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| Author | : Jung Chang |
| Publsiher | : Alfred a Knopf Incorporated |
| Total Pages | : 436 |
| Release | : 2013 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 9780307271600 |
| Rating | : 4.7/5 (716 downloads) |
A portrait of the nineteenth-century empress covers the coup that made her regent after her father's death, her defiance of centuries of traditions and formalities, and her role in introducing Western political ideas and technologies.
| Author | : Jung Chang |
| Publsiher | : Knopf |
| Total Pages | : 448 |
| Release | : 2013-10-29 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0385350376 |
| Rating | : 4.0/5 (76 downloads) |
A New York Times Notable Book Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) is the most important woman in Chinese history. She ruled China for decades and brought a medieval empire into the modern age. At the age of sixteen, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor’s numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China—behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male. In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Cixi fought against monumental obstacles to change China. Under her the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state: industries, railways, electricity, the telegraph and an army and navy with up-to-date weaponry. It was she who abolished gruesome punishments like “death by a thousand cuts” and put an end to foot-binding. She inaugurated women’s liberation and embarked on the path to introduce parliamentary elections to China. Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot. Cixi reigned during extraordinary times and had to deal with a host of major national crises: the Taiping and Boxer rebellions, wars with France and Japan—and an invasion by eight allied powers including Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States. Jung Chang not only records the Empress Dowager’s conduct of domestic and foreign affairs, but also takes the reader into the depths of her splendid Summer Palace and the harem of Beijing’s Forbidden City, where she lived surrounded by eunuchs—one of whom she fell in love, with tragic consequences. The world Chang describes here, in fascinating detail, seems almost unbelievable in its extraordinary mixture of the very old and the very new. Based on newly available, mostly Chinese, historical documents such as court records, official and private correspondence, diaries and eyewitness accounts, this biography will revolutionize historical thinking about a crucial period in China’s—and the world’s—history. Packed with drama, fast paced and gripping, it is both a panoramic depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a woman: as the concubine to a monarch, as the absolute ruler of a third of the world’s population, and as a unique stateswoman.
| Author | : Jung Chang |
| Publsiher | : Knopf Publishing Group |
| Total Pages | : 0 |
| Release | : 2019-10-29 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 9780525657828 |
| Rating | : 4.5/5 (578 downloads) |
In a group biography, the author reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape the history of 20th-century China. Red Sister, Ching-ling, married the "Father of China," Sun Yat-sen, and rose to be Mao's vice-chair. Little Sister, May-ling, became Madame Chiang Kai-shek, first lady of pre-Communist Nationalist China. Big Sister, Ei-ling, became Chiang's main adviser and one of China's richest women.
| Author | : Zita Eva Rohr |
| Publsiher | : Springer Nature |
| Total Pages | : 263 |
| Release | : 2019-11-07 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 3030250415 |
| Rating | : 4.0/5 (15 downloads) |
Is the world of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones really medieval? How accurately does it reflect the real Middle Ages? Historians have been addressing these questions since the book and television series exploded into a cultural phenomenon. For scholars of medieval and early modern women, they offer a unique vantage point from which to study the intersections of elite women and popular understandings of the premodern world. This volume is a wide-ranging study of those intersections. Focusing on female agency and the role of advice, it finds a wealth of continuities and contrasts between the many powerful female characters of Martin’s fantasy world and the strategies that historical women used to exert influence. Reading characters such as Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, and Brienne of Tarth with a creative, deeply scholarly eye, Queenship and the Women of Westeros makes cutting-edge developments in queenship studies accessible to everyday readers and fans.
| Author | : Jung Chang |
| Publsiher | : Random House |
| Total Pages | : 528 |
| Release | : 2013-09-26 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1448191424 |
| Rating | : 4.1/5 (24 downloads) |
Discover the extraordinary story of the woman who brought China into the modern age, from the bestselling author of Wild Swans In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Empress Dowager Cixi – the most important woman in Chinese history – brought a medieval empire into the modern age. Under her, the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state and it was she who abolished gruesome punishments like ‘death by a thousand cuts’ and put an end to foot-binding. Jung Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot and also takes the reader into the depths of her splendid Summer Palace and the harem of Beijing’s Forbidden City, where she lived surrounded by eunuchs – with one of whom she fell in love, with tragic consequences. Packed with drama, fast-paced and gripping, it is both a panoramic depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a woman: as the concubine to a monarch, as the absolute ruler of a third of the world’s population, and as a unique stateswoman. ‘Powerful’ Simon Sebag Montefiore ‘Truly authoritative’ New York Times ‘Wonderful’ Sunday Times **Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Biography Prize**
| Author | : Iain Robertson Scott |
| Publsiher | : Anthem Press |
| Total Pages | : 356 |
| Release | : 2016-06-30 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1783084995 |
| Rating | : 4.4/5 (95 downloads) |
No country has undergone a greater period of sustained and convulsive change than China in the twentieth century. This is its story, tracing the emergence of a modern China.
