
The Northern Song Dynasty: A History of China, PART ONE, transports you back to an era when a fragmented land was being stitched together - when battlefield commanders could become emperors, when poets and scholar-officials shaped the currents of policy, and...

The Northern Song Dynasty: A History of China, PART TWO, plunges you into a world of emperors, reformers, and powerful women who shaped the destiny of an empire. From the early years of Emperor Zhenzong's court-where stalwart ministers such as Kou Zhun and...

The Northern Song Dynasty: A History of China, PART THREE, pulls you into a world of reformers, poets, generals, and emperors - a time when Chinese civilization shone at an extraordinary height even as the ground beneath it grew perilously thin. As I wrote...