Spanning over 2,000 years, Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors tells the history of China and its 157 rulers from the early empire of 221BC to the revolution, detailing in special features such diverse subjects as the Great Wall of China, the Silk Roads, Buddhism, the Mongols, the Ming Tombs, the Forbidden City and the Opium Wars. The book is illustrated with paintings, sculptures, woodcuts and portraits and maps. In addition, key information such as birthname and cause of death is given on each emperor, and timelines detail the major events of every reign. This is a book to read for pleasure, an essential reference volume for the home, school or library, and a source of discovery and inspiration on a culture that has enthralled people in the West throughout history.

Ming Da is only nine years old when he becomes the emperor of China, and his three advisors take advantage of him by stealing his stores of rice, gold, and precious stones. But Ming Da has a plan. With the help of his tailors, he comes up with a clever idea to outsmart his devious advisors: He asks his tailors to make “magical” new clothes for him. Anyone who is honest, the young emperor explains, will see the clothes’ true splendor, but anyone who is dishonest will see only burlap sacks. The emperor dons a burlap sack, and the ministers can’t help but fall for his cunning trick.

A History of Chinese imperial dynasties with illustrations.

This history of China’s imperial capital cities reveals “a picaresque chronicle of dynastic succession and court intrigue” across millennia (Publishers Weekly). Throughout the long history of Imperial China, emperors designed their capital cities in ways that reveal the heart of their dynasty. The ley lines of these cities reveal religious preoccupations, while the design of important buildings tells us much about the cultural influences of the period. The Shang Emperor of the third century B.C. made obsessive—and ultimately fatal—attempts to engage the Immortals with cosmologically pleasing urban planning. Meanwhile, the Tang capital at Chang'an betrays the striking creativity and cultural receptiveness that earmark the era as a literary and artistic golden age. And the Forbidden City of fifteenth century Beijing still stands as testament to Ming dynasty architectural virtuosity. Arthur Cotterell provides an inside view of the rich array of characters, political and ideological tensions, and technological genius that defined the imperial cities of China, as each in turn is uncovered, explored, and celebrated. The oldest continuous civilization in existence today stands to become the most influential.

One hundred years before Columbus and his fellow Europeans began their voyages of discovery, fleets of giant junks commanded by the eunuch admiral Zheng He and filled with the empire’s finest porcelains, lacquerware, and silk ventured to the world’s “four corners.” Seven epic expeditions brought China’s treasure ships across the China Seas and Indian Ocean, from Japan to the spice island of Indonesia and the Malabar Coast of India, on to the rich ports of the Persian Gulf and down the East African coast, to China’s “El Dorado,” and perhaps even to Australia, three hundred years before Captain Cook’s landing. It was a time of exploration and expansion, but it ended in a retrenchment so complete that less than a century later, it was a crime to go to sea in a multimasted ship. In When China Ruled the Seas, Louise Levathes takes a fascinating and unprecedented look at this dynamic period in China’s enigmatic history, focusing on the country’s rise as a naval power that briefly brought half the world under its nominal authority. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, official Ming histories, and African, Arab, and Indian sources, many translated for the first time, Levathes brings readers inside China’s most illustrious scientific and technological era. She sheds new light on the historical and cultural context in which this great civilization thrived, as well as the perception of China by other contemporary cultures. Beautifully illustrated and engagingly written, When China Ruled the Seas is the fullest picture yet of the early Ming dynasty—the last flowering of Chinese culture before the Manchu invasion.

Midway through the reign of the Ch'ien-lung emperor, Hungli, mass hysteria broke out among the common people. It was feared that sorcerers were roaming the land, clipping off the ends of men's queues (the braids worn by royal decree) and chanting magical incantations over them in order to steal the souls of their owners. In a fascinating chronicle of this epidemic of fear and the official prosecution of soulstealers that ensued, Philip Kuhn opens a window on the world of eighteenth-century China.