I like medieval stuff but I've nearly learned everything I care about in Europe. I want to get started on China, but I don't have the cultural background to dive in to anything detailed, I'd just get lost in a sea of missing context.

This is exactly what pop historians are for, but 80% of them just make shit up, so I need a recommendation.

  • Wertheimer [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I read John Keay's China: A History last year, a single-volume pop history, and it definitely provides the grounding and context you'll want in order to engage in further explorations. Up next, in addition to the primary sources mentioned elsewhere in this thread, might be the Belknap History of Imperial China series. For intellectual history, I strongly recommend A.C. Graham's Disputers of the Tao.

    For more recent history (Qing and onward), the gold standard is Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China. Other folk here will have better recommendations for post-revolutionary China, I'm sure, but Spence will give you the context you need for that.