A fable for the twentieth century, brimming with pain and sorrow, 04 Dec 2008
This haunting personal odyssey through the political and social convulsions of twentieth century China should carry a health warning: This book will linger in the mind for months to come. Jung Chang recounts through personal memoirs and memories the turbulent and tragic lives of her grandparents and parents in Manchuria early in the century as the country desperately tries to shake off the brutality of the feudal warlord government. But no sooner had the Kuomintang arrived to unify most of China than the hapless population of Manchuria fell under the nightmare of Japanese occupation. Several years later and the brief and cruel `liberation' by the Russians is followed by the Kuomintang-Communist civil war. During the Japanese occupation many people had sided with the Kuomintang nationalists rather than the Communists as they appeared at the time to be in a better position to kick out the foreign oppressors. However, they were to pay for that allegiance once the Communist Party was in power.
The author was born into the People's Republic of China in Sichuan province. Her parents had been enthusiastic activists and supporters of the Communists but it didn't take long for the great socialist utopia under Mao Zedong to degenerate into an unutterably crass and barbaric regime hell-bent on manipulating, controlling and terrorising the population. Their actions cloaked in totalitarian doublespeak, Party officials invent, hunt down and persecute `class enemies', `counterrevolutionaries', `rightists' and `capitalist-roaders' in an endless cycle of murderous campaigns. Jung's parents, like millions of others, see their fortunes rise and fall with these campaigns at the whim of the Party because of their family's early association with the Kuomintang. They are periodically denounced, threatened, beaten, tormented, paraded, imprisoned and exiled, suffering every humiliation that could be inflicted on an individual. That suffering, told with an astonishing lack of bitterness forms the backdrop to Jung's early life.
As Mao's grip tightens his obsession with demonstrating the superiority of communism over capitalism results in the catastrophic Great Leap Forward when the labour of almost the entire workforce is directed towards producing steel while the countryside implodes resulting in an apocalyptic famine and the deaths of an estimated 30 million people. Incredibly, propaganda blamed this on bad weather and after a slight drop in his popularity Mao begins to engineer his own demonic cult of the personality, his deification coming easily to a culture that had been used to worshipping emperors as quasi-gods. Now Mao was to set about destroying the Party, the last impediment to his total personal power. The battered and impoverished Chinese people, desperately trying to recover from the horror of the Great Leap Forward, now had the Cultural Revolution unleashed upon them. During this collective spell of insanity Mao's Red Guards, consisting largely of schoolchildren and students on the rampage, were whipped into a frenzy to turn upon, humiliate, beat and destroy their teachers and consequently all education. In an attempt to edit the past out of existence, China lost almost its entire written heritage along with its religious and historical sites, statues, temples and old towns, everywhere destroyed. Eventually, with everyone denouncing everyone in order to survive the country had been turned into a `moral wasteland of hatred' and there was nowhere left to go.
This exquisite and powerful book follows the author and her siblings through these terrifying phases and is a compulsive page-turner written in clear, delicate English and brimming with pain and sorrow. I doubt if there has been a more honest and poignant portrayal of daily life under a totalitarian regime, where terror pervades every stratum of society, every family, every thought and deed.




The most amazing history lesson I have ever had!!, 22 Oct 2008
I've never felt so sad to reach the end of a book in all my life. This book is truely amazing and is well and truely the best book I've ever read! I even had the urge to start reading it all over again as soon as I'd finished.

Wild Swans follows the journey of three generations of women, from the same family, through the tragic history of twentieth century China.

I felt almost ashamed that I wasn't aware of hardly any of China's recent history. I picked the book up as I was doing a charity trek along the Great Wall in August 2008 and felt I should brush up on the history of the country. Although I had read wonderful things about this book I was prepared for a dull history lesson, one that I felt I had to put myself through. Sure it was a history lesson, but a breathtaking, extraordinary, unforgettable one. I struggled to remember that what I was reading was a true story, an account of three peoples' lives!

No one told me this book was banned in China. So in my hand luggage it went, luckily I, and the book, made it there and back safely. I wish I had managed to finish it before I left for China, but when I returned from my trip I was even more eager to learn about the wonderful country I had just visited!

This book is outstanding! It's not possible to put into words how much I enjoyed it. Please, just read it!!

An accessible history, 16 Oct 2008
One of the best books I have ever read.
Touching and heartfelt, yet matter of fact and never sentimental. This book is remarkably easy to read, I found it hard to put down. At once, this is the epic story of a family and a country. I could never have believed the amount of knowledge I accumulated from this book. The writing style of Jung Chang made it effortless.

worth it, 15 Oct 2008
Firstly I will admit it's been a few years since I read this and a friend has it now so I can't skim through it to refresh my memory.

The story travels through china before communist rule to the present. Most of the book is in the time of the Mao rule but I found it never really thought of this government as a bad thing, or a good thing. I never got an impression that the author blamed this government for what happened. I think this is one of the best things about this book, you see more the mindset of the people at the time.

As I had said a friend has it now, it got passed around and all of us loved the book. It even gave two the idea of going to China on holiday.

I picked this book up for a fiver because I was a student at the time and found it difficult to justify spending that much money on a book, but it would have been worth it even it I did pay the full price. (and thank you to the person who left it into a 2nd hand book shop)

An emotionally gripping, roller-coaster ride through the lives of three fascinating women, 02 Oct 2008
This is without doubt one of the best books I've ever read. It is a powerful, gripping story that takes you through act after act of what human beings are capable of doing on this Earth, sometimes in the most brutal fashion.

Based on the lives of three generations of women, it starts in turn of the 20th century China, when the Qing dynasty was starting to crumble and that way of life was coming to an end, taking you through the civil war, Mao coming to power, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution before ending in the 70s when the author leaves for Britain.

This is a "no holding back" story of survival with frequent scenarios detailing the worst and most brutal of human suffering. Reading through makes you realise the many things in this world we take for granted: democracy, security, civil liberties and freedom. It is an epic life story seen through the eyes of three ordinary women. They weren't world leaders or iconic historical figures, but ordinary citizens living their lives in a regime that is regarded with controversy even to this day.

All in all, although it's a book detailing suffering, fear and brutality it is an uplifting story of survival. You can't help but shed a tear for the person who survives, against all the odds, to make a better life for themselves. Like Pandora's box, once opened you'll see all the sins of the world come to fruition but one thing will remain at the end: hope.

If you're going to make a stir, you might as well do it in style. And Gavin Menzies has caused one, big time. In 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, this retired Royal Navy submarine commander, who only visited China for the first time on his 25th wedding anniversary, claims that the Chinese navigator Zheng He discovered America some 71 years before Columbus. And not content with this, he goes on to suggest that Zheng He learnt how to calculate longitude several centuries before John Harrison supposedly nailed the problem. Unsurprisingly, this has not gone down too well in some areas and the book has been the target of some scepticism.

Although Menzies has unearthed a few unknown primary sources, the bulk of his thesis depends on amalgamating several disparate areas of research into a grand unified theory. So he combines what we do know--principally that the Chinese built huge sailing ships with nine masts and that Asiatic chickens were discovered in South America--into what he considers compelling evidence. Menzies has also turned up some maps from the pre-Columbus era that appear to show the Americas, along with a few shipwrecks and Ming artefacts from along his supposed route.

It all makes for a gripping read, even if the sum doesn't quite add up to the whole. For all the detail, Menzies is some way off providing proof. None of the supposed 28,000 colonists has left any documentary evidence because all records, boats and shipyards associated with his voyage were burnt by imperial order in 1433. This surely begs the question--if we know so much of Zheng He's voyages around the Indian Ocean, how come we know nothing of his trips further east? Nor, conveniently for Menzies, did any of the colonists return home in triumph. They either died en route or skulked home to obscurity after they were disowned by the emperor.

So you either accept Menzies as an act of faith or brush him aside with scepticism. Either way, you'll have a lot of fun in the process as the book is never less than provocative. And even the sceptics will find themselves hoping Menzies has got it right, because there's something intrinsically uplifting about the notion of an amateur historian getting one over the professionals. --John Crace

