Ebook: The Ageless Chinese: A History

This is a masterly book. The author was born and educated in China and obtained advanced degrees from the University of Wisconsin. He has an intimate and detailed knowledge of the history of his own country, but the real virtue of his book rests in his recognition of how to communicate his knowledge to an alien audience. He goes through the long and complicated story of four thousand years of Chinese history with full awareness of how to convey such a strange society and such alien events to Americans. The arrangement is strictly chronological, but the emphasis is on changing patterns of social organization rather than on political or dynastic history.

The author begins with an adequate explication of Chinese geographic and climate conditions as elements which have exerted a permanent influence on Chinese history. Each successive period is then explained, chiefly in terms of social structure, ideology, and general culture. When the story is finished, the reader can see which cultural elements persisted and which changed from period to period, until all them were destroyed in the cataclysm of the last 60 years. Until this final collapse, Chinese culture persisted for millennia in what is surely one of the most successful societies ever developed by man.

— Carroll Quigley, The Washington Sunday Star, November 18, 1963.