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Title details for Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt - Available

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom

China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War

by Stephen R. Platt
Angela Lin
Audiobook
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Winner of the 2012 Cundill Prize in History
A gripping account of China's nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and often gruesome battles—a sweeping yet intimate portrait of the conflict that shaped the fate of modern China.
The story begins in the early 1850s, the waning years of the Qing dynasty, when word spread of a major revolution brewing in the provinces, led by a failed civil servant who claimed to be the son of God and brother of Jesus. The Taiping rebels drew their power from the poor and the disenfranchised, unleashing the ethnic rage of millions of Chinese against their Manchu rulers. This homegrown movement seemed all but unstoppable until Britain and the United States stepped in and threw their support behind the Manchus: after years of massive carnage, all opposition to Qing rule was effectively snuffed out for generations. Stephen R. Platt recounts these events in spellbinding detail, building his story on two fascinating characters with opposing visions for China's future: the conservative Confucian scholar Zeng Guofan, an accidental general who emerged as the most influential military strategist in China's modern history; and Hong Rengan, a brilliant Taiping leader whose grand vision of building a modern, industrial, and pro-Western Chinese state ended in tragic failure.
This is an essential and enthralling history of the rise and fall of the movement that, a century and a half ago, might have launched China on an entirely different path into the modern world.
"Platt has skillfully converted his erudition into an eminently general-interest treatment of what may have been the most lethal civil war in history."—Booklist, starred review

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 1, 2012

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781464005947
      • File size: 505687 KB
      • Duration: 17:33:30

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This account provides a riveting account of the nineteenth-century Taiping Revolution in China, which cost the country 20 million people. When the United States and Great Britain sided with the Qin rulers against the revolutionaries, it set China on a historical course that is still influencing the country's leaders. Narrator Angela Lin keeps the story moving with her vocal clarity and excellent pacing, and she's adept at pronouncing the Chinese names. However, she often sounds loud and breathless--as if every sentence carries a vital piece of information--a style that grows tiresome over the course of the book. Listeners would have been better served if she had saved her vigor for select passages, thereby focusing attention on what's truly important. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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