A fable for the twentieth century, brimming with pain and sorrow, 04 Dec 2008
This haunting personal odyssey through the political and social convulsions of twentieth century China should carry a health warning: This book will linger in the mind for months to come. Jung Chang recounts through personal memoirs and memories the turbulent and tragic lives of her grandparents and parents in Manchuria early in the century as the country desperately tries to shake off the brutality of the feudal warlord government. But no sooner had the Kuomintang arrived to unify most of China than the hapless population of Manchuria fell under the nightmare of Japanese occupation. Several years later and the brief and cruel `liberation' by the Russians is followed by the Kuomintang-Communist civil war. During the Japanese occupation many people had sided with the Kuomintang nationalists rather than the Communists as they appeared at the time to be in a better position to kick out the foreign oppressors. However, they were to pay for that allegiance once the Communist Party was in power.
The author was born into the People's Republic of China in Sichuan province. Her parents had been enthusiastic activists and supporters of the Communists but it didn't take long for the great socialist utopia under Mao Zedong to degenerate into an unutterably crass and barbaric regime hell-bent on manipulating, controlling and terrorising the population. Their actions cloaked in totalitarian doublespeak, Party officials invent, hunt down and persecute `class enemies', `counterrevolutionaries', `rightists' and `capitalist-roaders' in an endless cycle of murderous campaigns. Jung's parents, like millions of others, see their fortunes rise and fall with these campaigns at the whim of the Party because of their family's early association with the Kuomintang. They are periodically denounced, threatened, beaten, tormented, paraded, imprisoned and exiled, suffering every humiliation that could be inflicted on an individual. That suffering, told with an astonishing lack of bitterness forms the backdrop to Jung's early life.
As Mao's grip tightens his obsession with demonstrating the superiority of communism over capitalism results in the catastrophic Great Leap Forward when the labour of almost the entire workforce is directed towards producing steel while the countryside implodes resulting in an apocalyptic famine and the deaths of an estimated 30 million people. Incredibly, propaganda blamed this on bad weather and after a slight drop in his popularity Mao begins to engineer his own demonic cult of the personality, his deification coming easily to a culture that had been used to worshipping emperors as quasi-gods. Now Mao was to set about destroying the Party, the last impediment to his total personal power. The battered and impoverished Chinese people, desperately trying to recover from the horror of the Great Leap Forward, now had the Cultural Revolution unleashed upon them. During this collective spell of insanity Mao's Red Guards, consisting largely of schoolchildren and students on the rampage, were whipped into a frenzy to turn upon, humiliate, beat and destroy their teachers and consequently all education. In an attempt to edit the past out of existence, China lost almost its entire written heritage along with its religious and historical sites, statues, temples and old towns, everywhere destroyed. Eventually, with everyone denouncing everyone in order to survive the country had been turned into a `moral wasteland of hatred' and there was nowhere left to go.
This exquisite and powerful book follows the author and her siblings through these terrifying phases and is a compulsive page-turner written in clear, delicate English and brimming with pain and sorrow. I doubt if there has been a more honest and poignant portrayal of daily life under a totalitarian regime, where terror pervades every stratum of society, every family, every thought and deed.




The most amazing history lesson I have ever had!!, 22 Oct 2008
I've never felt so sad to reach the end of a book in all my life. This book is truely amazing and is well and truely the best book I've ever read! I even had the urge to start reading it all over again as soon as I'd finished.

Wild Swans follows the journey of three generations of women, from the same family, through the tragic history of twentieth century China.

I felt almost ashamed that I wasn't aware of hardly any of China's recent history. I picked the book up as I was doing a charity trek along the Great Wall in August 2008 and felt I should brush up on the history of the country. Although I had read wonderful things about this book I was prepared for a dull history lesson, one that I felt I had to put myself through. Sure it was a history lesson, but a breathtaking, extraordinary, unforgettable one. I struggled to remember that what I was reading was a true story, an account of three peoples' lives!

No one told me this book was banned in China. So in my hand luggage it went, luckily I, and the book, made it there and back safely. I wish I had managed to finish it before I left for China, but when I returned from my trip I was even more eager to learn about the wonderful country I had just visited!

This book is outstanding! It's not possible to put into words how much I enjoyed it. Please, just read it!!

An accessible history, 16 Oct 2008
One of the best books I have ever read.
Touching and heartfelt, yet matter of fact and never sentimental. This book is remarkably easy to read, I found it hard to put down. At once, this is the epic story of a family and a country. I could never have believed the amount of knowledge I accumulated from this book. The writing style of Jung Chang made it effortless.

worth it, 15 Oct 2008
Firstly I will admit it's been a few years since I read this and a friend has it now so I can't skim through it to refresh my memory.

The story travels through china before communist rule to the present. Most of the book is in the time of the Mao rule but I found it never really thought of this government as a bad thing, or a good thing. I never got an impression that the author blamed this government for what happened. I think this is one of the best things about this book, you see more the mindset of the people at the time.

As I had said a friend has it now, it got passed around and all of us loved the book. It even gave two the idea of going to China on holiday.

I picked this book up for a fiver because I was a student at the time and found it difficult to justify spending that much money on a book, but it would have been worth it even it I did pay the full price. (and thank you to the person who left it into a 2nd hand book shop)

An emotionally gripping, roller-coaster ride through the lives of three fascinating women, 02 Oct 2008
This is without doubt one of the best books I've ever read. It is a powerful, gripping story that takes you through act after act of what human beings are capable of doing on this Earth, sometimes in the most brutal fashion.

Based on the lives of three generations of women, it starts in turn of the 20th century China, when the Qing dynasty was starting to crumble and that way of life was coming to an end, taking you through the civil war, Mao coming to power, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution before ending in the 70s when the author leaves for Britain.

This is a "no holding back" story of survival with frequent scenarios detailing the worst and most brutal of human suffering. Reading through makes you realise the many things in this world we take for granted: democracy, security, civil liberties and freedom. It is an epic life story seen through the eyes of three ordinary women. They weren't world leaders or iconic historical figures, but ordinary citizens living their lives in a regime that is regarded with controversy even to this day.

All in all, although it's a book detailing suffering, fear and brutality it is an uplifting story of survival. You can't help but shed a tear for the person who survives, against all the odds, to make a better life for themselves. Like Pandora's box, once opened you'll see all the sins of the world come to fruition but one thing will remain at the end: hope.

Tedious and unconvincing, 20 Dec 2008
Fascinating story, but it rapidly became clear as I worked through the book that Menzies is prepared to accept pretty much anything anyone tells him as "evidence". The story starts with the well documented and widely accepted story of Zheng He and the treasure fleets of the early Ming dynasty. These were remarkable vessels and their story, and the large amount of evidence behind it, is ably covered in "When China ruled the seas" by Louise Levathes. The difference between the two authors is that Levathes (mostly) restricts herself to what the evidence supports, while Menzies is happy to accept the flimsiest of conjectures as proof positive.

The actual evidence for Chinese voyages runs out at the eastern coast of Africa and on the Australian coast. But Menzies quite happily extrapolates beyond this. Evidence of Chinese genes and customs in parts of the US? Must have been the treasure fleet (never mind that there have been plenty of other historical contacts). A map purportedly showing the northern coast of Eurasia before it was charted by the Russians? Treasure fleet must have dunnit. A natural rock formation in the Bahamas bearing some visual resemblance to a built structure. Obviously the Chinese made it - based on nothing other than Menzies' claim that the formation has dimensions similar to the largest ships in the fleet.

Menzies is either extremely gullible, or he's taking his audience for a ride on the scale of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". I wouldn't mind if it were an exhilarating ride, but it's rather long and tedious and just no fun at all. If you want alternative history, can I suggest Harry Turtledove or Michael Moorcock as rather more entertaining?


Risible, flea-brained stupidity, 07 Sep 2008
There is such a thing as a work of fantasy. This is book is just that. No evidence whatsoever. No proof. No circumstantial evidence. Pure tosh from start to finish. This is no more history than books on Atlantis are history.
Do youselves a favour - if Sino-European history interests you, buy a good, well-respected, well-researched work on the subject. Leave foolishness like this to the idiots.

An interesting read, 30 Aug 2008
The basic premise of this book is that prior to the European voyages of discovery a massive fleet of ships left China and ended up circumnavigating the globe and on the way discovered North and South America, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and Greenland. The author, Gavin Menzies, is a former Royal Navy submarine commander and as such much of his evidence is based on his knowledge of currents and wind direction when compared to maps that predate the voyages of Columbus. He goes on to use a number of other sources of evidence to back up his case including, among other things, the presence of mysterious wrecks scattered the globe, the presence of animals and plants outside their native lands before Europeans reached them and the diaries of the first European explorers themselves.

While much of the evidence presented in this book is thought provoking and definitely worthy of further study there are many pieces that are open to other interpretation and some that can only be described as circumstantial. I feel some of the problem that this book has is that it doesn't generally present its evidence in the best way possible being overly repetitious in places and being a bit too informal in others. Overall 1421 is an interesting book that does present many new questions for historians on the accepted view of the voyages discovery but it does require more research.

Lovely PR hype - but sadly fairly rubbish history, 19 Jun 2008
You'd hope for more from a former Royal Navy commander, but sadly while his publicity machine is first rate, his history is anything but.

It would be lovely to turn what we know about naval history on its head and say that the Chinese Admiral Zheng He conclusively 'discovered' America or Australia long before any European navigators/explorers.

Unfortunately, this book falls into the category of what publishers call "wa-wa" history. In other words, it ain't true - and the historical reseach is shoddy.

The publishers know it's rubbish. We the public know it's rubbish, but we buy it anyway. And so they publish, because they know we'll buy it and they'll make money. In other words we get the books we deserve. We should be reading decent, reseach-based histories - but we find them rather dull so we don't....

Despite the welter of 5 and 4 star reviews this book has garnered on Amazon, it is important - before you buy it - to note one important fact.

Not ONE single naval historian has given any credence to these claims. Not any European - nor any Chinese - historian. In fact, they all say that the evidence is not there.

While other readers seem to like this book, I have to say that having read other books on global trade and sea voyages in the pre-modern era, I found Menzies style very confusing and it was very difficult to follow his train of thought and how he was using evidence to support his conclusions

Astonishingly, Menzies seems to have ignored two key pieces of Chinese evidence for Zheng He's voyages which list the countries he visited - and don't mention anything that could be America.

In fact Menzies does not read Chinese and there are no direct quotes from any articles or studies written in Chinese. Which is pretty gob-smacking when you think the book is about a Chinese Admiral!

The book may be entertaining, and I am sure Gavin Menzies is a nice bloke etc etc. But that ain't enough. For me his book was full of circular reasoning, speculation, distorted sources and slapdash research.

