God's Chinese Son - The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (Paperback)

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan

"A magnificent tapestry . . . a story that reaches beyond China into our world and time: a story of faith, hope, passion, and a fatal grandiosity."--Washington Post Book World

"Marvelous and new. . . . [Spence] is the pre-eminent literary historian of China."--Richard Bernstein, New York Times

Whether read for its powerful account of the largest uprising in human history, or for its foreshadowing of the terrible convulsions suffered by twentieth-century China, or for the narrative power of a great historian at his best, God's Chinese Son must be read. At the center of this history of China's Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuquan, a failed student of Confucian doctrine who ascends to heaven in a dream and meets his heavenly family: God, Mary, and his older brother, Jesus. He returns to earth charged to eradicate the "demon-devils," the alien Manchu rulers of China. His success carries him and his followers to the heavenly capital at Nanjing, where they rule a large part of south China for more than a decade. Their decline and fall, wrought by internal division and the unrelenting military pressures of the Manchus and the Western powers, carry them to a hell on earth. Twenty million Chinese are left dead.

Jonathan D. Spence is the author of a remarkable body of work in the history and culture of China. He is Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and is author of The Search for Modern China, a New York Times bestseller, with more than 100,000 copies in print, and has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

General

Imprint:	W W Norton & Co Inc
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	September 1997
First published:	December 1996
Authors:	Jonathan D. Spence
Dimensions:	236 x 157 x 33mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	432
ISBN-13:	978-0-393-31556-1
Categories:	Books > Humanities > History > General Books > History > General
LSN:	0-393-31556-8
Barcode:	9780393315561

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