Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China
Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, History
Historian Sterling Seagrave reexamines the life of Tzu Hsi, the empress dowager who held power in China in the late nineteenth century. He argues that her reputation as a ruthless and scheming tyrant was largely invented by palace rivals and Western journalists. Seagrave presents a more sympathetic portrait of a woman trapped by the politics of a collapsing empire. The book challenged long-accepted accounts.
Recommended by 1 person
- Shane Parrish: “An interesting book that was very uncomfortable to read. Why? Because the author makes a well-argued and documented case for the inaccuracy of Western scholarship on this period in Chinese history.”