Full name: God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan

Author: Jonathan D. Spence Year: 1996 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction, Biographies, Historical fiction, Religion Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780393315561 0393315568

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. Similar books: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt Treason by the Book by Jonathan D. Spence Mao's China and After by Maurice Meisner The Great Wall by John Man 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 China by Edward L. Shaughnessy A History of China by Wolfram Eberhard 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