Or as has already been said - this book may well prove to be the Piltdown Man of literature and should only be classified as fiction.

You may think this is a case of the little man, the amateur, beating the massed hords of the professionals. That is always a very beguiling image, but it's the wrong one to picture.

This book is a triumph for publishing hype and muddled thinking and writing. For that reason we should give it a wide berth. Unless of course you actually like your history as fiction. In which case, be my guest. However, you have been warned....

Mind boggling pseudo-history, 25 May 2008
His far-fetched theories, while very interesting, have no scientific basis.
Any curious fact stated in the book that was checked by a (reputable) scientists was found false.
Read the well researched and scientifically sound "When China Ruled the Seas" by Louise Levathes, or check the Internet sites at & to understand the hoax...

A fable for the twentieth century, brimming with pain and sorrow, 04 Dec 2008
This haunting personal odyssey through the political and social convulsions of twentieth century China should carry a health warning: This book will linger in the mind for months to come. Jung Chang recounts through personal memoirs and memories the turbulent and tragic lives of her grandparents and parents in Manchuria early in the century as the country desperately tries to shake off the brutality of the feudal warlord government. But no sooner had the Kuomintang arrived to unify most of China than the hapless population of Manchuria fell under the nightmare of Japanese occupation. Several years later and the brief and cruel `liberation' by the Russians is followed by the Kuomintang-Communist civil war. During the Japanese occupation many people had sided with the Kuomintang nationalists rather than the Communists as they appeared at the time to be in a better position to kick out the foreign oppressors. However, they were to pay for that allegiance once the Communist Party was in power.
The author was born into the People's Republic of China in Sichuan province. Her parents had been enthusiastic activists and supporters of the Communists but it didn't take long for the great socialist utopia under Mao Zedong to degenerate into an unutterably crass and barbaric regime hell-bent on manipulating, controlling and terrorising the population. Their actions cloaked in totalitarian doublespeak, Party officials invent, hunt down and persecute `class enemies', `counterrevolutionaries', `rightists' and `capitalist-roaders' in an endless cycle of murderous campaigns. Jung's parents, like millions of others, see their fortunes rise and fall with these campaigns at the whim of the Party because of their family's early association with the Kuomintang. They are periodically denounced, threatened, beaten, tormented, paraded, imprisoned and exiled, suffering every humiliation that could be inflicted on an individual. That suffering, told with an astonishing lack of bitterness forms the backdrop to Jung's early life.
As Mao's grip tightens his obsession with demonstrating the superiority of communism over capitalism results in the catastrophic Great Leap Forward when the labour of almost the entire workforce is directed towards producing steel while the countryside implodes resulting in an apocalyptic famine and the deaths of an estimated 30 million people. Incredibly, propaganda blamed this on bad weather and after a slight drop in his popularity Mao begins to engineer his own demonic cult of the personality, his deification coming easily to a culture that had been used to worshipping emperors as quasi-gods. Now Mao was to set about destroying the Party, the last impediment to his total personal power. The battered and impoverished Chinese people, desperately trying to recover from the horror of the Great Leap Forward, now had the Cultural Revolution unleashed upon them. During this collective spell of insanity Mao's Red Guards, consisting largely of schoolchildren and students on the rampage, were whipped into a frenzy to turn upon, humiliate, beat and destroy their teachers and consequently all education. In an attempt to edit the past out of existence, China lost almost its entire written heritage along with its religious and historical sites, statues, temples and old towns, everywhere destroyed. Eventually, with everyone denouncing everyone in order to survive the country had been turned into a `moral wasteland of hatred' and there was nowhere left to go.
This exquisite and powerful book follows the author and her siblings through these terrifying phases and is a compulsive page-turner written in clear, delicate English and brimming with pain and sorrow. I doubt if there has been a more honest and poignant portrayal of daily life under a totalitarian regime, where terror pervades every stratum of society, every family, every thought and deed.




The most amazing history lesson I have ever had!!, 22 Oct 2008
I've never felt so sad to reach the end of a book in all my life. This book is truely amazing and is well and truely the best book I've ever read! I even had the urge to start reading it all over again as soon as I'd finished.

Wild Swans follows the journey of three generations of women, from the same family, through the tragic history of twentieth century China.

I felt almost ashamed that I wasn't aware of hardly any of China's recent history. I picked the book up as I was doing a charity trek along the Great Wall in August 2008 and felt I should brush up on the history of the country. Although I had read wonderful things about this book I was prepared for a dull history lesson, one that I felt I had to put myself through. Sure it was a history lesson, but a breathtaking, extraordinary, unforgettable one. I struggled to remember that what I was reading was a true story, an account of three peoples' lives!

No one told me this book was banned in China. So in my hand luggage it went, luckily I, and the book, made it there and back safely. I wish I had managed to finish it before I left for China, but when I returned from my trip I was even more eager to learn about the wonderful country I had just visited!

This book is outstanding! It's not possible to put into words how much I enjoyed it. Please, just read it!!

An accessible history, 16 Oct 2008
One of the best books I have ever read.
Touching and heartfelt, yet matter of fact and never sentimental. This book is remarkably easy to read, I found it hard to put down. At once, this is the epic story of a family and a country. I could never have believed the amount of knowledge I accumulated from this book. The writing style of Jung Chang made it effortless.

worth it, 15 Oct 2008
Firstly I will admit it's been a few years since I read this and a friend has it now so I can't skim through it to refresh my memory.

The story travels through china before communist rule to the present. Most of the book is in the time of the Mao rule but I found it never really thought of this government as a bad thing, or a good thing. I never got an impression that the author blamed this government for what happened. I think this is one of the best things about this book, you see more the mindset of the people at the time.

As I had said a friend has it now, it got passed around and all of us loved the book. It even gave two the idea of going to China on holiday.

I picked this book up for a fiver because I was a student at the time and found it difficult to justify spending that much money on a book, but it would have been worth it even it I did pay the full price. (and thank you to the person who left it into a 2nd hand book shop)

An emotionally gripping, roller-coaster ride through the lives of three fascinating women, 02 Oct 2008
This is without doubt one of the best books I've ever read. It is a powerful, gripping story that takes you through act after act of what human beings are capable of doing on this Earth, sometimes in the most brutal fashion.

Based on the lives of three generations of women, it starts in turn of the 20th century China, when the Qing dynasty was starting to crumble and that way of life was coming to an end, taking you through the civil war, Mao coming to power, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution before ending in the 70s when the author leaves for Britain.

This is a "no holding back" story of survival with frequent scenarios detailing the worst and most brutal of human suffering. Reading through makes you realise the many things in this world we take for granted: democracy, security, civil liberties and freedom. It is an epic life story seen through the eyes of three ordinary women. They weren't world leaders or iconic historical figures, but ordinary citizens living their lives in a regime that is regarded with controversy even to this day.

All in all, although it's a book detailing suffering, fear and brutality it is an uplifting story of survival. You can't help but shed a tear for the person who survives, against all the odds, to make a better life for themselves. Like Pandora's box, once opened you'll see all the sins of the world come to fruition but one thing will remain at the end: hope.

Tedious and unconvincing, 20 Dec 2008
Fascinating story, but it rapidly became clear as I worked through the book that Menzies is prepared to accept pretty much anything anyone tells him as "evidence". The story starts with the well documented and widely accepted story of Zheng He and the treasure fleets of the early Ming dynasty. These were remarkable vessels and their story, and the large amount of evidence behind it, is ably covered in "When China ruled the seas" by Louise Levathes. The difference between the two authors is that Levathes (mostly) restricts herself to what the evidence supports, while Menzies is happy to accept the flimsiest of conjectures as proof positive.

The actual evidence for Chinese voyages runs out at the eastern coast of Africa and on the Australian coast. But Menzies quite happily extrapolates beyond this. Evidence of Chinese genes and customs in parts of the US? Must have been the treasure fleet (never mind that there have been plenty of other historical contacts). A map purportedly showing the northern coast of Eurasia before it was charted by the Russians? Treasure fleet must have dunnit. A natural rock formation in the Bahamas bearing some visual resemblance to a built structure. Obviously the Chinese made it - based on nothing other than Menzies' claim that the formation has dimensions similar to the largest ships in the fleet.

Menzies is either extremely gullible, or he's taking his audience for a ride on the scale of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". I wouldn't mind if it were an exhilarating ride, but it's rather long and tedious and just no fun at all. If you want alternative history, can I suggest Harry Turtledove or Michael Moorcock as rather more entertaining?


Risible, flea-brained stupidity, 07 Sep 2008
There is such a thing as a work of fantasy. This is book is just that. No evidence whatsoever. No proof. No circumstantial evidence. Pure tosh from start to finish. This is no more history than books on Atlantis are history.
Do youselves a favour - if Sino-European history interests you, buy a good, well-respected, well-researched work on the subject. Leave foolishness like this to the idiots.

An interesting read, 30 Aug 2008
The basic premise of this book is that prior to the European voyages of discovery a massive fleet of ships left China and ended up circumnavigating the globe and on the way discovered North and South America, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and Greenland. The author, Gavin Menzies, is a former Royal Navy submarine commander and as such much of his evidence is based on his knowledge of currents and wind direction when compared to maps that predate the voyages of Columbus. He goes on to use a number of other sources of evidence to back up his case including, among other things, the presence of mysterious wrecks scattered the globe, the presence of animals and plants outside their native lands before Europeans reached them and the diaries of the first European explorers themselves.

