The Search for Modern China, Jonathan D. Spence
The Search for Modern China, Jonathan D. Spence
6 Rating(s)
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The Search for Modern China

Author: Jonathan D. Spence

Narrator: Frederick Davidson

Unabridged: 36 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/14/2014


Synopsis

The history of China is as rich and strange as that of any country on earth. Yet for many, Chinas history remains unknown, or known only through the stylized images that generations in the West have cherished or reviled as truth. With his command of character and eventthe product of thirty years of research and reflection in the fieldSpence dispels those myths in a powerful narrative. Over four centuries of Chinese history, from the waning days of the once-glorious Ming Dynasty to Deng Xiaopings bloody suppression of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, Spence fashions the astonishing story of the effort to achieve a modern China. Through the ideas and emotions of its reformist Confucian scholars, its poets, novelists, artists, and visionary students, we see one of the worlds oldest cultures struggling to define itself as Chinese and modern.

About Jonathan D. Spence

Jonathan D. Spence is Sterling Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of a distinguished body of work on the history of modern China. Among his most recent books are God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan and The Chan’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Josh on December 07, 2015

Sonder is the term for the realisation that every person around you has an inner life as deep and meaningful as your own, and the explosion of complexity implied thereby. Sometimes you just realise how little you know; how absurdly deep the water goes past your shallow part of the pool. Reading a bo......more

Goodreads review by Alice on April 30, 2021

This is a must-read for anyone who wishes to make sense of present-day international relations. This well-written and excellent piece of academic work is a concise and comprehensive history of China spanning 3-1/2 centuries from the end of the Ming Dynasty (1644) right through to the June 4th 1989 Ti......more

Goodreads review by Shawn on April 23, 2016

Timeline 1122 - 1234 Manchu Jurchens take northern China “Jin dynasty” 1368 Ming Dynasty established 1550 Portugese establish presence in Macao. 1559 Nurhaci born 1570 Pirate attacks stopped in southern coast, Spain enters Manila 1572 to 1620 Emperor Wanli of Ming Dynasty 1590s Nurhacu leads tribesmen in L......more

Goodreads review by Tom on June 26, 2007

Probably the best, and certainly the most popular, history of China in the modern era (i.e., post 1500 CE). Spence's prose is straightforward and clean, and his method of following individual artists, writers, or activists through a given time period to illustrate general policy acts as an engine to......more

Goodreads review by Porter on May 23, 2020

Jonathan Spence was my favorite author when I majored in Chinese History 30 years ago. This was the first history book that I ever eagerly looked forward to being published. It is the first one that I ever pre-ordered. So, yes, I am a big fan of it. The Search for Modern China has since become one of......more