The Story of China

The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream

By: Michael Wood

Narrated by: Liam Gerrard

Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

Michael Wood has travelled the length and breadth of China, the world's oldest civilization and longest lasting state, to tell a thrilling story of intense drama, fabulous creativity, and deep humanity that stretches back thousands of years.

After a century and a half of foreign invasion, civil war, and revolution, China has once again returned to center stage as a global superpower and the world's second largest economy. But how did it become so dominant? Wood argues that in order to comprehend the great significance of China today, we must begin with its history.

The Story of China takes a fresh look at the Middle Kingdom in the light of the recent massive changes inside the country. Taking into account exciting new archeological discoveries, the book begins with China's prehistory. Wood looks at particular periods and themes that are now being reevaluated by historians. Wood explores the encounter with the West, the Opium Wars, the clashes with the British, and the extraordinarily rich debates in the late nineteenth century that pushed China along the path to modernity.

The Story of China is the indispensable book about the most intriguing and powerful country on the world stage today.

©2020 Michael Wood (P)2022 Tantor

Michael Wood Does Not Miss, Narrator Kinda Does...

I saw someone else mentioning in a review that the narrator can't pronounced Chinese names correctly I want to point out all the English words he doesn't seem to know how to pronounced. When he said stuff like inculcate as 'incalcate', hegemony as 'hegimminy', coup de grâce as 'coup de Grace' (like the name Grace). It always had me shaking my head conjuring memories of the Bone-Apple-Tea subreddit.

But having said that about the narrrator Michael Wood is on top of his game as always. He's able to weave a story of China's history citing archaeological finds, written sources, etc talking about the commoner and Emperor alike. If you like history and or history of Asia you'll love this book.

Excellent!

Concise, balanced, and well researched narrative of the epic history of China and its people.

Please hire narrator who can pronounce Chinese

It’s very hard to get past every other sentence being confused by what the narrator is trying to pronounce. His voice is great and I see that he is an accomplished narrator, but Chinese in particular does not lend itself to understanding if the speaker can’t pronounce pinyin, which could be achieved with a few days training. It took about 5 times hearing Zhengzhou (pronounced something like xangju by the narrator) to figure out what he was talking about.

Well researched, balanced, and informative

I wasn't expecting much from this book, just mainly to learn a bit about Chinese history --- basically boost myself from 0% knowledge to even 30% knowledge of its history. This book was in fact outstanding in its approach and its presentation. It cited primary sources and direct quotes as much as possible, and focused on different perspectives in each empire's rule all the way up to Covid-19. It was neither too rosy nor too critical, instead giving an objective overview of known facts or opinions based on the sources left for us to dissect. I would recommend this audiobook to anyone interested in getting a crash course on Chinese History.

Quite detailed, but not a very helpful history of China

Too many unnecessary details made the first few chapters hard to get through. Later chapters are somewhat better. Most importantly, the narrator’s voice and his mispronunciation of even English words made it much harder to stay with this book.