While much of the evidence presented in this book is thought provoking and definitely worthy of further study there are many pieces that are open to other interpretation and some that can only be described as circumstantial. I feel some of the problem that this book has is that it doesn't generally present its evidence in the best way possible being overly repetitious in places and being a bit too informal in others. Overall 1421 is an interesting book that does present many new questions for historians on the accepted view of the voyages discovery but it does require more research.

Lovely PR hype - but sadly fairly rubbish history, 19 Jun 2008
You'd hope for more from a former Royal Navy commander, but sadly while his publicity machine is first rate, his history is anything but.

It would be lovely to turn what we know about naval history on its head and say that the Chinese Admiral Zheng He conclusively 'discovered' America or Australia long before any European navigators/explorers.

Unfortunately, this book falls into the category of what publishers call "wa-wa" history. In other words, it ain't true - and the historical reseach is shoddy.

The publishers know it's rubbish. We the public know it's rubbish, but we buy it anyway. And so they publish, because they know we'll buy it and they'll make money. In other words we get the books we deserve. We should be reading decent, reseach-based histories - but we find them rather dull so we don't....

Despite the welter of 5 and 4 star reviews this book has garnered on Amazon, it is important - before you buy it - to note one important fact.

Not ONE single naval historian has given any credence to these claims. Not any European - nor any Chinese - historian. In fact, they all say that the evidence is not there.

While other readers seem to like this book, I have to say that having read other books on global trade and sea voyages in the pre-modern era, I found Menzies style very confusing and it was very difficult to follow his train of thought and how he was using evidence to support his conclusions

Astonishingly, Menzies seems to have ignored two key pieces of Chinese evidence for Zheng He's voyages which list the countries he visited - and don't mention anything that could be America.

In fact Menzies does not read Chinese and there are no direct quotes from any articles or studies written in Chinese. Which is pretty gob-smacking when you think the book is about a Chinese Admiral!

The book may be entertaining, and I am sure Gavin Menzies is a nice bloke etc etc. But that ain't enough. For me his book was full of circular reasoning, speculation, distorted sources and slapdash research.

Or as has already been said - this book may well prove to be the Piltdown Man of literature and should only be classified as fiction.

You may think this is a case of the little man, the amateur, beating the massed hords of the professionals. That is always a very beguiling image, but it's the wrong one to picture.

This book is a triumph for publishing hype and muddled thinking and writing. For that reason we should give it a wide berth. Unless of course you actually like your history as fiction. In which case, be my guest. However, you have been warned....

Mind boggling pseudo-history, 25 May 2008
His far-fetched theories, while very interesting, have no scientific basis.
Any curious fact stated in the book that was checked by a (reputable) scientists was found false.
Read the well researched and scientifically sound "When China Ruled the Seas" by Louise Levathes, or check the Internet sites at & to understand the hoax...

Well written, 07 Jul 2008
I have read this book quite quickly as I found it very interesting.It is well researched and very readable for a lay person like me. An essential read for people who are interested in the future!

A fable for the twentieth century, brimming with pain and sorrow, 04 Dec 2008
This haunting personal odyssey through the political and social convulsions of twentieth century China should carry a health warning: This book will linger in the mind for months to come. Jung Chang recounts through personal memoirs and memories the turbulent and tragic lives of her grandparents and parents in Manchuria early in the century as the country desperately tries to shake off the brutality of the feudal warlord government. But no sooner had the Kuomintang arrived to unify most of China than the hapless population of Manchuria fell under the nightmare of Japanese occupation. Several years later and the brief and cruel `liberation' by the Russians is followed by the Kuomintang-Communist civil war. During the Japanese occupation many people had sided with the Kuomintang nationalists rather than the Communists as they appeared at the time to be in a better position to kick out the foreign oppressors. However, they were to pay for that allegiance once the Communist Party was in power.
The author was born into the People's Republic of China in Sichuan province. Her parents had been enthusiastic activists and supporters of the Communists but it didn't take long for the great socialist utopia under Mao Zedong to degenerate into an unutterably crass and barbaric regime hell-bent on manipulating, controlling and terrorising the population. Their actions cloaked in totalitarian doublespeak, Party officials invent, hunt down and persecute `class enemies', `counterrevolutionaries', `rightists' and `capitalist-roaders' in an endless cycle of murderous campaigns. Jung's parents, like millions of others, see their fortunes rise and fall with these campaigns at the whim of the Party because of their family's early association with the Kuomintang. They are periodically denounced, threatened, beaten, tormented, paraded, imprisoned and exiled, suffering every humiliation that could be inflicted on an individual. That suffering, told with an astonishing lack of bitterness forms the backdrop to Jung's early life.
As Mao's grip tightens his obsession with demonstrating the superiority of communism over capitalism results in the catastrophic Great Leap Forward when the labour of almost the entire workforce is directed towards producing steel while the countryside implodes resulting in an apocalyptic famine and the deaths of an estimated 30 million people. Incredibly, propaganda blamed this on bad weather and after a slight drop in his popularity Mao begins to engineer his own demonic cult of the personality, his deification coming easily to a culture that had been used to worshipping emperors as quasi-gods. Now Mao was to set about destroying the Party, the last impediment to his total personal power. The battered and impoverished Chinese people, desperately trying to recover from the horror of the Great Leap Forward, now had the Cultural Revolution unleashed upon them. During this collective spell of insanity Mao's Red Guards, consisting largely of schoolchildren and students on the rampage, were whipped into a frenzy to turn upon, humiliate, beat and destroy their teachers and consequently all education. In an attempt to edit the past out of existence, China lost almost its entire written heritage along with its religious and historical sites, statues, temples and old towns, everywhere destroyed. Eventually, with everyone denouncing everyone in order to survive the country had been turned into a `moral wasteland of hatred' and there was nowhere left to go.
This exquisite and powerful book follows the author and her siblings through these terrifying phases and is a compulsive page-turner written in clear, delicate English and brimming with pain and sorrow. I doubt if there has been a more honest and poignant portrayal of daily life under a totalitarian regime, where terror pervades every stratum of society, every family, every thought and deed.




The most amazing history lesson I have ever had!!, 22 Oct 2008
I've never felt so sad to reach the end of a book in all my life. This book is truely amazing and is well and truely the best book I've ever read! I even had the urge to start reading it all over again as soon as I'd finished.

Wild Swans follows the journey of three generations of women, from the same family, through the tragic history of twentieth century China.

I felt almost ashamed that I wasn't aware of hardly any of China's recent history. I picked the book up as I was doing a charity trek along the Great Wall in August 2008 and felt I should brush up on the history of the country. Although I had read wonderful things about this book I was prepared for a dull history lesson, one that I felt I had to put myself through. Sure it was a history lesson, but a breathtaking, extraordinary, unforgettable one. I struggled to remember that what I was reading was a true story, an account of three peoples' lives!

No one told me this book was banned in China. So in my hand luggage it went, luckily I, and the book, made it there and back safely. I wish I had managed to finish it before I left for China, but when I returned from my trip I was even more eager to learn about the wonderful country I had just visited!

This book is outstanding! It's not possible to put into words how much I enjoyed it. Please, just read it!!

An accessible history, 16 Oct 2008
One of the best books I have ever read.
Touching and heartfelt, yet matter of fact and never sentimental. This book is remarkably easy to read, I found it hard to put down. At once, this is the epic story of a family and a country. I could never have believed the amount of knowledge I accumulated from this book. The writing style of Jung Chang made it effortless.

worth it, 15 Oct 2008
Firstly I will admit it's been a few years since I read this and a friend has it now so I can't skim through it to refresh my memory.

The story travels through china before communist rule to the present. Most of the book is in the time of the Mao rule but I found it never really thought of this government as a bad thing, or a good thing. I never got an impression that the author blamed this government for what happened. I think this is one of the best things about this book, you see more the mindset of the people at the time.

As I had said a friend has it now, it got passed around and all of us loved the book. It even gave two the idea of going to China on holiday.

I picked this book up for a fiver because I was a student at the time and found it difficult to justify spending that much money on a book, but it would have been worth it even it I did pay the full price. (and thank you to the person who left it into a 2nd hand book shop)

An emotionally gripping, roller-coaster ride through the lives of three fascinating women, 02 Oct 2008
This is without doubt one of the best books I've ever read. It is a powerful, gripping story that takes you through act after act of what human beings are capable of doing on this Earth, sometimes in the most brutal fashion.

Based on the lives of three generations of women, it starts in turn of the 20th century China, when the Qing dynasty was starting to crumble and that way of life was coming to an end, taking you through the civil war, Mao coming to power, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution before ending in the 70s when the author leaves for Britain.

This is a "no holding back" story of survival with frequent scenarios detailing the worst and most brutal of human suffering. Reading through makes you realise the many things in this world we take for granted: democracy, security, civil liberties and freedom. It is an epic life story seen through the eyes of three ordinary women. They weren't world leaders or iconic historical figures, but ordinary citizens living their lives in a regime that is regarded with controversy even to this day.

All in all, although it's a book detailing suffering, fear and brutality it is an uplifting story of survival. You can't help but shed a tear for the person who survives, against all the odds, to make a better life for themselves. Like Pandora's box, once opened you'll see all the sins of the world come to fruition but one thing will remain at the end: hope.

