Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The most authoritative life of the Chinese leader every written, Mao: The Unknown Story is based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao’s close circle in China who have never talked before — and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was... (more)

The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC - AD 2000

The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC - AD 2000

by Julia Lovell

Legendarily 2,200 years old and 4,300 miles long, the Great Wall of China seems to make an overwhelmingly confident physical statement about the country it spans: about China’s age-old sense of itself being an advanced civilization anxious to draw a clear line between itself and the “barbarians” at its borders. But behind the wall’s intimidating exterior—and the myths that have built up around it—is a complex... (more)

Before Mao : The Untold Story of Li Lisan and the Creation of Communist China

Before Mao : The Untold Story of Li Lisan and the Creation of Communist China

by Patrick Lescot

Combining an exceptional love story with a gripping tale of incarceration in Stalin's gulag and later in Mao Tse-tung's concentration camps, Patrick Lescot's Before Mao is a deeply moving, beautifully told saga of Li Lisan, Mao's predecessor at the head of the Communist Party and a key member of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. Told in an engaging, highly dramatic style that reads more like a novel than a... (more)

The Long March: The True History of Communist China's Founding Myth

The Long March: The True History of Communist China's Founding Myth

by Shuyun Sun

The Long March is Communist China’s founding myth, the heroic tale that every Chinese child learns in school. Seventy years after the historical march took place, Sun Shuyun set out to retrace the Marchers’ steps and unexpectedly discovered the true history behind the legend. The Long March is the stunning narrative of her extraordinary expedition. The facts are these: in 1934, in the midst of a brutal civil... (more)

Awakened

by Zhang Lin

Return to the Middle Kingdom: One Family, Three Revolutions, and the Birth of Modern China

Return to the Middle Kingdom: One Family, Three Revolutions, and the Birth of Modern China

by Yuan-Tsung Chen

The Russian Concubine

by Kate Furnivall

A sweeping novel set in war-torn 1928 China, with a star-crossed love story at its center. In a city full of thieves and Communists, danger and death, spirited young Lydia Ivanova has lived a hard life. Always looking over her shoulder, the sixteen-year-old must steal to feed herself and her mother, Valentina, who numbered among the Russian elite until Bolsheviks murdered most of them, including her husband.... (more)

The Terracotta Army

by John Man

The Terracotta Army is one of the greatest, and most famous, archaeological discoveries of all time. 8,099 life-size figures of warriors and horses were interred in the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of China - each is individually carved, and they are thought to represent real members of the emperor's army. This is the remarkable story of their creation, the man who ordered them made, their rediscovery and their... (more)

The Great Wall

by John Man

China’s Great Wall north of Beijing is one of the world’s most famous sights. Millions every year climb the line of stone snaking over mountains. We all feel we know the Wall. But we are wrong. It is too big, too varied, too complex to be captured by a few images or a day-trip. Myths surround it. Many believe that the stone barrier marches across all China, that it has been in existence for over 2,000 years,... (more)

The City of Heavenly Tranquility: Beijing in the History of China

The City of Heavenly Tranquility: Beijing in the History of China

by Jasper Becker

When the world descends on Beijing for the 2008 Olympics, it will find the results of a helter skelter rush for modernization and wealth. In the course of a thousand years, temples and shrines, palaces, and gardens had filled the walls of old Peking. Its narrow, twisting streets held the collective memories of five dynasties and turbulent events of the 20th century. It has now all been swept away to make way for... (more)

The Genius of China: 3000 Years of Science, Discovery and InventionRobert Temple

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: china history

Mao: The Unknown Story

by Jon Halliday, Jung Chang

The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC - AD 2000

by Julia Lovell

Before Mao : The Untold Story of Li Lisan and the Creation of Communist China

by Patrick Lescot

The Long March: The True History of Communist China's Founding Myth

by Shuyun Sun

Awakened

by Zhang Lin

Return to the Middle Kingdom: One Family, Three Revolutions, and the Birth of Modern China

by Yuan-Tsung Chen

The Russian Concubine

by Kate Furnivall

The Terracotta Army

by John Man

The Great Wall

by John Man

The City of Heavenly Tranquility: Beijing in the History of China

by Jasper Becker

The Genius of China: 3000 Years of Science, Discovery and Invention

by Robert Temple