100 Days to Understand The History of China.

From Peking Man to Xi Jinping, five thousand years of Chinese history told as a story rather than a textbook. Between dynasties with unfamiliar names and events the country would rather forget, it can look impenetrable — yet today's world makes no sense without it.

One hundred short entries, one a day: the first emperor's unification, the inventions that changed the world, the Ming Great Wall that everyone pictures and almost no one dates correctly, the "century of humiliation" that still shapes Beijing's language, Mao as both hero and tyrant, and the fault lines of the present — Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang.

An entire civilization, in pieces small enough to read on a break.