The First Emperor of China

by Arthur Cotterell

s/t: The Greatest Archeological Find of Our Time

Genres: Nonfiction, China, History, Archaeology

208 pages, Hardcover

First published September 6, 1988

About the author

Arthur Cotterell, former Principal of Kingston College in London, has spent many years combining senior educational management with historical research. He is the respected author of more than thirty books, and is now writing on the Chinese empire, from the history of which he considers one can learn as much about leadership as from Ashridge or Harvard.

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cotterell gives a clear-eyed depiction of the first emperor and what he stood for. And the picture that emerges is perhaps the ultimate expression of far-right-wing ideology. Qin Shihuangdi and his Legalists were considerably more articulate than either Adolf Hitler or Genghis Khan. For anyone curious about where supremicism leads when taken to its horrifically logical conclusion, this is it.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book is titled "The First Emperor of China" and subtitled "the greatest archeological find of our time", the focus is neither exclusively on the first emperor nor on the archaeology of the tomb at Mount Li. The first third of the book offers a somewhat chatty guide to the tomb and the terracotta army. The second third of the book provides historical background to the Ch'in empire. Finally, the Ch'in empire - not just the first emperor - is discussed in the final third of the book. If you have seen the History Channel documentary "China's First Emperor" a lot of this material will be familiar.

[Cecile · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm reading this because of something that the author of Thank You for Not Reading wrote about this emperor's destruction of the libraries of ancient China. He was a gung-ho military guy it seems.

[Belle Meade School]

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