![Download Women Who Changed the World: Their Lives, Challenges, and Accomplishments through History [4 volumes] PDF](https://books.google.com/books/content/images/frontcover/P3FYEAAAQBAJ?fife=w200-h370)
| Author | : Candice Goucher |
| Publsiher | : ABC-CLIO |
| Total Pages | : 1312 |
| Release | : 2022-01-24 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1440868255 |
| Rating | : 4.8/5 (55 downloads) |
Women Who Changed the World: Their Lives, Challenges, and Accomplishments through History features 200 biographies of notable women and offers readers an opportunity to explore the global past from a gendered perspective. The women featured in this four-volume set cover the full sweep of history, from our ancestral forbearer "Lucy" to today's tennis phenoms Venus and Serena Williams. Every walk of life is represented in these pages, from powerful monarchs and politicians to talented artists and writers, from inquisitive scientists to outspoken activists. Each biography follows a standardized format, recounting the woman's life and accomplishments, discussing the challenges she faced within her particular time and place in history, and exploring the lasting legacy she left. A chronological listing of biographies makes it easy for readers to zero in on particular time periods, while a further reading list at the end of each essay serves as a gateway to further exploration and study. High-interest sidebars accompany many of the biographies, offering more nuanced glimpses into the lives of these fascinating women.
| Author | : Jane Hathaway |
| Publsiher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : |
| Release | : 2018-08-31 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1108572332 |
| Rating | : 4.2/5 (32 downloads) |
Eunuchs were a common feature of pre- and early modern societies that are now poorly understood. Here, Jane Hathaway offers an in-depth study of the chief of the African eunuchs who guarded the harem of the Ottoman Empire. A wide range of primary sources are used to analyze the Chief Eunuch's origins in East Africa and his political, economic, and religious role from the inception of his office in the late sixteenth century through the dismantling of the palace harem in the early twentieth century. Hathaway highlights the origins of the institution and how the role of eunuchs developed in East Africa, as well as exploring the Chief Eunuch's connections to Egypt and Medina. By tracing the evolution of the office, we see how the Chief Eunuch's functions changed in response to transformations in Ottoman society, from the generalized crisis of the seventeenth century to the westernizing reforms of the nineteenth century.
| Author | : CJ Lim |
| Publsiher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 328 |
| Release | : 2021-04-16 |
| Genre | : Architecture |
| ISBN | : 1315402521 |
| Rating | : 4.2/5 (21 downloads) |
Once Upon a China is an unconventional architectural story of great beauty, empathy, honour and sadness. The chapters are ingenious reimaginations of ‘Dream of the Red Mansion’, ‘Journey to the West ’, ‘The Water Margin’, and ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’, and are conceived as specific themes of Chinese identity: domesticity, consumerism, democracy and adaptability. These four seminal pre-modern fictions contain diverse voices and philosophical perspectives on history as well as satires that have defined past developments of Chinese societies, politics and the built environment. Comics is an unorthodox but extraordinary medium for architectural speculations. The eccentric characteristics of comic-inspired drawings in this book enrich the processes of conception and conceptualisation of design – their fragmented yet sequential nature proves versatile in the imagination of spatial experiences, enabling the complex stories of place, brief and building to materialise. At the same time, the politicisation of architecture through comics engenders a sense of optimism to reappraise Chinese design futures and critical thinking beyond the exuberance of non-contextual Western capitalist models.
