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A review by beejai
The Search For Modern China by Jonathan D. Spence
4.0
I really, really, really wish I had read this book instead of listening to it. The content was excellent, but the narration was easily the worst I have experienced in my 3+ years with audible. It was just horrible.
But anyway, this is a book review. If you are able to get a written copy of Spence's work, I would strongly recommend it. He works through Chinese history starting about 500 years back and moving forward with ever more detail right up to the consequences of Tiananmen Square in '89 with a hopeful look at what that might foretell for the future. I would really love a follow-up book covering the last 30 years, but for what it is, this book is excellent. At least, I am pretty sure it is. The narrator I was listening to botched and blundered his way through so many places and names that it distracted from the facts.
Where this book is the strongest is in the time period from the fall of the Qing Dynasty up to the early years of Communist China. Between the two world wars, the warlords, the KMT, and the rise and ultimate triumph of the CCP... there is a lot to cover, many times multiple seemingly contradicting things happening simultaneously. And yet Spence brings a clarity to it as well as anyone can in as short of a work as this is. If you are all interested in China or its impact on the world over this past century, this should be the first place you go.
Just make sure you read it and don't get Fredrick Davidson's horrible narration from Audible.
But anyway, this is a book review. If you are able to get a written copy of Spence's work, I would strongly recommend it. He works through Chinese history starting about 500 years back and moving forward with ever more detail right up to the consequences of Tiananmen Square in '89 with a hopeful look at what that might foretell for the future. I would really love a follow-up book covering the last 30 years, but for what it is, this book is excellent. At least, I am pretty sure it is. The narrator I was listening to botched and blundered his way through so many places and names that it distracted from the facts.
Where this book is the strongest is in the time period from the fall of the Qing Dynasty up to the early years of Communist China. Between the two world wars, the warlords, the KMT, and the rise and ultimate triumph of the CCP... there is a lot to cover, many times multiple seemingly contradicting things happening simultaneously. And yet Spence brings a clarity to it as well as anyone can in as short of a work as this is. If you are all interested in China or its impact on the world over this past century, this should be the first place you go.
Just make sure you read it and don't get Fredrick Davidson's horrible narration from Audible.