The Sui

The Tang Dynasty reached heights of power, wealth, military ambition, and cultural brilliance that made it one of the defining empires of Chinese history. But behind that success lay a more complicated story of emperors and empresses, frontier wars, ambitious generals, court intrigue, rebellion, and a constant struggle over who actually controlled the state.

The Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties: A History of China - Part Two begins in the later reign of Emperor Gaozong and follows the extraordinary rise of Wu Zetian before moving into the wider world of Tang China: conflict with the Tibetan Empire, the politics of Emperor Xuanzongs Kaiyuan era, the rise of Yang Guifei, Tang expansion into Central Asia, and the Battle of Talas against the Abbasid Caliphate.

Then comes the crisis that tears through the empire. An Lushan, Yang Guozhong, Guo Ziyi, Li Guangbi, Shi Siming, Changan, Luoyang, and the An Lushan Rebellion become part of a struggle in which battlefield decisions and palace politics are never far apart. As emperors lose control, generals gain armies, rebels build rival regimes, and eunuchs acquire growing influence over the imperial succession.

Written for general readers, this volume tells complicated Tang history as a human story-through ambitions, mistakes, rivalries, strange turns of fortune, military choices, and the political logic behind them.

For readers curious about Wu Zetian, the Tang Dynasty, the Silk Road world, the Battle of Talas, or the An Lushan Rebellion, this is a large and difficult age made approachable without taking the history out of it.