Tedious and unconvincing, 20 Dec 2008
Fascinating story, but it rapidly became clear as I worked through the book that Menzies is prepared to accept pretty much anything anyone tells him as "evidence". The story starts with the well documented and widely accepted story of Zheng He and the treasure fleets of the early Ming dynasty. These were remarkable vessels and their story, and the large amount of evidence behind it, is ably covered in "When China ruled the seas" by Louise Levathes. The difference between the two authors is that Levathes (mostly) restricts herself to what the evidence supports, while Menzies is happy to accept the flimsiest of conjectures as proof positive.

The actual evidence for Chinese voyages runs out at the eastern coast of Africa and on the Australian coast. But Menzies quite happily extrapolates beyond this. Evidence of Chinese genes and customs in parts of the US? Must have been the treasure fleet (never mind that there have been plenty of other historical contacts). A map purportedly showing the northern coast of Eurasia before it was charted by the Russians? Treasure fleet must have dunnit. A natural rock formation in the Bahamas bearing some visual resemblance to a built structure. Obviously the Chinese made it - based on nothing other than Menzies' claim that the formation has dimensions similar to the largest ships in the fleet.

Menzies is either extremely gullible, or he's taking his audience for a ride on the scale of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". I wouldn't mind if it were an exhilarating ride, but it's rather long and tedious and just no fun at all. If you want alternative history, can I suggest Harry Turtledove or Michael Moorcock as rather more entertaining?


Risible, flea-brained stupidity, 07 Sep 2008
There is such a thing as a work of fantasy. This is book is just that. No evidence whatsoever. No proof. No circumstantial evidence. Pure tosh from start to finish. This is no more history than books on Atlantis are history.
Do youselves a favour - if Sino-European history interests you, buy a good, well-respected, well-researched work on the subject. Leave foolishness like this to the idiots.

An interesting read, 30 Aug 2008
The basic premise of this book is that prior to the European voyages of discovery a massive fleet of ships left China and ended up circumnavigating the globe and on the way discovered North and South America, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and Greenland. The author, Gavin Menzies, is a former Royal Navy submarine commander and as such much of his evidence is based on his knowledge of currents and wind direction when compared to maps that predate the voyages of Columbus. He goes on to use a number of other sources of evidence to back up his case including, among other things, the presence of mysterious wrecks scattered the globe, the presence of animals and plants outside their native lands before Europeans reached them and the diaries of the first European explorers themselves.

While much of the evidence presented in this book is thought provoking and definitely worthy of further study there are many pieces that are open to other interpretation and some that can only be described as circumstantial. I feel some of the problem that this book has is that it doesn't generally present its evidence in the best way possible being overly repetitious in places and being a bit too informal in others. Overall 1421 is an interesting book that does present many new questions for historians on the accepted view of the voyages discovery but it does require more research.

Lovely PR hype - but sadly fairly rubbish history, 19 Jun 2008
You'd hope for more from a former Royal Navy commander, but sadly while his publicity machine is first rate, his history is anything but.

It would be lovely to turn what we know about naval history on its head and say that the Chinese Admiral Zheng He conclusively 'discovered' America or Australia long before any European navigators/explorers.

Unfortunately, this book falls into the category of what publishers call "wa-wa" history. In other words, it ain't true - and the historical reseach is shoddy.

The publishers know it's rubbish. We the public know it's rubbish, but we buy it anyway. And so they publish, because they know we'll buy it and they'll make money. In other words we get the books we deserve. We should be reading decent, reseach-based histories - but we find them rather dull so we don't....

Despite the welter of 5 and 4 star reviews this book has garnered on Amazon, it is important - before you buy it - to note one important fact.

Not ONE single naval historian has given any credence to these claims. Not any European - nor any Chinese - historian. In fact, they all say that the evidence is not there.

While other readers seem to like this book, I have to say that having read other books on global trade and sea voyages in the pre-modern era, I found Menzies style very confusing and it was very difficult to follow his train of thought and how he was using evidence to support his conclusions

Astonishingly, Menzies seems to have ignored two key pieces of Chinese evidence for Zheng He's voyages which list the countries he visited - and don't mention anything that could be America.

In fact Menzies does not read Chinese and there are no direct quotes from any articles or studies written in Chinese. Which is pretty gob-smacking when you think the book is about a Chinese Admiral!

The book may be entertaining, and I am sure Gavin Menzies is a nice bloke etc etc. But that ain't enough. For me his book was full of circular reasoning, speculation, distorted sources and slapdash research.

Or as has already been said - this book may well prove to be the Piltdown Man of literature and should only be classified as fiction.

You may think this is a case of the little man, the amateur, beating the massed hords of the professionals. That is always a very beguiling image, but it's the wrong one to picture.

This book is a triumph for publishing hype and muddled thinking and writing. For that reason we should give it a wide berth. Unless of course you actually like your history as fiction. In which case, be my guest. However, you have been warned....

Mind boggling pseudo-history, 25 May 2008
His far-fetched theories, while very interesting, have no scientific basis.
Any curious fact stated in the book that was checked by a (reputable) scientists was found false.
Read the well researched and scientifically sound "When China Ruled the Seas" by Louise Levathes, or check the Internet sites at & to understand the hoax...

Well written, 07 Jul 2008
I have read this book quite quickly as I found it very interesting.It is well researched and very readable for a lay person like me. An essential read for people who are interested in the future!

A bold book, 19 Dec 2008
John Man gave himself a big challenge ... to write a book that goes beyond a mere biography. To write a book that dares to go beyond all the written sources to explore not just what Genghis Khan did, but who really was Genghis Khan. It allows a glimpse of the great man's soul.

I admire Man for taking on the challenge. To do it he has collaborated extensively with the leading Mongolian and international scholars. Most importantly he has gone beyond this mere "knowledge" and built on it by visiting the key locations in Genghis' life, to get a feel for what this or that battle was like, what the childhood was like, and as a result he paints a more personal story than any other biography of Temujin.

Man makes more than a few deductions about what Temujin / Genghis was thinking at various times, but he is very good at walking the reader thru the process of his deductions. Its a brave thing to do and I award the book 4 stars for the authors tenacity and bravery in piecing together the likely thoughts of a man who lived 800 years ago.

A fifth star comes for how readable Man has made his book. It reads well and makes the book compelling.

*****



Enthusiastic but patchy, 08 Jul 2008
Genghis Khan is full of the author's enthusiasm for Mongol culture and their history, and this is charming for the most part. The period that this book deals with is fascinating, and the book itself describes engagingly the clash of urban and nomadic cultures, the intertwining of Mongolia's fate in China and how Genghis Khan may have lived and died. Much is based on conjecture; this is clearly necessary as there is only one limited source, The Secret History, from around the time. This is clearly explained in the text and where this and other sources are questionable the reader is informed and the evidence appears to be dealt with an appropriate degree of scepticism.
The lack of evidence becomes more troublesome when the author feels the need to introduce his travels to flesh out the content. As suggested in other reviews, it feels like space filler and adds very little to the book, making you wish you could hit fast forward on these sections.
Another slight annoyance is the apologist theme throughout - whenever the Mongols commit an atrocity, it is not for sadism or xenophobia's sake but as a 'sign for others' or as justifiable vengeance. Given the number of murders - particularly of non-combatants - the Mongols felt they had to commit to peoples of various backgrounds, either word didn't get around or this strategy didn't work that well.
Genghis Khan is on the whole an informative read, but I would not have resented a shorter book. I would give it three stars but I'm not sure if anyone has made a better book on this subject.

Definitive, 11 Jun 2008
If you want to know about Mr Khan, this is the book. John Man has done a brilliant job in bringing this incredible man to life. Other reviewers have explained the book well. If you are interested in Ghengis, whatever your moral compass, this is the book you need to read. Briliant.

Interesting, but too much travelogue, 19 Mar 2008
By some estimates, Genghis Khan managed to rid the world of one-tenth of its contemporary population, which means that his credentials in the noble art of mass murder are nearly unequalled. John Man gives us a more balanced picture. But beware! This is John Man, The Fan Of Khan, and he therefore tends to accentuate the positive of ol' G.K., such as it is. Certainly Genghis's empire was impressive, considering that it was all done on horseback. However, given that the Mongols were nomadic, with nothing but contempt for sedentary peoples, who merited only robbing, looting, raping and massacring, it was never going to last. Mr. Man brings the story down to the present day, with a number of countries seeking to claim the legacy of Genghis.

And this, for me, is where the problems with this book start. Mr. Man seeks out the places with which Genghis was associated - where he was born and where he possibly died. This I found interesting - up to a point. But for me, there was much too much of it and in too much detail, and after a while I found myself speeding up to get through it quicker. A shorter version of the literary traveller's tales would have made for a much better book.

The interesting and informative story of a great man, 11 Oct 2006
Genghis Khan rose from obscurity to command of the Mongol tribes and upon his death ruled one of the largest empires the world had ever seen, an empire his descendents expanded until it stretched from Korea to Hungary. This book attempts to shed some light on the life and death of Genghis Khan, sifting fact from legend and shows his place in the hearts and minds of modern Mongolian and Chinese people.

This book follows in the footsteps of the great conquer from his birth to his death. Using historical sources as well as more modern research and interspaced with tales from his own journeys around Asia, John Man weaves an interesting and enjoyable story that is a must read for anyone interested in Far Eastern history. Unlike many people I have never seen Genghis Khan as a villain but as one of the greatest men in history and I hope that this book goes some way to redress the balance oh his reputation.