| Author | : David E. Scharff |
| Publsiher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 316 |
| Release | : 2020-12-31 |
| Genre | : Psychology |
| ISBN | : 1000299163 |
| Rating | : 4.9/5 (63 downloads) |
Marriage and Family in Modern China is a groundbreaking psychoanalytic examination of how 70 years of widespread social change have transformed the intimacies of life in modern China. The book describes the evolution of marriage and family structure, from the ancient tradition of large families preferring sons, arranged marriages and devaluation of girls, to a contemporary dominance of free-choice marriages and families that now prefer to remain small even after the ending of the One Child Policy. David Scharff uses extensive reports of his psychoanalytic interventions to demonstrate how the residue of widespread trauma suffered by Chinese families during past centuries has interacted with the effects of rapid modernization to produce new patterns of individual identity, personal ambition and family structure. This wholly original book offers new insight into Chinese families for all those interested in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and in the intricacies of Chinese domestic life.
| Author | : Weiping Wu |
| Publsiher | : SAGE |
| Total Pages | : 1356 |
| Release | : 2018-07-09 |
| Genre | : Business & Economics |
| ISBN | : 1526455617 |
| Rating | : 4.5/5 (17 downloads) |
An exploration of the transformations of contemporary China, firmly grounded in both disciplinary and China-specific contexts.
| Author | : Tim Symonds |
| Publsiher | : Andrews UK Limited |
| Total Pages | : 250 |
| Release | : 2016-11-07 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 178705036X |
| Rating | : 4.0/5 (6 downloads) |
It's the year 1906. Rumours abound that a deadly plot is hatching - not in the fog-ridden back-alleys of London's Limehouse district or the sinister Devon moors of the Hound of the Baskervilles but in faraway Peking. Holmes's task - discover whether such a plot exists and if so, foil it. But are the assassins targeting the young and progressive Ch'ing Emperor or his imperious aunt, the fearsome Empress Dowager Cixi? The murder of either could spark a civil war. The fate of China and the interests of Britain's vast Empire in the Orient could be at stake. Holmes and Watson take up the mission with their customary confidence – until they find they are no longer in the familiar landscapes of Edwardian England. Instead, they tumble into the Alice In Wonderland world of the Forbidden City.
| Author | : Kerry Brown |
| Publsiher | : Berkshire Publishing Group |
| Total Pages | : 1744 |
| Release | : 2017-12-27 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1933782617 |
| Rating | : 4.2/5 (17 downloads) |
The Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography, the first publication of its kind since 1898, is the work of more than one hundred internationally recognized experts from nearly a dozen countries. It has been designed to satisfy the growing thirst of students, researchers, professionals, and general readers for knowledge about China. It makes the entire span of Chinese history manageable by introducing the reader to emperors, politicians, poets, writers, artists, scientists, explorers, and philosophers who have shaped and transformed China over the course of five thousand years. In 135 entries, ranging from 1,000 to 8,000 words and written by some of the world's leading China scholars, the Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography takes the reader from the important (even if possibly mythological) figures of ancient China to Communist leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The in-depth essays provide rich historical context, and create a compelling narrative that weaves abstract concepts and disparate events into a coherent story. Cross-references between the articles show the connections between times, places, movements, events, and individuals.
| Author | : Gregory Moore |
| Publsiher | : Lexington Books |
| Total Pages | : 253 |
| Release | : 2015-05-27 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 073919996X |
| Rating | : 4.9/5 (6 downloads) |
There has been little examination of the China policy of the Theodore Roosevelt administration. Works dealing with the topic fall either into brief discussions in biographies of Roosevelt, general surveys of Sino-American relations, or studies of special topics, such as the Chinese exclusion issue, which encompass a portion of the Roosevelt years. Moreover, the subject has been overshadowed somewhat by studies of problems between Japan and the United States in this era. The goal of this study is to offer a more complete examination of the American relationship with China during Roosevelt’s presidency. The focus will be on the discussion of major issues and concerns in the relationship of the two nations from the time Roosevelt took office until he left, something that this book does for the first time. Greater emphasis needs to be placed on creating a more complete picture of Teddy Roosevelt and China relations, especially in regard to his and his advisers’ perceptual framework of that region and its impact upon the making of China policy. The goal of this study is to begin that process. Special attention is paid to the question of how Roosevelt and the members of his administration viewed China, as it is believed that their viewpoints, which were prejudicial, were very instrumental in how they chose to deal with China and the question of the Open Door. The emphasis on the role of stereotyping gives the book a particularly unique point of view. Readers will be made aware of the difficulties of making foreign policy under challenging conditions, but also of how the attitudes and perceptions of policymakers can shape the direction that those policies can take. A critical argument of the book is that a stereotyped perception of China and its people inhibited American policy responses toward the Chinese state in Roosevelt’s Administration. While Roosevelt’s attitudes regarding white supremacy have been discussed elsewhere, a fuller consideration of how his views affected the making of foreign policy, particularly China policy, is needed, especially now that Sino-American relations today are of great concern.
