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A review by joshuamt
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang
4.0
Provided me with a new perspective through which to view 20th century Chinese history.
Some reviews judged the book to be boring, and I agree that the writing itself (both the style and the structure) was sometimes dull. The book pales in comparison to my favorite biographies, like Manchester's 2 volumes on Churchill, where I walked away feeling like I knew the subject. However, the narrative itself more than compensated for this detraction and kept me turning pages: not only is this a refreshingly (to me) new view of the Empress Dowager's life and rule, but it provides, both explicitly and by implication, a new intepretation of 20th century China.
The bigger question in my mind is whether this favorable view of the Empress Dowager is true, or rather fictionalised revisionism? I am not qualified to comment on this (nor motivated to parse through the footnotes and examine Ms Chang's sources), and given the political implications, I will personally wait for this question to be examined by disintered historians.
Some reviews judged the book to be boring, and I agree that the writing itself (both the style and the structure) was sometimes dull. The book pales in comparison to my favorite biographies, like Manchester's 2 volumes on Churchill, where I walked away feeling like I knew the subject. However, the narrative itself more than compensated for this detraction and kept me turning pages: not only is this a refreshingly (to me) new view of the Empress Dowager's life and rule, but it provides, both explicitly and by implication, a new intepretation of 20th century China.
The bigger question in my mind is whether this favorable view of the Empress Dowager is true, or rather fictionalised revisionism? I am not qualified to comment on this (nor motivated to parse through the footnotes and examine Ms Chang's sources), and given the political implications, I will personally wait for this question to be examined by disintered historians.