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By Heisenberg
#15052687
Can anyone recommend any good books (i.e. preferably not Orientalist liberal bullshit) on Chinese history? I just realised I know almost nothing about China at all. :lol:

Edit: paging our Dear Leader @Potemkin, since he is essentially a human encyclopedia.
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By Potemkin
#15052690
Heisenberg wrote:Can anyone recommend any good books (i.e. preferably not Orientalist liberal bullshit) on Chinese history? I just realised I know almost nothing about China at all. :lol:

Edit: paging our Dear Leader @Potemkin, since he is essentially a human encyclopedia.

China: A History by John Keay

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 1, Introductory Orientations by Joseph Needham

Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow

And while you're waiting for those books to arrive, start with the Wikipedia page on the Xia Dynasty, and take it from there.... :)
By Pants-of-dog
#15052696
I feel like a troglodyte.

My knowledge of Chinese history comes mostly from Shaw Brothers movies. And Tsui Hark, of course.
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By ThirdTerm
#15052698
THE ORIGINS OF POLITICAL ORDER : FROM PREHUMAN TIMES TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION /

Image

Francis Fukuyama examines the paths that different societies have taken to reach their current forms of political order. The author is a respected neo-con figure who celebrated the end of history or the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy that occurred after the Cold War (1945–1991) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991). Part II of the book contains all information you need about Ancient China.

Table of Contents:
part I: Before the state. The necessity of politics
The state of nature
The tyranny of cousins
Tribal societies : property, justice, war
The coming of the leviathan
part II: State building. Chinese tribalism
War and the rise of the Chinese state
The great Han system
Political decay and the return of patrimonial government
The Indian detour
Varnas and jatis
Weaknesses of Indian politics
Slavery and the Muslim exit from tribalism
The Mamluks save Islam
The functioning and decline of the Ottoman state
- Christianity undermines the family
part III: The rule of law. The origins of the rule of law
The church becomes a state
The state becomes a church
Oriental despotism
Stationary bandits
part IV: Accountable government. The rise of political accountability
Rente seekers
Patrimonialism crosses the Atlantic
East of the Elbe
Toward a more perfect absolutism
Taxation and representation
Why accountability? Why absolutism?
part V: Toward a theory of political development. Political development and political decay
Political development, then and now.

https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1284278/TOC
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By Heisenberg
#15052700
Potemkin wrote:China: A History by John Keay

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 1, Introductory Orientations by Joseph Needham

Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow

And while you're waiting for those books to arrive, start with the Wikipedia page on the Xia Dynasty, and take it from there....

Cheers, old bean :up:
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By Potemkin
#15052703
Heisenberg wrote:Cheers, old bean :up:

No problem, old boy. Toodle-pip! :up:
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By colliric
#15052739
Heisenberg wrote:Can anyone recommend any good books (i.e. preferably not Orientalist liberal bullshit) on Chinese history? I just realised I know almost nothing about China at all. :lol:

Edit: paging our Dear Leader @Potemkin, since he is essentially a human encyclopedia.


Sima Qian's Records Of The Grand Historian is the quintessential classical work of Ancient Chinese History by China's greatest ancient historian. It's the only book you REALLY need to read.

Many classic Chinese movies are directly based on that book including all movies about the first emperor and the legendary Chinese Assassin that tried to kill him, Jing Ke.
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By Wellsy
#15060538
After Virtue - Alasdair MacIntyre

Wanting to see what it's about, especially before his clear turn to Thomist Catholicism and emphasis on non-reflective submission to a hierarchial authority.
But I am hoping some day I might be able to see the alternative more clearly in learning some Hegel and a critique of his idealism.
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=phi
What Hegel wants for the modern world is neither traditional Sittlichkeit nor modern Moralität. He wants a synthesis of Sittlichkeit and Moralität, which though at times confusing he also calls Sittlichkeit. This higher Sittlichkeit, which Hegel lays out in detail only in the Philosophy of Right, combines the rational and reective side of Moralität with the transcendence of the ought characteristic of Sittlichkeit. It is rational reective morality that actually exists as concretely embedded in the customs, traditions, laws, character, practices, and feelings of a people.
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By ThirdTerm
#15060539


This book has been banned from publication for 50 years after Hoover submitted the original manuscript to the publisher because the book contains state secrets that had to be kept out of the public eye. Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath is comparable to Churchill's war memoirs.

