The search for modern china has since become one of the premiere primers in modern chinese history it covers all of the major events and issues that helped to shape china over the last 500 years and if anybody is looking for a good overview of china jonathan spence was my favorite author when i majored in chinese history 30 years ago. The search for modern china keeps in certain respects to this mould taking for premise the quest for modernity and this casts a certain light on the narrative thus while modernity itself was a western concept seventeenth century china was in some ways just as modern or more so than any western model eg its meritocratic administration. Jonathan d spence is george burton adams professor of history at yale university and author of eight acclaimed books on china here he has written a very readable history of this fascinating country to understand chinas past there is no better place to start than jonathan d spences excellent new book the new york times book review front page review 136 pages of photographs. The search for modern china item preview remove circle share or embed this item embed embed for wordpresscom hosted blogs and archiveorg item description tags want more advanced embedding details examples and help no favorite share flag flag this item for