This book chronicles 3500 years of China's recorded civilisation, beginning with the founding of the Shang dynasty around 1500 BC, and continuing through the Great Cultural Revolution now in progress. It is a rich, exciting story, important to our understanding of today's crisis between East and West, yet surprisingly little is known. Fitzgerald traces the great sweep of Chinese civilisation through all its millenniums. He writes of the great events and powerful men who have shaped China's destiny including the early efforts to unite China, the rise and fall of dynasties and the invasions of barbarians, the encroachment of the West and the Civil War in our own century, Shih Huang Ti and Genghis Khan, Sun Yat-sen, and Mao Tse-tung.