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Our understanding of Chinese warfare has suffered from misconstrued contrasts between Chinese and Western ways in warfare. This is one of the arguments convincingly set forth in this important volume on an important subject. It also discusses the essentialising interpretations of Chinese culture ...

Our understanding of Chinese warfare has suffered from misconstrued contrasts between Chinese and Western ways in warfare. This is one of the arguments convincingly set forth in this important volume on an important subject. It also discusses the essentialising interpretations of Chinese culture focussing on the avoidance of warfare and the civil ethic of its officials.
Based on original sources, and dealing with the subject from the earliest dynasty up to modernity, it uniquely combines chapters on strategy and tactics. Both scope and approach make it a must for historians of China. And, with a view to its conclusions on the place of China in the context of global military history, it also provides essential reading for historians of (comparative) warfare in general.
The book's primary goal to provide a fuller interpretation of the role of the military in Chinese history has been achieved with ease.

Through biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities, John Wills displays the five-thousand- year sweep of Chinese history from the legendary sage emperors to the tragedy of Tiananmen Square. This unique introduction to Chinese history and culture uses more than twenty exemplary ...

Through biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities, John Wills displays the five-thousand- year sweep of Chinese history from the legendary sage emperors to the tragedy of Tiananmen Square. This unique introduction to Chinese history and culture uses more than twenty exemplary lives, including those of statesmen, philosophers, poets, and rulers, to provide the focus for accounts of key historical trends and periods. [A] spirited and highly intelligent book.... A splendid reflection on the nature of the Chinese relationship to history, culture, and morality.... What gives Wills's [book] its originality and its effectiveness is the artful span of examples he has chosen, examples that not only range across time ... but are also chosen to illuminate major themes and continuities within the Chinese universe.... There is high drama, cruelty, and excess in many of these stories.... And there is also wit and charm mixed with the telling of great events.--Jonathan Spence, The New York Times Book Review A tapestry displaying a vast array of noble dreams and failures, of initial utterances and long-distance echoes, of recurrent patterns and abrupt innovations intended to intrigue and inform educated readers looking for a way into three thousand years of Chinese history.--Jerry Dennerline, The Journal of Asian Studies