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About Treason By The Book
Product Description “A savory, fascinating story of absolute rule, one that not only reveals a great deal about China’s turbulent past but also suggests where some of the more durable reflexes of China’s current leaders have their roots. . . . A detective yarn and a picaresque tale.” (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times) Shortly before noon on October 28, 1728, General Yue Zhongqi, the most powerful military and civilian official in northwest China, was en route to his headquarters. Suddenly, out of the crowd, a stranger ran toward Yue and passed him an envelope—an envelope containing details of a treasonous plot to overthrow the Manchu government. This thrilling story of a conspiracy against the Qing dynasty in 1728 is a captivating tale of intrigue and a fascinating exploration of what it means to rule and be ruled. Once again, Jonathan Spence has created a vivid portrait of the rich culture that surrounds a most dramatic moment in Chinese history. From The New Yorker Is it possible to find out where rumors come from? Sometimes. In early-eighteenth-century China, Emperor Yongzheng deployed his vast bureaucracy to ferret out the origins of certain slanderous statements. The gossip proved to be part of a disinformation campaign run by rebels bent on overthrowing his dynasty. He quashed it by publishing a volume of some of the rebellious writings that had inspired the malcontents, along with rebuttals by a team of scholars, and then distributed it throughout his enormous empire as compulsory reading––the Little Red Book of its day. In this fascinating detective story, many aspects of Qing society seem startlingly modern, such as the government's use of spin control and affirmative-action quotas. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker Review Praise for Treason by the Book: A History Book Club Selection “Compelling . . . reads like a medieval whodunit.” —The Wall Street Journal “A fascinating, beautiful book.” —The Washington Times “Near-cinematic suspense . . . Spence’s depiction of the investigation is mesmerizing.” —Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel “An infectiously readable narrative . . . on par with bestselling works of historical reconstruction such as Dava Sobel’s Longitude . . . Eighteenth-century China springs to life.” —The Dallas Morning News “A slice of history told in the lively manner of a novel . . . A novel of ideas.” —Ian Buruma, The New York Times Book Review “[A] fascinating detective story.” —The New Yorker “A work of history that pulses with emotion, with vital characters re-created vividly, with complex situations lucidly unraveled, with irony underscored. His straight forward prose style and use of the historic present give his work an engrossing immediacy. It is history of the best kind.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “A delicate spider’s web of a book, deft, fascinating, and precise as Chinese calligraphy.” —The Los Angeles Times About the Author Jonathan Spence's eleven books on Chinese history include 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 teaches at Yale University. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The General General Yue Zhongqi has risen far and fast, which is what makes the present moment so dangerous for him. Born in 1686, the son of a general, Yue was a major at age twenty-five, a colonel at thirty-two, and was named commander-in-chief of Sichuan province at thirty-five. His string of military successes includes campaigns along the Tibetan border, in Kokonor, against mountain tribes in Xining, in China's westernmost province of Gansu, and on the borders of the far southern province of Yunnan. Now, in late October 1728, at the age of forty-two, not only is he governor-general of two provinces, and the regional commander-in-chief, but he has also been ennobled by a grateful emperor, and his own son in turn has been swiftly promoted to h