A fable for the twentieth century, brimming with pain and sorrow, 04 Dec 2008
This haunting personal odyssey through the political and social convulsions of twentieth century China should carry a health warning: This book will linger in the mind for months to come. Jung Chang recounts through personal memoirs and memories the turbulent and tragic lives of her grandparents and parents in Manchuria early in the century as the country desperately tries to shake off the brutality of the feudal warlord government. But no sooner had the Kuomintang arrived to unify most of China than the hapless population of Manchuria fell under the nightmare of Japanese occupation. Several years later and the brief and cruel `liberation' by the Russians is followed by the Kuomintang-Communist civil war. During the Japanese occupation many people had sided with the Kuomintang nationalists rather than the Communists as they appeared at the time to be in a better position to kick out the foreign oppressors. However, they were to pay for that allegiance once the Communist Party was in power.
The author was born into the People's Republic of China in Sichuan province. Her parents had been enthusiastic activists and supporters of the Communists but it didn't take long for the great socialist utopia under Mao Zedong to degenerate into an unutterably crass and barbaric regime hell-bent on manipulating, controlling and terrorising the population. Their actions cloaked in totalitarian doublespeak, Party officials invent, hunt down and persecute `class enemies', `counterrevolutionaries', `rightists' and `capitalist-roaders' in an endless cycle of murderous campaigns. Jung's parents, like millions of others, see their fortunes rise and fall with these campaigns at the whim of the Party because of their family's early association with the Kuomintang. They are periodically denounced, threatened, beaten, tormented, paraded, imprisoned and exiled, suffering every humiliation that could be inflicted on an individual. That suffering, told with an astonishing lack of bitterness forms the backdrop to Jung's early life.
As Mao's grip tightens his obsession with demonstrating the superiority of communism over capitalism results in the catastrophic Great Leap Forward when the labour of almost the entire workforce is directed towards producing steel while the countryside implodes resulting in an apocalyptic famine and the deaths of an estimated 30 million people. Incredibly, propaganda blamed this on bad weather and after a slight drop in his popularity Mao begins to engineer his own demonic cult of the personality, his deification coming easily to a culture that had been used to worshipping emperors as quasi-gods. Now Mao was to set about destroying the Party, the last impediment to his total personal power. The battered and impoverished Chinese people, desperately trying to recover from the horror of the Great Leap Forward, now had the Cultural Revolution unleashed upon them. During this collective spell of insanity Mao's Red Guards, consisting largely of schoolchildren and students on the rampage, were whipped into a frenzy to turn upon, humiliate, beat and destroy their teachers and consequently all education. In an attempt to edit the past out of existence, China lost almost its entire written heritage along with its religious and historical sites, statues, temples and old towns, everywhere destroyed. Eventually, with everyone denouncing everyone in order to survive the country had been turned into a `moral wasteland of hatred' and there was nowhere left to go.
This exquisite and powerful book follows the author and her siblings through these terrifying phases and is a compulsive page-turner written in clear, delicate English and brimming with pain and sorrow. I doubt if there has been a more honest and poignant portrayal of daily life under a totalitarian regime, where terror pervades every stratum of society, every family, every thought and deed.




The most amazing history lesson I have ever had!!, 22 Oct 2008
I've never felt so sad to reach the end of a book in all my life. This book is truely amazing and is well and truely the best book I've ever read! I even had the urge to start reading it all over again as soon as I'd finished.

Wild Swans follows the journey of three generations of women, from the same family, through the tragic history of twentieth century China.

I felt almost ashamed that I wasn't aware of hardly any of China's recent history. I picked the book up as I was doing a charity trek along the Great Wall in August 2008 and felt I should brush up on the history of the country. Although I had read wonderful things about this book I was prepared for a dull history lesson, one that I felt I had to put myself through. Sure it was a history lesson, but a breathtaking, extraordinary, unforgettable one. I struggled to remember that what I was reading was a true story, an account of three peoples' lives!

No one told me this book was banned in China. So in my hand luggage it went, luckily I, and the book, made it there and back safely. I wish I had managed to finish it before I left for China, but when I returned from my trip I was even more eager to learn about the wonderful country I had just visited!

This book is outstanding! It's not possible to put into words how much I enjoyed it. Please, just read it!!

An accessible history, 16 Oct 2008
One of the best books I have ever read.
Touching and heartfelt, yet matter of fact and never sentimental. This book is remarkably easy to read, I found it hard to put down. At once, this is the epic story of a family and a country. I could never have believed the amount of knowledge I accumulated from this book. The writing style of Jung Chang made it effortless.

worth it, 15 Oct 2008
Firstly I will admit it's been a few years since I read this and a friend has it now so I can't skim through it to refresh my memory.

The story travels through china before communist rule to the present. Most of the book is in the time of the Mao rule but I found it never really thought of this government as a bad thing, or a good thing. I never got an impression that the author blamed this government for what happened. I think this is one of the best things about this book, you see more the mindset of the people at the time.

As I had said a friend has it now, it got passed around and all of us loved the book. It even gave two the idea of going to China on holiday.

I picked this book up for a fiver because I was a student at the time and found it difficult to justify spending that much money on a book, but it would have been worth it even it I did pay the full price. (and thank you to the person who left it into a 2nd hand book shop)

An emotionally gripping, roller-coaster ride through the lives of three fascinating women, 02 Oct 2008
This is without doubt one of the best books I've ever read. It is a powerful, gripping story that takes you through act after act of what human beings are capable of doing on this Earth, sometimes in the most brutal fashion.

Based on the lives of three generations of women, it starts in turn of the 20th century China, when the Qing dynasty was starting to crumble and that way of life was coming to an end, taking you through the civil war, Mao coming to power, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution before ending in the 70s when the author leaves for Britain.

This is a "no holding back" story of survival with frequent scenarios detailing the worst and most brutal of human suffering. Reading through makes you realise the many things in this world we take for granted: democracy, security, civil liberties and freedom. It is an epic life story seen through the eyes of three ordinary women. They weren't world leaders or iconic historical figures, but ordinary citizens living their lives in a regime that is regarded with controversy even to this day.

All in all, although it's a book detailing suffering, fear and brutality it is an uplifting story of survival. You can't help but shed a tear for the person who survives, against all the odds, to make a better life for themselves. Like Pandora's box, once opened you'll see all the sins of the world come to fruition but one thing will remain at the end: hope.

Tedious and unconvincing, 20 Dec 2008
Fascinating story, but it rapidly became clear as I worked through the book that Menzies is prepared to accept pretty much anything anyone tells him as "evidence". The story starts with the well documented and widely accepted story of Zheng He and the treasure fleets of the early Ming dynasty. These were remarkable vessels and their story, and the large amount of evidence behind it, is ably covered in "When China ruled the seas" by Louise Levathes. The difference between the two authors is that Levathes (mostly) restricts herself to what the evidence supports, while Menzies is happy to accept the flimsiest of conjectures as proof positive.

The actual evidence for Chinese voyages runs out at the eastern coast of Africa and on the Australian coast. But Menzies quite happily extrapolates beyond this. Evidence of Chinese genes and customs in parts of the US? Must have been the treasure fleet (never mind that there have been plenty of other historical contacts). A map purportedly showing the northern coast of Eurasia before it was charted by the Russians? Treasure fleet must have dunnit. A natural rock formation in the Bahamas bearing some visual resemblance to a built structure. Obviously the Chinese made it - based on nothing other than Menzies' claim that the formation has dimensions similar to the largest ships in the fleet.

Menzies is either extremely gullible, or he's taking his audience for a ride on the scale of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". I wouldn't mind if it were an exhilarating ride, but it's rather long and tedious and just no fun at all. If you want alternative history, can I suggest Harry Turtledove or Michael Moorcock as rather more entertaining?


Risible, flea-brained stupidity, 07 Sep 2008
There is such a thing as a work of fantasy. This is book is just that. No evidence whatsoever. No proof. No circumstantial evidence. Pure tosh from start to finish. This is no more history than books on Atlantis are history.
Do youselves a favour - if Sino-European history interests you, buy a good, well-respected, well-researched work on the subject. Leave foolishness like this to the idiots.

An interesting read, 30 Aug 2008
The basic premise of this book is that prior to the European voyages of discovery a massive fleet of ships left China and ended up circumnavigating the globe and on the way discovered North and South America, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and Greenland. The author, Gavin Menzies, is a former Royal Navy submarine commander and as such much of his evidence is based on his knowledge of currents and wind direction when compared to maps that predate the voyages of Columbus. He goes on to use a number of other sources of evidence to back up his case including, among other things, the presence of mysterious wrecks scattered the globe, the presence of animals and plants outside their native lands before Europeans reached them and the diaries of the first European explorers themselves.

While much of the evidence presented in this book is thought provoking and definitely worthy of further study there are many pieces that are open to other interpretation and some that can only be described as circumstantial. I feel some of the problem that this book has is that it doesn't generally present its evidence in the best way possible being overly repetitious in places and being a bit too informal in others. Overall 1421 is an interesting book that does present many new questions for historians on the accepted view of the voyages discovery but it does require more research.

Lovely PR hype - but sadly fairly rubbish history, 19 Jun 2008
You'd hope for more from a former Royal Navy commander, but sadly while his publicity machine is first rate, his history is anything but.

It would be lovely to turn what we know about naval history on its head and say that the Chinese Admiral Zheng He conclusively 'discovered' America or Australia long before any European navigators/explorers.

