A comprehensive, yet entertaining look at China's history through a modern lens. For millennia, China was the largest and richest nation on earth. Two centuries

The turbulent and chequered past of the world's most populous country is one of the most fascinating in world history, and relatively little known in the West.

Eight remarkable Chinese dynasties are chronicled here, covering 3,500 years of Chinese history from the emergence of the first dynasty in 1600 B.C. to the fall

After the collapse of the Han dynasty in the third century CE, China divided along a north-south line. Mark Lewis traces the changes that both underlay and resu