| Author | : Peter Monteath |
| Publsiher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 210 |
| Release | : 2019-08-07 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0429753454 |
| Rating | : 4.3/5 (54 downloads) |
This book explores the place of China and the Chinese during the age of imperialism. Focusing not only on the state but also on the vitality of Chinese culture and the Chinese diaspora, it examines the seeming contradictions of a period in which China came under immense pressure from imperial expansion while remaining a major political, cultural and demographic force in its own right. Where histories of China commonly highlight episodes of conflict and subjugation in China’s relations with the West, the contributions to this volume explore the complex spaces where empires and their peoples did not merely collide but also became entangled.
| Author | : Erica Hannickel |
| Publsiher | : W. W. Norton & Company |
| Total Pages | : 384 |
| Release | : 2022-12-20 |
| Genre | : Nature |
| ISBN | : 0393867293 |
| Rating | : 4.7/5 (93 downloads) |
One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2022 A kaleidoscopic journey into the world of nature’s most tantalizing flower, and the lives it has inspired. The epitome of floral beauty, orchids have long fostered works of art, tales of adventure, and scientific discovery. Tenacious plant hunters have traversed continents to collect rare specimens; naturalists and shoguns have marveled at orchids’ seductive architecture; royalty and the smart set have adorned themselves with their allure. In Orchid Muse, historian and home grower Erica Hannickel gathers these bold tales of the orchid-smitten throughout history, while providing tips on cultivating the extraordinary flowers she features. Consider Empress Eugenie and Queen Victoria, the two most powerful women in nineteenth-century Europe, who shared a passion for Coelogyne cristata, with its cascading, fragrant white blooms. John Roebling, builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, cultivated thousands of orchids and introduced captivating hybrids. Edmond Albius, an enslaved youth on an island off the coast of Madagascar, was the first person to hand-pollinate Vanilla planifolia, leading to vanilla’s global boom. Artist Frida Kahlo was drawn to the lavender petals of Cattleya gigas and immortalized the flower’s wilting form in a harrowing self-portrait, while more recently Margaret Mee painted the orchids she discovered in the Amazon to advocate for their conservation. The story of orchidomania is one that spans the globe, transporting readers from the glories of the palace gardens of Chinese Empress Cixi to a seedy dime museum in Gilded Age New York’s Tenderloin, from hazardous jungles to the greenhouses and bookshelves of Victorian collectors. Lush and inviting, with radiant full-color illustrations throughout, Orchid Muse is the ultimate celebration of our enduring fascination with these beguiling flowers.
| Author | : Jung Chang |
| Publsiher | : Anchor |
| Total Pages | : 384 |
| Release | : 2019-10-29 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0451493516 |
| Rating | : 4.3/5 (16 downloads) |
They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled through a hundred years of wars, revolutions and seismic transformations, the three Soong sisters from Shanghai were at the center of power, and each of them left an indelible mark on history. Red Sister, Ching-ling, married the 'Father of China', Sun Yat-sen, and rose to be Mao's vice-chair. Little Sister, May-ling, became Madame Chiang Kai-shek, first lady of pre-Communist Nationalist China and a major political figure in her own right. Big Sister, Ei-ling, became Chiang's unofficial main adviser - and made herself one of China's richest women. All three sisters enjoyed tremendous privilege and glory, but also endured constant mortal danger. They showed great courage and experienced passionate love, as well as despair and heartbreak. They remained close emotionally, even when they embraced opposing political camps and Ching-ling dedicated herself to destroying her two sisters' worlds. Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a gripping story of love, war, intrigue, bravery, glamour and betrayal, which takes us on a sweeping journey from Canton to Hawaii to New York, from exiles' quarters in Japan and Berlin to secret meeting rooms in Moscow, and from the compounds of the Communist elite in Beijing to the corridors of power in democratic Taiwan. In a group biography that is by turns intimate and epic, Jung Chang reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape twentieth-century China.
