Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

Growing Up under a Red Flag: A Memoir of Surviving the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Ying Chang Compestine

A memoir in picture book form. Not for very young children -- I would recommend knowing your child and being prepared for questions. It hits the elements a child would see, violence, her father's arrest and her mother's depression, denunciations, lack of food, burning things to hide them, and more.

The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History by Tonio Andrade

The adventures of the gun. With frequent ventures into explaining fallacies in why China fell behind. (To be sure, sometimes the fallacies seemed a bit cherry-picked.)

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The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China by Mark Elliott

A study of the practices of the Qing dynasty with regard to the Manchus, as conquerors, and the Han whom they ruled. Not that it was ever that simple. There were Mongols in the Eight Banners system all along, and Chinese bannermen were only briefly dispensed with. (Someone had to wrangle the artillery.)

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Religions of Japan in Practice by George J. Tanabe Jr.

An overview of many texts written in Japan. Heavily Buddhist and on the intellectual side. A variety, including a marriage ceremony, a pamphlet guide to the Yasukuni Shrine (featuring Poppo the Wise Pigeon to answer questions), history about the adoption of Buddhism and arguments about whether disasters were caused by worshipping the Buddha or failure to worship him, and hagiography.

Sanctioned Violence in Early China by Mark Edward Lewis

This is a study of forms of violence such as warfare, hunting, execution, sacrifice, and revenge. Rather academic in tone.

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History Speaks: The Four Princes Of The Warring States by Tsai Chih Chung

After a biography of the author, this graphic novel depicts accounts of four notable statesmen.  Politics, trickery, war, advice, and other affairs of state.

Mencius Speaks: The Cure For Chaos by Tsai Chih Chung

Opens with a brief biography of Mencius, followed by vignette like topics on benevolence and profit, original heart, the importance of having a child as a filial duty, the difference between saving one's sister-in-law from drowning by touching her (expediency over propiety) and not saving the kingdom by expediency, which doesn't work, and more.

The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties by Timothy Brook

Another author in this series.
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China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty by Mark Edward Lewis,

From the geographical shifts of population and importance, the succession of emperors, the revisions of the legal code, the urban life, with its main roads forbidden to most by night, the beginning of the examination system (which might win you a prestigious marriage instead of a post), the importance of tribute bearers in their native costume to show how far its power reached, how Buddhism was still treated as foreign, the Buddha being denounced as mere ghost or ancestor, to honor only his own family, and accusations against foreign monks going so far to claim they were animals in disguise (one, it was declared, was revealed to be a camel), women who became Daoist or Buddhist nuns to escape marriage and more.

Arranged by theme.

A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule by Jonathan Schlesinger

An interesting look at a complex of issues in Qing rule.

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