Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom
by Stephen R. Platt | 
Treason by the Book
by Jonathan D. Spence | 
The Gate of Heavenly Peace
by Jonathan D. Spence | 
Restless Empire
by Odd Arne Westad | 
China
by John King Fairbank |
The Search for Modern China
by Jonathan D. Spence |
The Long March
by Sun Shuyun | 
The Opium War
by Julia Lovell |
The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985
by John King Fairbank | 
China
by John Keay | 
The Death of Woman Wang
by Jonathan D. Spence |
The Boxer Rebellion
by Diana Preston |
Hungry Ghosts
by Jasper Becker |
Red Star over China
by Edgar Snow | 
The Island of Seven Cities
by Paul Chiasson | 
The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
by Jonathan D. Spence | 
Return to Dragon Mountain
by Jonathan D. Spence | 
St. Patrick of Ireland
by Philip Freeman |
Faith and Treason
by Antonia Fraser | 
Zealot
by Reza Aslan |
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.