• Fall and Rise of China (Audio) Taught by Richard Baum
  • From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History (Audio) Taught by Kenneth J. Hammond

Just finished 2 audio books recently, both contain tons of historical information. While from Yao to Mao made me fall into sleep from time to time, I plan to go through the Fall and Rise of China again, simply because it is too fascinating.

If you are more interested in modern Chinese history, then Richard Baum’s course will give you a detailed understanding of all the core events in China’s century of stunning change, including these major happenings:

* Collapse of the Qing dynasty: You study the interlacing social, political, and economic factors that led to the fall of China’s 2,000-year empire and the implacable call for new political paradigms.
* The Republican era and civil wars: In the wake of the defunct empire, you witness the drama of the short-lived Chinese Republic, followed by political chaos and the long strategic battle between Republican forces and the seemingly unstoppable Communist Party.
* The “Great Leap Forward”: In a landmark episode of the Mao era, the regime’s grand-scale projects to communize agriculture and galvanize industry saw bureaucratic mismanagement leading to tragedy for tens of millions of Chinese.
* The Cultural Revolution: During this bitter era of the 1960s, festering tensions between the Maoist regime and its critics erupted in a brutal campaign of terror and repression against perceived enemies of Socialism.
* China’s post-Mao economic “miracle”: In the later lectures you track the specific reforms and ideological shifts that opened China to global economic engagement and forged its new role as a free-market dynamo.

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