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Chinese History, Clinical Psychology
The Search for Modern China by Jonathan D. Spence — book cover

The Search for Modern China

by Jonathan D. Spence
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Overview

The leading textbook by the leading scholar.

This text, the classic introduction to modern China for students and general readers, emerged from Spence’s highly successful introductory course at Yale, in which he traced the beginnings of modern China to internal developments beginning in the early 17th century. Strong on social and political history, as well as Chinese culture and its intersections with politics, this paperback is a longstanding leader in the survey course on modern China.

Covering more than four centuries of epic history with unsurpassed learning, imagination, and passion, Spence tells a story of vast struggle, of exhilarating dreams and crushed lives, and above all of the sheer capacity of the human spirit to endure. Professor of history at Yale University and author of numerous works on China, Spence shows the reader a world struggling to remake itself and establish harmony in light of recent events.

About the Author, Jonathan D. Spence

Jonathan D. Spence is Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, where he has taught for thirty years. He has been awarded MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The Search for Modern China won the Lionel Gelber Award and the Kiriyama Book Prize.

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Editorials

New York Times

Monumental.... History that is always lively, always concrete, always comprehensible.

Boston Globe

A remarkable achievement...vivid...fluent, graceful.... A publishing event.

Washington Post Book World

History at its best...all in the vivid, accessible style for which the author is well known.

Publishers Weekly

Spence advocates democracy in China and presents contemporary views of its oppressive history, including Chiang Kai-Shek's fascist supporters and the bloodbath known as the Cultural Revolution. ``A splendid achievement, this sweeping . . . epic chronicle compresses four centuries of political and social change into a sharply observant narrative,'' said Publishers Weekly.

New York Times Books of the Century

[Spence] shows, rahter than tells, the continuity of Chinese history....This superb history will challenge and enrich Western thinking about contemporary China.

Book Details

Published
December 19, 2012
Publisher
Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Pages
976
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780393934519

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