The culmination of an extraordinary literary project that Herbert Hoover launched during World War II, his "magnum opus"—at last published nearly fifty years after its completion—offers a revisionist reexamination of the war and its cold war aftermath and a sweeping indictment of the "lost statesmanship" of Franklin Roosevelt. Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath originated as a volume of Hoover's memoirs, a book initially focused on his battle against President Roosevelt's foreign policies before Pearl Harbor. As time went on, however, Hoover widened his scope to include Roosevelt's foreign policies during the war, as well as the war's consequences: the expansion of the Soviet empire at war's end and the eruption of the cold war against the Communists.

On issue after issue, Hoover raises crucial questions that continue to be debated to this day. Did Franklin Roosevelt deceitfully maneuver the United States into an undeclared and unconstitutional naval war with Germany in 1941? Did he unnecessarily appease Joseph Stalin at the pivotal Tehran conference in 1943? Did communist agents and sympathizers in the White House, Department of State, and Department of the Treasury play a malign role in some of America's wartime decisions? Hoover raises numerous arguments that challenge us to think again about our past. Whether or not one ultimately accepts his arguments, the exercise of confronting them will be worthwhile to all.

https://www.hoover.org/research/freedom ... -aftermath
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By Godstud
#15060592
I am reading some good historical fiction from Simon Scarrow and Conn Iggulden, as of late. Good books, by authors with a good historical knowledge of the eras in which they write. :D
By late
#15060597
Heisenberg wrote:Can anyone recommend any good books (i.e. preferably not Orientalist liberal bullshit) on Chinese history? I just realised I know almost nothing about China at all.



This has some history, but what it really offers is a lot of insight into how the Chinese think.

https://www.amazon.com/Go-Nation-Asia-Studies-Global/dp/0520276329/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3NMRE8ZUA84HX&keywords=go+nation&qid=1579566613&sprefix=go+natoi%2Caps%2C161&sr=8-1

Sorry about the price, when I got it from Amazon it was less than 10 bucks delivered. Maybe interlibrary loan?
By Sivad
#15075101
I'm hooked on Paolo Bacigalupi. It's total globalist propaganda doomer collapse porn that no self-respecting scifi writer would ever pen but if you can overlook the fact the that author is sellout piece of shit who has totally betrayed the ethos of the genre then it's pretty good stuff. The Water Knife and The Windup Girl are excellent works of post-apocalyptic noir.
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By Godstud
#15075103
I just read a very good sci-fi book called Red Rising, by Pierce Brown. I am looking forward to the next 4 books of the series. Dystopian future, and rebellion.

I have about 25 books on order now, to keep me occupied. :)
By skinster
#15076068
Recent:

Brain Maker by Dr David Perlmutter(sp?) has changed the way I eat. My frand who is a doctor had it on him one time and I asked what he was reading and he said he was re-reading it to remember how to treat his patients. I got myself a copy and it is hella interesting for anyone who cares about diet/health.

Bad News For Labour by that working group on media people that have wrote excellent msm analysis on a few topics. This one was about the anti-semitism smears. It pretty much proved the smears for what they are, similar in some way to how the undercover documentary The Lobby does.

Currently: Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. On chapter five. It is :*(
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By Heisenberg
#15076091
Image
To keep me busy during the coronavirus lockdown. 8)
By Sivad
#15076094
Godstud wrote:I just read a very good sci-fi book called Red Rising, by Pierce Brown.


Sounds like a cross between hunger games and gattaca.
User avatar
By Godstud
#15076103
Better than both.
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