After reading the historical fiction book "Under Heaven" by Guy Gavriel Kay I've found myself interested in learning more about the history of China, and imperial history in particular.
So, AskHistorians, can you recommend a good introduction to Chinese history? Either a stand-alone book or a series.
I realise this is a massive topic covering thousands of years, but I'm not looking for something that's rigorously academic. More of a "pop history" sort of thing. Accessible, reliable, well-written and with a large scope.
A good example of the kind of thing I'm looking for would be the recent History of England series by Peter Ackroyd.
Not the OP, but I'd like to know as well. I've read a few older ones and they're just endless strings of emperors, one after another (and long tedious accounts of barbarian generals inbetween).
Something like "China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty" (recommended to the OP, btw) but for the whole of Chinese history. Does such a thing exist?
China: A New History by John King Fairbank & Merle Goldman, 2nd edition
I found "China: A History" by John Keay to be a good book for an overview. It's written well, though it is still a little overwhelming since there's just so much history.
Unrelatedly, "Under Heaven" is a great book!
The Cambridge Illustrated History of China seems to be the combination of scope and accessibility you're looking for.
"The Search For Modern China" by Jonathan Spence, who's a pretty prominent Sinologist, is a great place to start in my opinion. I found it accessible and interesting. It's not comprehensive of Chinese history, it covers from the fall of the ming dynasty in the 17th century to present, but it's a great book. I'm studying Chinese at university and it's a part of the introductory reading list.
On China by Kissinger is a very good read. It is much more detailed after about 1900 and especially after 1949, but the other parts are all good too. He just tends to boil down empires and dynasties into a few key themes to avoid boring the nonacademic reader with repetitive and insignificant details
I think the best two parts of the book are 1. He condenses a lot of the drier information without completely discounting it and 2. He was there for a lot of it and can give a unique perspective on what it was like to work with many of the CCP leaders.
The text we used in our intro to Chinese history class was A Brief History of Chinese Civilization by Schirokauer and Brown. It may be a little more academic than you're looking for, since it's literally a textbook, but I think it's a good place to start. Only 400-ish pages long, it covers from the neolithic age all the way to present day PRC. Since it's covering such a long period of history, it can't go very in depth, only spending around 30 pages per dynasty, and as is typical with histories, spending more and more time on more recent periods. It does a fairly good job of covering major political, religious, technological, cultural, and military developments.
When you're able to read books written in German, I can highly recommend Kai Vogelsang's "Geschichte Chinas" (Stuttgart 2013) published by Reclam. By its own statement the book trys to tackle the topic by focusing on the field of controversy evolving around the dichotomy of unity and plurality, diversity and holisticity throughout Chinese history. The timeline covered ranges from Neolithic times to the 21st century.