The Story of China

The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream

By: Michael Wood

Narrated by: Liam Gerrard

Michael Wood has travelled the length and breadth of China, the world's oldest civilization and longest lasting state, to tell a thrilling story of intense drama, fabulous creativity, and deep humanity that stretches back thousands of years.

After a century and a half of foreign invasion, civil war, and revolution, China has once again returned to center stage as a global superpower and the world's second largest economy. But how did it become so dominant? Wood argues that in order to comprehend the great significance of China today, we must begin with its history.

The Story of China takes a fresh look at the Middle Kingdom in the light of the recent massive changes inside the country. Taking into account exciting new archeological discoveries, the book begins with China's prehistory. Wood looks at particular periods and themes that are now being reevaluated by historians. Wood explores the encounter with the West, the Opium Wars, the clashes with the British, and the extraordinarily rich debates in the late nineteenth century that pushed China along the path to modernity.

The Story of China is the indispensable book about the most intriguing and powerful country on the world stage today.

©2020 Michael Wood (P)2022 Tantor

Great mix of sweeping history and real people

Title of review says it all. Excellent portrayal from royals to common people. Nice job!

Excellent!

Concise, balanced, and well researched narrative of the epic history of China and its people.

Excellent Chinese history overview

The author does a superb job weaving together a broad range of strands of chinese history and culture into a highly enjoyable and deeply informative narrative. Recommend for anyone wishing to get a handle on what makes China, well, China.

Love this book

Learning about China has been so much eye-opener people tell you different things about China but at the reading this book I want to learn more

Please hire narrator who can pronounce Chinese

It’s very hard to get past every other sentence being confused by what the narrator is trying to pronounce. His voice is great and I see that he is an accomplished narrator, but Chinese in particular does not lend itself to understanding if the speaker can’t pronounce pinyin, which could be achieved with a few days training. It took about 5 times hearing Zhengzhou (pronounced something like xangju by the narrator) to figure out what he was talking about.