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A review by scipiodadawg
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang
1.0
This book feels all over the place. There's not much here that actually challenges popular knowledge it really just dismisses it. The formatting of the bibliography feels strange for the sake of page clarity in the plot. I say plot because it feels like it's more important than the story is there rather than depth. The hypocrisy that Chang may rightly be calling out by historians feels present in Cixi's adversaries where they must be powerful and scheming, but also incompetent and meek.
I think, as a history book, you should be answering questions or promoting them. This feels like the author went into, or at some point along the process, decided that Cixi's reputation was more important than facts. Towards the second half, there are a lot of assumptions that are made without explicit backing or even contradict surrounding actions to place her in the best life. The author describes an adversary of Cixi as a myth maker which very well could and seems to be true to an extent. This extent isn't clear and gives a blanket falsehood to these while supposing motives in a similar mythical fashion. It's very easy to see a shift from history to apologia at best and propaganda at worse
I think, as a history book, you should be answering questions or promoting them. This feels like the author went into, or at some point along the process, decided that Cixi's reputation was more important than facts. Towards the second half, there are a lot of assumptions that are made without explicit backing or even contradict surrounding actions to place her in the best life. The author describes an adversary of Cixi as a myth maker which very well could and seems to be true to an extent. This extent isn't clear and gives a blanket falsehood to these while supposing motives in a similar mythical fashion. It's very easy to see a shift from history to apologia at best and propaganda at worse