The Sui Dynasty

by Arthur F. Wright

Book Overview

The Sui Dynasty This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394492765
• ISBN13: 9780394492766
• Release Date: December 1978
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 237 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Events many years past but somehow contemporary

How does one unify a nation and a culture? At what point do ambitious plans grow beyond a government's capacity overwhelm their authors? Is there a fundamental difference between the drive and discipline which lifts spirits and fosters achievement, and the arrogance and brutality which engender rebellion?Wright takes up these eternal questions in a meditation on the short-lived Sui dynasty, predecessor and layer of cultural and institutional foundations for the more famous Tang. Its founder unified China for the first time in 400 years; his successor, aiming to transcend this accomplishment with public works and foreign wars, brought down the dynasty. An old work and hard to find, but one which offers some illumination on the problems of contemporary China as well as on a time long past.