Great State (eBook)

Brook takes you into the paintings in a way that can be spookily intimate

An erudite, surprising book that finds traces of swashbuckling where you'd least expect

Some of Mr. Brook's subjects are ethnically Chinese, but many are not - Mongols and Manchus figure prominently, as do Tibetans, Englishmen, Portuguese, Koreans and a host of others ... [It is] a wondrous range

Truly mesmerising. In this accessible but authoritative study, he... shows better than anyone I've read so far, the truly subversive power of detail

A fresh look at China's engagement with the outside world over centuries ... With useful maps and stories within stories, this is an ingenious look at an often misunderstood country

Excellent ... The power of this book lies partly in the fact that Brook does not overstate his case. While he does not seek to claim that China's current actions are prefigured by the past, an attentive reader cannot fail to notice extraordinary parallels

Impressive ... [Timothy Brook] at his best

A brilliant attempt to make us understand the reach and breadth of the first global age

The quest is fascinating and picaresque, a sort of cartographical Tristram Shandy with a sure-handed narrator steering us from Ming dynasty China to pre-Civil War Oxford to the Spice Islands of South-East Asia

What a pleasure to read a significant, original book that covers millennia of Chinese history in an informal, often chatty, but always learned style