˝'To understand what China means today one could do worse than begin with Mr. Cottrell's fluent account of its beginning' (THE TIMES)
China has one of the oldest civilizations, a way of life that flourished almost unchanged till the early years of the twentieth century. Yet few in the West know the absorbing story of China's beginnings, of the unification under the Emperor Shih-Huang-Ti around 200 B.C., of the building of the amazing Great Wall and of the violence that accompanied it. Here Leonard Cottrell has pieced the facts together with customary skill, once more making little-known history and historical characters fascinatingly alive.˝