Unfortunately, this book falls into the category of what publishers call "wa-wa" history. In other words, it ain't true - and the historical reseach is shoddy.

The publishers know it's rubbish. We the public know it's rubbish, but we buy it anyway. And so they publish, because they know we'll buy it and they'll make money. In other words we get the books we deserve. We should be reading decent, reseach-based histories - but we find them rather dull so we don't....

Despite the welter of 5 and 4 star reviews this book has garnered on Amazon, it is important - before you buy it - to note one important fact.

Not ONE single naval historian has given any credence to these claims. Not any European - nor any Chinese - historian. In fact, they all say that the evidence is not there.

While other readers seem to like this book, I have to say that having read other books on global trade and sea voyages in the pre-modern era, I found Menzies style very confusing and it was very difficult to follow his train of thought and how he was using evidence to support his conclusions

Astonishingly, Menzies seems to have ignored two key pieces of Chinese evidence for Zheng He's voyages which list the countries he visited - and don't mention anything that could be America.

In fact Menzies does not read Chinese and there are no direct quotes from any articles or studies written in Chinese. Which is pretty gob-smacking when you think the book is about a Chinese Admiral!

The book may be entertaining, and I am sure Gavin Menzies is a nice bloke etc etc. But that ain't enough. For me his book was full of circular reasoning, speculation, distorted sources and slapdash research.

Or as has already been said - this book may well prove to be the Piltdown Man of literature and should only be classified as fiction.

You may think this is a case of the little man, the amateur, beating the massed hords of the professionals. That is always a very beguiling image, but it's the wrong one to picture.

This book is a triumph for publishing hype and muddled thinking and writing. For that reason we should give it a wide berth. Unless of course you actually like your history as fiction. In which case, be my guest. However, you have been warned....

Mind boggling pseudo-history, 25 May 2008
His far-fetched theories, while very interesting, have no scientific basis.
Any curious fact stated in the book that was checked by a (reputable) scientists was found false.
Read the well researched and scientifically sound "When China Ruled the Seas" by Louise Levathes, or check the Internet sites at & to understand the hoax...

Well written, 07 Jul 2008
I have read this book quite quickly as I found it very interesting.It is well researched and very readable for a lay person like me. An essential read for people who are interested in the future!

A bold book, 19 Dec 2008
John Man gave himself a big challenge ... to write a book that goes beyond a mere biography. To write a book that dares to go beyond all the written sources to explore not just what Genghis Khan did, but who really was Genghis Khan. It allows a glimpse of the great man's soul.

I admire Man for taking on the challenge. To do it he has collaborated extensively with the leading Mongolian and international scholars. Most importantly he has gone beyond this mere "knowledge" and built on it by visiting the key locations in Genghis' life, to get a feel for what this or that battle was like, what the childhood was like, and as a result he paints a more personal story than any other biography of Temujin.

Man makes more than a few deductions about what Temujin / Genghis was thinking at various times, but he is very good at walking the reader thru the process of his deductions. Its a brave thing to do and I award the book 4 stars for the authors tenacity and bravery in piecing together the likely thoughts of a man who lived 800 years ago.

A fifth star comes for how readable Man has made his book. It reads well and makes the book compelling.

*****



Enthusiastic but patchy, 08 Jul 2008
Genghis Khan is full of the author's enthusiasm for Mongol culture and their history, and this is charming for the most part. The period that this book deals with is fascinating, and the book itself describes engagingly the clash of urban and nomadic cultures, the intertwining of Mongolia's fate in China and how Genghis Khan may have lived and died. Much is based on conjecture; this is clearly necessary as there is only one limited source, The Secret History, from around the time. This is clearly explained in the text and where this and other sources are questionable the reader is informed and the evidence appears to be dealt with an appropriate degree of scepticism.
The lack of evidence becomes more troublesome when the author feels the need to introduce his travels to flesh out the content. As suggested in other reviews, it feels like space filler and adds very little to the book, making you wish you could hit fast forward on these sections.
Another slight annoyance is the apologist theme throughout - whenever the Mongols commit an atrocity, it is not for sadism or xenophobia's sake but as a 'sign for others' or as justifiable vengeance. Given the number of murders - particularly of non-combatants - the Mongols felt they had to commit to peoples of various backgrounds, either word didn't get around or this strategy didn't work that well.
Genghis Khan is on the whole an informative read, but I would not have resented a shorter book. I would give it three stars but I'm not sure if anyone has made a better book on this subject.

Definitive, 11 Jun 2008
If you want to know about Mr Khan, this is the book. John Man has done a brilliant job in bringing this incredible man to life. Other reviewers have explained the book well. If you are interested in Ghengis, whatever your moral compass, this is the book you need to read. Briliant.

Interesting, but too much travelogue, 19 Mar 2008
By some estimates, Genghis Khan managed to rid the world of one-tenth of its contemporary population, which means that his credentials in the noble art of mass murder are nearly unequalled. John Man gives us a more balanced picture. But beware! This is John Man, The Fan Of Khan, and he therefore tends to accentuate the positive of ol' G.K., such as it is. Certainly Genghis's empire was impressive, considering that it was all done on horseback. However, given that the Mongols were nomadic, with nothing but contempt for sedentary peoples, who merited only robbing, looting, raping and massacring, it was never going to last. Mr. Man brings the story down to the present day, with a number of countries seeking to claim the legacy of Genghis.

And this, for me, is where the problems with this book start. Mr. Man seeks out the places with which Genghis was associated - where he was born and where he possibly died. This I found interesting - up to a point. But for me, there was much too much of it and in too much detail, and after a while I found myself speeding up to get through it quicker. A shorter version of the literary traveller's tales would have made for a much better book.

The interesting and informative story of a great man, 11 Oct 2006
Genghis Khan rose from obscurity to command of the Mongol tribes and upon his death ruled one of the largest empires the world had ever seen, an empire his descendents expanded until it stretched from Korea to Hungary. This book attempts to shed some light on the life and death of Genghis Khan, sifting fact from legend and shows his place in the hearts and minds of modern Mongolian and Chinese people.

This book follows in the footsteps of the great conquer from his birth to his death. Using historical sources as well as more modern research and interspaced with tales from his own journeys around Asia, John Man weaves an interesting and enjoyable story that is a must read for anyone interested in Far Eastern history. Unlike many people I have never seen Genghis Khan as a villain but as one of the greatest men in history and I hope that this book goes some way to redress the balance oh his reputation.


Excellent introduction into the 5 Elements Theory, 10 Sep 2000
The British School of Shiatsu-Do have chosen this book as our Year 1 course book for students. It presents students with a clear introduction of the 5 Elements approach to Oriental Medicine. With references to Feng Shui and Qi Gong, the student can gain further insight into how the 5 Element theory premeates the the Eastern approach to live. For the general reader it is easy to read, in some areas thought provoking, and can start you on a different road to life!

superbly written, brilliant insights into ancient philosophy, 27 Feb 2000
this book contains absolute gems of information and insight into this ancient healing tradition. It really is an inspirational read. I love it!

A fable for the twentieth century, brimming with pain and sorrow, 04 Dec 2008
This haunting personal odyssey through the political and social convulsions of twentieth century China should carry a health warning: This book will linger in the mind for months to come. Jung Chang recounts through personal memoirs and memories the turbulent and tragic lives of her grandparents and parents in Manchuria early in the century as the country desperately tries to shake off the brutality of the feudal warlord government. But no sooner had the Kuomintang arrived to unify most of China than the hapless population of Manchuria fell under the nightmare of Japanese occupation. Several years later and the brief and cruel `liberation' by the Russians is followed by the Kuomintang-Communist civil war. During the Japanese occupation many people had sided with the Kuomintang nationalists rather than the Communists as they appeared at the time to be in a better position to kick out the foreign oppressors. However, they were to pay for that allegiance once the Communist Party was in power.
The author was born into the People's Republic of China in Sichuan province. Her parents had been enthusiastic activists and supporters of the Communists but it didn't take long for the great socialist utopia under Mao Zedong to degenerate into an unutterably crass and barbaric regime hell-bent on manipulating, controlling and terrorising the population. Their actions cloaked in totalitarian doublespeak, Party officials invent, hunt down and persecute `class enemies', `counterrevolutionaries', `rightists' and `capitalist-roaders' in an endless cycle of murderous campaigns. Jung's parents, like millions of others, see their fortunes rise and fall with these campaigns at the whim of the Party because of their family's early association with the Kuomintang. They are periodically denounced, threatened, beaten, tormented, paraded, imprisoned and exiled, suffering every humiliation that could be inflicted on an individual. That suffering, told with an astonishing lack of bitterness forms the backdrop to Jung's early life.
As Mao's grip tightens his obsession with demonstrating the superiority of communism over capitalism results in the catastrophic Great Leap Forward when the labour of almost the entire workforce is directed towards producing steel while the countryside implodes resulting in an apocalyptic famine and the deaths of an estimated 30 million people. Incredibly, propaganda blamed this on bad weather and after a slight drop in his popularity Mao begins to engineer his own demonic cult of the personality, his deification coming easily to a culture that had been used to worshipping emperors as quasi-gods. Now Mao was to set about destroying the Party, the last impediment to his total personal power. The battered and impoverished Chinese people, desperately trying to recover from the horror of the Great Leap Forward, now had the Cultural Revolution unleashed upon them. During this collective spell of insanity Mao's Red Guards, consisting largely of schoolchildren and students on the rampage, were whipped into a frenzy to turn upon, humiliate, beat and destroy their teachers and consequently all education. In an attempt to edit the past out of existence, China lost almost its entire written heritage along with its religious and historical sites, statues, temples and old towns, everywhere destroyed. Eventually, with everyone denouncing everyone in order to survive the country had been turned into a `moral wasteland of hatred' and there was nowhere left to go.
This exquisite and powerful book follows the author and her siblings through these terrifying phases and is a compulsive page-turner written in clear, delicate English and brimming with pain and sorrow. I doubt if there has been a more honest and poignant portrayal of daily life under a totalitarian regime, where terror pervades every stratum of society, every family, every thought and deed.




