Return to Dragon Mountain - by Jonathan D Spence (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Splendid . . . One could not imagine a better subject than Zhan Dai for Spence." (The New Republic)

Celebrated China scholar Jonathan Spence vividly brings to life seventeenth-century China through this biography of Zhang Dai, recognized as one of the finest historians and essayists of the Ming dynasty. Born in 1597, Zhang Dai was forty-seven when the Ming dynasty, after more than two hundred years of rule, was overthrown by the Manchu invasion of 1644. Having lost his fortune and way of life, Zhang Dai fled to the countryside and spent his final forty years recounting the time of creativity and renaissance during Ming rule before the violent upheaval of its collapse. This absorbing tale of Zhang Dai's life illuminates the transformation of a culture and reveals how China's history affects its place in the world today.

Review Quotes

Praise for Return to Dragon Mountain

Selected as a "Best Book of the Year" by The Washington Post

"Westerners seeking to understand China should shelve that big pile of anxious new volumes on China's economic ascent, and read instead Return to Dragon Mountain. Jonathan Spence is arguably the best living English-language Chinese historian . . . An extraordinary life and a fascinating story."
--The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Spence takes us inside the mind of a fellow historian. . . . [Zhang Dai] left a timelessly human record of a pivotal and fascinating era, and Spence has employed patience and empathy to bring him back to life."
--The Washington Post

"Beguiling . . . Spence only enhances his fine reputation with seasoned perceptions of the accessible, multifaceted Zhang Dai."
--Booklist

"Beautiful . . . in Return to Dragon Mountain, Spence has himself opened an unsuspecting world, a magic-lantern realm lost until now and movingly retrieved."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Impressive."
--The New York Review of Books

About the Author

Jonathan Spence (1936-2021): Was the author of more than a dozen well-regarded books "which illuminate China's vast history through details that illuminated bigger pictures and themes. (The New York Times)" including The Gate of Heavenly Peace, Treason by the Book, and The Death of Woman Wang. His awards include a Guggenheim and a MacArthur Fellowship. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008.