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ameyawarde's review against another edition
5.0
I don't even know what to say about Cixi. I'm blown away. She is definitely my new favorite historical woman/person. From a strong female friendship with her husband's empress, and their brilliant take over of power in their very early 20s and acting as joint empresses together for the rest of the proper Empress's life, to Cixi maintaining control for the rest of hers, but using that power for UNBELIEVABLE reforms. She literally took the VERY conservative, anti-change China from medieval times to the modern times with very little bloodshed, because she knew exactly how to get stuff done with the minimum of upsets, even from behind the curtain that had to always separate her and all the males of her court.
It really boggles my mind with just how radically she changed China during her reign. I don't know of any other world leader who ever achieved so much, especially so -relatively- peaceably. And yet, she was a woman in power, so she has been vilified in the extreme. So many things she accomplished have not been rightfully attributed to her, and instead went to the men around her-- which is so absurd it's rather enraging after reading this book, and how useless some of those people really were.
I just can't say enough good things about this book. It was super interesting, and I need a cat or a daughter or something to name after her because she was just a super amazing lady (despite the few murders that can be attributed to her-- for a world leader, I think her death count was still much less than most.)
It really boggles my mind with just how radically she changed China during her reign. I don't know of any other world leader who ever achieved so much, especially so -relatively- peaceably. And yet, she was a woman in power, so she has been vilified in the extreme. So many things she accomplished have not been rightfully attributed to her, and instead went to the men around her-- which is so absurd it's rather enraging after reading this book, and how useless some of those people really were.
I just can't say enough good things about this book. It was super interesting, and I need a cat or a daughter or something to name after her because she was just a super amazing lady (despite the few murders that can be attributed to her-- for a world leader, I think her death count was still much less than most.)
eletricjb's review against another edition
4.0
Super interesting, wish someone would write this woman's life as a novel. Or translate one that already exists!? Something. Biographies are great for info, but they're not very engaging.
cosmith2015's review against another edition
5.0
I very much enjoyed this book. Mr. Chang did a great job bringing the Dowager Empress to life. I particularly enjoyed how he divided the book. Several chapters would be dedicated to the same span of time, but each chapter would be about different things. One might be policies, another was her day to day life.
korzna's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed the history and the detail. it was dry at times.
goldenluck's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
3.5
This was very well written and about such a fascinating era of China that is rarely spoken about. I do think the author seemed to idolize Cixi a little bit which made me wonder about how unbiased the narrative was, however it sounds like she's a pretty demonized figure in other works so this may have been a justified overcorrection.