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The Penguin History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 - 2008
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| List Price: | £30.00 |
| Price: | £14.63 |
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Dispatched from and sold by aphrohead_books
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Average customer review:
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #29751 in Books
- Published on: 2008-05-29
- Original language: English
- Binding: Hardcover
- 816 pages
Editorial Reviews
Sunday Telegraph
`[Fenby's] book is a miracle of thoroughness, truthfulness and readability - the perfect primer for a time when China is about to enter all our lives.'
Times
'Fenby excels at weaving the strands of his complex narrative into heroic and more often harrowing tales. There are sharp pen portraits of the heroes and (mostly) villains of the piece ... Fenby's enthusiasm is infectious'
Herald
'Reads like a novel and is never less than thoughtful and compassionate for the fate of a much-abused people ... [Fenby has] a journalist's eye for telling detail'
Customer Reviews
A disappointment, and a rush-job.
This is a disappointing book, and it needn't have been; Jonathan Fenby, while not a trained historian, is a strong and intelligent writer, and 'Generalissimo' was excellent. This, however, clearly shows signs of being a rush job done for the Olympic Year; for one thing, given how recently Fenby's other books came out, it seems extremely unlikely he had the time that a book of this magnitude requires. The writing is journalistic and in places glib, without the depth of sources or statistics that a book like this needs. Most bizarrely, there are no Chinese-language sources cited in the text! Despite ideological bias, good, interesting historical work is done on the mainland - never mind Taiwan and Hong Kong - and it seems odd to overlook it so completely.
It's still a decent introduction to modern China for someone new to the field, but it doesn't offer the depth or insight that other books in the Penguin History series have. The strongest sections are on the 1930s and 1940s, where Fenby has done previous work; others have been put together at some speed from other English books, most noticeably MAO'S LAST REVOLUTION for the Cultural Revolution sections. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; MLR, for instance, though a great book, is not that accessible, but the lack of original research or insight is noticeable. Ultimately, it's a weak entry in a normally great series of books.
