a jumping-off point for further research. However, that’s not really a bad thing. I don’t know a whole lot about China, and what I really needed was an overview, an introduction, as it were. An overview to show me just how rich the history is, presented in such a way that allowed me to shake hands with it, and really get comfortable. 

 

The Story of China is an absolutely fascinating book, which almost feels cinematic in how it is written. Some of the events and people are focused on in such a way, I could almost feel the camera zooming in on a macro level, really allowing me to not only understand what I was reading about, but also forging a connection that made me truly care. The way Michael Wood writes this book kept me engaged and enthralled in a way that a lot of nonfiction books just don’t manage.

 

The history covered in this book is told in chronological order, but Wood intersperses modern-day events and more modern details into the narrative here or there, thus showing the reader how history impacts the modern day. One cannot really exist without the other. These connections were rather fascinating to see, and it’s something I wish more historical nonfiction authors would infuse their writing with. History does not happen in a vacuum and being able to actually see how the ripples in the historical pond spread out and impact other, more modern events and/or people, was really one of the most interesting parts of the book. 

 

The research that went into this book is absolutely mindboggling. There are a lot of referenced texts, artwork, and the like. I was quite honestly amazed by the amount of detail packed into this historical account. Woods absolutely infuses The Story of China with information, and somehow he never manages to lose sight of the story he’s actually telling, nor does the research become cumbersome, overwhelming, or confusing. He knows when to zoom his camera in and focus on one specific detail, person, or event, and when to use his wide-angle lens to show the sprawling scope, the wider landscape, the totality of the event. 

 

There are some familiar events covered here like the rise and fall of dynasties, the Terracotta Army, the flooding of the Yangtze River, famines, and more. There is also a lot here that you won’t be aware of, and all those connections I mention above make all of this even more interesting. In fact, I daresay, out of all the history books I’ve read in my life, this had to be one of the most informative, enjoyable ones. There’s something about the way Woods manages to tell such a sprawling, illustrious history with such intimacy and care that just worked for me. 

 

Lush descriptions of landscapes, palaces, cities, and officials brought many of the settings and the people to life. Outside forces that impacted events were covered, like the Little Ice Age, which brought sweeping political change to the fore. Small facts dropped in here or there were, quite honestly, staggering. For example, by the time the Western calendar began, there were already 140,000 literate Chinese bureaucrats employed by the Qin state. There was also a fairly nuanced study of Mao, which surprised me, as he is such a polarizing figure and is easily painted over with a large brush. 

 

While I truly loved this book, I will say that readers who are familiar with China’s history might not find anything new here. This is, after all, an overview. It’s a long book, but there is absolutely no way you can cover a history as storied and intricate as China’s adequately in one volume. For people like me, who aren’t terribly familiar with the region, this is exactly what the doctor ordered, and it’s given me a ton of ideas about books I want to read next, and things I want to learn about. I do advise, however, to keep in mind this is an overview, and depending on your familiarity with China, it may or may not give you new information. 

 

For me, though, The Story of China blew my socks off. This was a digestible, interesting, intricate view of history that not only captivated me, but kept me coming back for more. Wood’s ability distill weighty, complicated history into digestible bites for his readers is laudable. 


This is history as it should be written.

 

5/5 stars

 

 

 

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