Free audiobook
A history of China from the oracle bones to 2025: the Shang and Zhou, Confucius and the philosophers, the first emperor and the Han, the Tang poets and Wu Zetian, Song cities and inventions, the Mongols, Zheng He and the Ming, the Qing and the Opium Wars, the republic, war and revolution, and China since Mao. Contested figures are given as ranges, with who gives each. Every quotation comes from a public-domain source, and every era's sources are named.
Now playing
Chapter 1
All 35 chapters as high-quality MP3s to download, plus the PDF edition with the full text, a timeline of every era, and every source.
Get the downloadQuotations come from public-domain translations: Caesar (McDevitte and Bohn, 1869), Gregory of Tours (Brehaut, 1916), Einhard (Turner, 1880), the Song of Roland (Scott Moncrieff, 1919), Joinville (Wedgwood, 1906), Froissart (Berners), the trial of Joan of Arc (Murray, 1902), Commynes (Scoble, 1855), Montaigne (Cotton), Saint-Simon (Bayle St. John, 1857), Rousseau (Cole, 1913) and Hugo (Hapgood, 1887). Every page the research opened is listed under its era.
Narrated by an AI voice. Written and fact-checked with the help of AI tools, from published scholarship, museum records and the ancient texts themselves; where scholars disagree, the book says so. Dates before the colonies are approximate. Events of 2025 and 2026 are told from official records and news reports available when the book was finished, in November 2026.
Want to see it? The Chinese history timeline has the people and events in this book, with sources.