A review by tex2flo
Empress Dowager CIXI: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang

4.0

How could I have lived so long in the last century and not heard about this fascinating leader of China? The details in the history emphasize just how much I do not know and how removed we Americans were to the medieval customs of China up to the 1900s. The Empress Dowager was a complex woman who began with almost nothing but went on to rule China for almost 50 years behind a varying company of "puppet" emperors--her sons, natural and adopted.