A review by little_sparrow3
Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern by Jing Tsu

4.0

This was utterly fascinating. I studied Mandarin Chinese in high school and so knew a little bit about how the written characters were simplified in the mid-1900s, but I never thought about how pinyin came to be (I honestly thought it was always there) or how people sent telegrams or used a typewriter in Chinese. Definitely worth a read if you're a linguistics buff or just like learning about history.