The most amazing history lesson I have ever had!!, 22 Oct 2008
I've never felt so sad to reach the end of a book in all my life. This book is truely amazing and is well and truely the best book I've ever read! I even had the urge to start reading it all over again as soon as I'd finished.

Wild Swans follows the journey of three generations of women, from the same family, through the tragic history of twentieth century China.

I felt almost ashamed that I wasn't aware of hardly any of China's recent history. I picked the book up as I was doing a charity trek along the Great Wall in August 2008 and felt I should brush up on the history of the country. Although I had read wonderful things about this book I was prepared for a dull history lesson, one that I felt I had to put myself through. Sure it was a history lesson, but a breathtaking, extraordinary, unforgettable one. I struggled to remember that what I was reading was a true story, an account of three peoples' lives!

No one told me this book was banned in China. So in my hand luggage it went, luckily I, and the book, made it there and back safely. I wish I had managed to finish it before I left for China, but when I returned from my trip I was even more eager to learn about the wonderful country I had just visited!

This book is outstanding! It's not possible to put into words how much I enjoyed it. Please, just read it!!

An accessible history, 16 Oct 2008
One of the best books I have ever read.
Touching and heartfelt, yet matter of fact and never sentimental. This book is remarkably easy to read, I found it hard to put down. At once, this is the epic story of a family and a country. I could never have believed the amount of knowledge I accumulated from this book. The writing style of Jung Chang made it effortless.

worth it, 15 Oct 2008
Firstly I will admit it's been a few years since I read this and a friend has it now so I can't skim through it to refresh my memory.

The story travels through china before communist rule to the present. Most of the book is in the time of the Mao rule but I found it never really thought of this government as a bad thing, or a good thing. I never got an impression that the author blamed this government for what happened. I think this is one of the best things about this book, you see more the mindset of the people at the time.

As I had said a friend has it now, it got passed around and all of us loved the book. It even gave two the idea of going to China on holiday.

I picked this book up for a fiver because I was a student at the time and found it difficult to justify spending that much money on a book, but it would have been worth it even it I did pay the full price. (and thank you to the person who left it into a 2nd hand book shop)

An emotionally gripping, roller-coaster ride through the lives of three fascinating women, 02 Oct 2008
This is without doubt one of the best books I've ever read. It is a powerful, gripping story that takes you through act after act of what human beings are capable of doing on this Earth, sometimes in the most brutal fashion.

Based on the lives of three generations of women, it starts in turn of the 20th century China, when the Qing dynasty was starting to crumble and that way of life was coming to an end, taking you through the civil war, Mao coming to power, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution before ending in the 70s when the author leaves for Britain.

This is a "no holding back" story of survival with frequent scenarios detailing the worst and most brutal of human suffering. Reading through makes you realise the many things in this world we take for granted: democracy, security, civil liberties and freedom. It is an epic life story seen through the eyes of three ordinary women. They weren't world leaders or iconic historical figures, but ordinary citizens living their lives in a regime that is regarded with controversy even to this day.

All in all, although it's a book detailing suffering, fear and brutality it is an uplifting story of survival. You can't help but shed a tear for the person who survives, against all the odds, to make a better life for themselves. Like Pandora's box, once opened you'll see all the sins of the world come to fruition but one thing will remain at the end: hope.

Tedious and unconvincing, 20 Dec 2008
Fascinating story, but it rapidly became clear as I worked through the book that Menzies is prepared to accept pretty much anything anyone tells him as "evidence". The story starts with the well documented and widely accepted story of Zheng He and the treasure fleets of the early Ming dynasty. These were remarkable vessels and their story, and the large amount of evidence behind it, is ably covered in "When China ruled the seas" by Louise Levathes. The difference between the two authors is that Levathes (mostly) restricts herself to what the evidence supports, while Menzies is happy to accept the flimsiest of conjectures as proof positive.

The actual evidence for Chinese voyages runs out at the eastern coast of Africa and on the Australian coast. But Menzies quite happily extrapolates beyond this. Evidence of Chinese genes and customs in parts of the US? Must have been the treasure fleet (never mind that there have been plenty of other historical contacts). A map purportedly showing the northern coast of Eurasia before it was charted by the Russians? Treasure fleet must have dunnit. A natural rock formation in the Bahamas bearing some visual resemblance to a built structure. Obviously the Chinese made it - based on nothing other than Menzies' claim that the formation has dimensions similar to the largest ships in the fleet.

Menzies is either extremely gullible, or he's taking his audience for a ride on the scale of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". I wouldn't mind if it were an exhilarating ride, but it's rather long and tedious and just no fun at all. If you want alternative history, can I suggest Harry Turtledove or Michael Moorcock as rather more entertaining?


Risible, flea-brained stupidity, 07 Sep 2008
There is such a thing as a work of fantasy. This is book is just that. No evidence whatsoever. No proof. No circumstantial evidence. Pure tosh from start to finish. This is no more history than books on Atlantis are history.
Do youselves a favour - if Sino-European history interests you, buy a good, well-respected, well-researched work on the subject. Leave foolishness like this to the idiots.

An interesting read, 30 Aug 2008
The basic premise of this book is that prior to the European voyages of discovery a massive fleet of ships left China and ended up circumnavigating the globe and on the way discovered North and South America, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and Greenland. The author, Gavin Menzies, is a former Royal Navy submarine commander and as such much of his evidence is based on his knowledge of currents and wind direction when compared to maps that predate the voyages of Columbus. He goes on to use a number of other sources of evidence to back up his case including, among other things, the presence of mysterious wrecks scattered the globe, the presence of animals and plants outside their native lands before Europeans reached them and the diaries of the first European explorers themselves.

While much of the evidence presented in this book is thought provoking and definitely worthy of further study there are many pieces that are open to other interpretation and some that can only be described as circumstantial. I feel some of the problem that this book has is that it doesn't generally present its evidence in the best way possible being overly repetitious in places and being a bit too informal in others. Overall 1421 is an interesting book that does present many new questions for historians on the accepted view of the voyages discovery but it does require more research.

Lovely PR hype - but sadly fairly rubbish history, 19 Jun 2008
You'd hope for more from a former Royal Navy commander, but sadly while his publicity machine is first rate, his history is anything but.

It would be lovely to turn what we know about naval history on its head and say that the Chinese Admiral Zheng He conclusively 'discovered' America or Australia long before any European navigators/explorers.

Unfortunately, this book falls into the category of what publishers call "wa-wa" history. In other words, it ain't true - and the historical reseach is shoddy.

The publishers know it's rubbish. We the public know it's rubbish, but we buy it anyway. And so they publish, because they know we'll buy it and they'll make money. In other words we get the books we deserve. We should be reading decent, reseach-based histories - but we find them rather dull so we don't....

Despite the welter of 5 and 4 star reviews this book has garnered on Amazon, it is important - before you buy it - to note one important fact.

Not ONE single naval historian has given any credence to these claims. Not any European - nor any Chinese - historian. In fact, they all say that the evidence is not there.

While other readers seem to like this book, I have to say that having read other books on global trade and sea voyages in the pre-modern era, I found Menzies style very confusing and it was very difficult to follow his train of thought and how he was using evidence to support his conclusions

Astonishingly, Menzies seems to have ignored two key pieces of Chinese evidence for Zheng He's voyages which list the countries he visited - and don't mention anything that could be America.

In fact Menzies does not read Chinese and there are no direct quotes from any articles or studies written in Chinese. Which is pretty gob-smacking when you think the book is about a Chinese Admiral!

The book may be entertaining, and I am sure Gavin Menzies is a nice bloke etc etc. But that ain't enough. For me his book was full of circular reasoning, speculation, distorted sources and slapdash research.

Or as has already been said - this book may well prove to be the Piltdown Man of literature and should only be classified as fiction.

You may think this is a case of the little man, the amateur, beating the massed hords of the professionals. That is always a very beguiling image, but it's the wrong one to picture.

This book is a triumph for publishing hype and muddled thinking and writing. For that reason we should give it a wide berth. Unless of course you actually like your history as fiction. In which case, be my guest. However, you have been warned....

Mind boggling pseudo-history, 25 May 2008
His far-fetched theories, while very interesting, have no scientific basis.
Any curious fact stated in the book that was checked by a (reputable) scientists was found false.
Read the well researched and scientifically sound "When China Ruled the Seas" by Louise Levathes, or check the Internet sites at & to understand the hoax...

Well written, 07 Jul 2008
I have read this book quite quickly as I found it very interesting.It is well researched and very readable for a lay person like me. An essential read for people who are interested in the future!

A bold book, 19 Dec 2008
John Man gave himself a big challenge ... to write a book that goes beyond a mere biography.