The Search for Modern China

By: Jonathan D. Spence

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

The history of China is as rich and strange as that of any country on earth. Yet for many, China’s 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 event - the product of 30 years of research and reflection in the field - Spence 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 Xiaoping’s 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 world’s oldest cultures struggling to define itself as Chinese and modern.

©1990 Jonathan D. Spence (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“To understand…China’s past there is no better place to start than Jonathan D. Spence’s excellent new book.” ( New York Times Book Review)

“Monumental…History that is always lively, always concrete, always comprehensible.” ( New York Times)

“Rich and dramatic…A pleasure to read, as well as being immensely informative.” ( San Francisco Chronicle)

Don’t read tables please

Could have done without literally reading tables aloud. Just summarize the trends in the tables.

bad narrator!

Why pick someone who can’t pronounce chinese names to read a book about chinese history? Book is fantastic

Excellent book, lazy narrator

This is a classic textbook on early modern and modern Chinese history. I've very happy to see it finally appearing in audio form, and I hope there are more on the way.

I have one complaint: The pronunciation of most of the Chinese names is so wrong that the reader might as well be making up random noises. For example, "zhou" is pronounced "joe," not "zoo," and it matters because "zhou" appears in the names of most Chinese geographic locations outside Beijing and Shanghai. It would take 10 minutes for the reader to learn the absolute basics of how to pronounce Chinese names. By being too lazy to take those 10 minutes, the next 20? 30? hours of audio lose much of their value for any listener who hopes actually to learn something.

Fascinating book; horrible narration

Would you try another book from Jonathan D. Spence and/or Frederick Davidson?

From Jonathan Spence definitely.
Davidson, never

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Frederick Davidson?

Anyone who would bother to spend the hour or two it takes to learn basic pronounciation of pinyin Chinese. His butchering of the names, places and words makes it impossible to listen and impossible to remember anything

Any additional comments?

I want to return the book. The narrator messes up Chinese so much the text become unintelligible.

great deep dive

probably the most comprehensive coverage of Qing through 90s China that I've seen in English