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Wealth and Power

China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century
Feb 09, 20171aa rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Its rather awkward to rate this book: from a 'serious history' point of view, its okay; from a 'biographical' point of view, its again only okay. But, just like those Penguin editions of Plutarch, one gets a sense of great (or at least interesting) lives and the times they lived in, over a long span - in the case of this book, about two hundred tumultuous years. This way of writing history is not common, but it does effectively impart to the reader a comprehension of larger spans of historical time, large scale social changes, and accidents, both good and bad, and thereby allow the reader to re-see their own society and their place it from different dimensions from what one may customarily view it from. And that is what makes it an excellent book.