Four thousand years of Chinese history beautifully presented, lavishly illustrated and succinctly described. There is a lot of information here and as an overview of Chinese history - political; religious and cultural - it is well worth reading. Although this is probably better as a reference work rather than a straight read.

I found the format rather short and choppy on each theme described - as each theme is broken up into shorter sections of between two and four pages. Several people wrote the different chapters and, in my opinion, certain bits are better than others. There is an extensive bibliography so, if any of the different aspects described catch your interest, there are plenty of ideas for further reading. ( )