The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 1: The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 BC-AD 220

Great book with wonderful attention ti detail and Cf. with the Mark Lewis book 'the Early Chinese Empires"

The other reviewers are dwelling on the binding. Sure the binding is a little weak, but I am here to tell you that if you want a literate, academic history of this era and are willing to commit to the 900 pages you will not be disappointed. The authors are great and the editing superb. I have been reading history for a long time and this is in the upper echelon, so I guess that if a perfect binding is your gig don't buy it, but if great books appeal to you this is for you..

Alas the arguments and pieces are getting a bit outdated. This is a risk in a long -running series like this, along with the binding. Princeton U Press has published a volume on new discoveries in the Ch'in and Han which contradict some treatments in this volume, esp re the Ch'in

Great content, very illuminating. Unlike the other three, one-star, reviewers, I have an authorized Taiwanese reprint, and the binding is great! Maybe you can score a copy from someone living there.

Cambridge University Press is giving itself a very bad press by publishing an expensive series made with a binding process that is good for pocket books, but absolutely insufficient for reference books of such a prestigious house. Many other Cambridge History Series are produced with high quality binding (stitch) as they deserve. In a modern world in which sections of books can be easily downloaded and printed individually, prestigious reference series can and should be made with high quality binding and can carry the appropriate price premium.

I fully agree with the previous reviewer. For such an expensive volume, the binding is atrocious and I expect this book to disintegrate before too long. I am also writing to Cambridge to convey my disgust.

I would buy this book. But, it is to expensive and the quality seems to be poor from the reviews.

I have to agree with the previous two reviewers...I have bought several (very expensive) volumes of the Cambridge History of China and the Cambridge History of Iran and they all suffer the same appalling binding...I'm afraid of reading them lest they fall apart in my hands!While I appreciate 'print-on-demand' technology allows publishers to continue to produce books that only generate limited demand, that doesn't excuse $150+ volumes from being so poorly but together. The Cambridge University Press should either dramatically drop the price of these volumes to reflect the quality of their production, or even better, improve both the binding and print quality to reflect their price.As an aside, the copies I have of The Cambridge History of Ancient China and The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, which don't seem to be 'print on demand', are fine and of the quality I would expect.The chances of me buying other volumes from this or any other Cambridge University series is pretty slim, which is too bad as the contents of the books themselves are generally brilliant.