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--biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities--including those of statesmen, philosophers, poets, and rulers, to provide the focus for accounts of key historical trends and pe...

"A totally absorbing book…imaginative and erudite, full of startling juxtapositions and flashes of real perception." —Jonathan D. SpenceJohn E. Wills's masterful history ushers us into the worlds of 1688, from the suicidal exaltation of Russian Old Believers to the ravishing voice of the haiku poet Basho. Witness the splendor of the Chinese imperial court as the Kangxi emperor publicly mourns the death of his grandmother and shrewdly consolidates his power. Join th...

In The World from 1450 to 1700, historian John Wills takes a fresh look at one of the most fascinating and tumultuous periods in world history. Assuming a global perspective, rather than the traditional Eurocentric view, Wills traces the interwoven changes that led from the world of Columbus, Luther, and the Mughal emperor Babur to the world of Locke, Louis XIV, and the Kangxi emperor. The book's multi-centered approach explores historical events not in isolation but rather in a d...

China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800 looks at early modern China in some of its most complicated and intriguing relations with a world of increasing global interconnection. New World silver, Chinese tea, Jesuit astronomers at the Chinese court, and merchants and marauders of all kinds play important roles here. Although pieces of these stories have been told before, these chapters provide the fullest and clearest available summaries, based on sources in Chinese and in European languages, m...

In recent times, the Asia-Pacific region has far surpassed Europe in terms of reciprocal trade with the United States, and since the 1980s immigrants from Asia entering the United States have exceeded their counterparts from Europe, reversing a longstanding historical trend and making Asian Americans the country’s fastest growing racial group. What does transpacific history look like if the arc of the story is extended to the present?The essays in this volume offer answers to this ...

Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai traces the roots of modern global East Asia by focusing on the fascinating history of its seaways. The East Asian maritime realm, from the Straits of Malacca to the Sea of Japan, has been a core region of international trade for millennia, but during the long seventeenth century (1550 to 1700), the velocity and scale of commerce increased dramatically. Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese smugglers and pirates forged autonomous networks and maritime po...

In The World from 1450 to 1700, historian John Wills takes a fresh look at one of the most fascinating and tumultuous periods in world history. Assuming a global perspective, rather than the traditional Eurocentric view, Wills traces the interwoven changes that led from the world of Columbus, Luther, and the Mughal emperor Babur to the world of Locke, Louis XIV, and the Kangxi emperor. The book's multi-centered approach explores historical events not in isolation but rather in a dynamic ...

The definitive Tolkien companion—an indispensable guide to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and more, from the author of The Road to Middle-earth.This "highly erudite celebration and exploration of Tolkien's works [is] enormous fun," declared the Houston Chronicle, and Tom Shippey, a prominent medievalist and scholar of fantasy, "deepens your understanding" without "making you forget your initial, purely instinctive response to Middle-e...

“An absorbing and humane account . . . Mr. Herman is at pains to remind us that the Viking world was never just a stage for mayhem. It was, he says, ‘about daring to reach for more than the universe had gifted you, no matter the odds and the obstacles.’ In short: We might all take our own life’s cue from the Viking heart.”—The Wall Street JournalFrom a New York Times best-selling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist, a sweeping epic of Vi...

A new, incisive history of the transcontinental railroads and how they transformed America in the decades after the Civil War.The transcontinental railroads of the late nineteenth century were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating panics in the U.S. economy. Their dependence on public largess drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, a...

"A fascinating account of the gathering and dissemination of news from the end of the Middle Ages to the French Revolution" and the rise of the newspaper (Glenn Altschuler, The Huffington Post).Long before the invention of printing, let alone the daily newspaper, people wanted to stay informed. In the pre-industrial era, news was mostly shared through gossip, sermons, and proclamations. The age of print brought pamphlets, ballads, and the first news-sheets...

Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Cesare Borgia—three iconic figures whose intersecting lives provide the basis for this astonishing work of narrative history. They could not have been more different, and they would meet only for a short time in 1502, but the events that transpired when they did would significantly alter each man’s perceptions—and the course of Western history.In 1502, Italy was riven by conflict, with the city of Florence as the ultimate prize. Machiavel...