Frederick W. Mote (1922–2005)

Only got up to Chapter 27, on the Ming Dynasty, but what I managed to read before my loan ended was enough to convince me to track down a more permanent copy. Very good overview that, while you do sometimes get the sense some important things are left out, seems to hit on most of the immediate questions. Mote does a good job moving up and down in scale, giving just enough biographical information to personalize the periods he's talking about (and, significantly, to make clear how different life was at various points), while never losing sight of the big picture. I especially appreciated the digressions on China's nomadic neighbors, which despite being even more abbreviated than the main body of the text were detailed and consistently engrossing in their own right.… (meer)

Frederick W. Mote was an eminent American sinologist and in this opus, Imperial China one sees the dedication and love towards the history of China that this man had.

Covering nearly a millennium, from the fall of the Tang and the Five Dynasties, the Liao Dynasty, the Song Dynasty, the Xi Xia state, the Jin Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty to the first century and a half of the Qing Dynasty, this book is a major contribution to scholarship.

Readable and accessible to layperson and scholar alike, Mote intimately brings alive 900 years of history and in spite of its length, is able to maintain the reader's attention throughout. As scholarly material, this book is well-researched with an excellent bibliography.

This is an excellent addition to any sinologist's library or to an interested layperson.… (meer)