China: A Cultural, Social, and Political History

by Patricia Buckley Ebrey

Designed for the East Asian history course, this text features the scholarship on the region and offers a range of cultural, political, economic and intellectual history. It also focuses on gender and material culture. It features color inserts that illustrate the rich artistic heritage of East Asia.

Genres: History, China

First published October 18, 2005

About the author

Patricia Buckley Ebrey is an American historian specializing in cultural and gender issues during the Chinese Song Dynasty. Ebrey obtained her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago in 1968 and her Masters and PhD from Columbia University in 1970 and 1975, respectively. Upon receiving her PhD, Ebrey was hired as visiting assistant professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She became an associate professor in 1982 and a full professor three years later. She is now a professor at the University of Washington.

Ebrey has received a number of awards for her work, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. Ebery's The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period received the 1995 Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Her 2008 work, Accumulating Culture: The Collections of Emperor Huizong, received the Smithsonian Institution's 2010 Shimada Prize for Outstanding Work of East Asian Art History.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

This particular book is out of print nowadays, but you can find it in its entirely (verbatim) in a massive two volume history of East Asia. 1. Pre-Modern East Asia to 1800 and 2. Modern East Asia from 1600. Those two books cover not only China but also Japan and Korea.

This history of China is really spot on, better than Ebrey’s Cambridge Illustrated History of China is some places. There was more detail and elaboration. Excellent!

[Chris Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

For Song and Tang dynasties, you can't do better than Patricia Ebrey

[Lyndsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting history, but like many textbooks, there is no life or story in the material.