I really enjoyed this brief little history of China. I felt that the topics and people it focused within the different time periods were relevant, interesting, and consequently well-chosen. I would have really liked more constructed visuals that imparted information like more maps over time, city maps, buildings,and something that showed how long each dynasty lasted since the numbers are hard to relate to each other. While I really appreciate the aesthetic qualities of the book (nice size, good paper quality, lots of illustrations, different sections etc), I did find that many of the images were not well captioned (some were) and often seemed like they were a handy image rather than the best image. As a Chinese immigrant, the author seems to be a reliable source who can also translate ideas to western audiences. Overall it was rather decent and I would consider teaching as part of a non-fiction unit.