Unfortunately the book is now becoming pretty dated - referring to Peking not Beijing, the USSR not Russia, and all currencies and amounts referenced were converted to 'today's equivalent' so unreliable figures when reading this book twenty years after it was published. His story was therefore a history of China - albeit from a very limited point of view. He was de-throned when China became a republic, became a 'puppet' emperor for the Japanese in Manchukuo, was captured by the Soviets at the end of WW2 and then imprisoned and 're-educated' by Chinese Communists under Mao. Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China, was born into ridiculous privilege and almost worshipped as a child. :DĪn interesting biography about what was surely one of the most fascinating lives of the twentieth century. Lesson learned: (1) not everybody can be a leader, (2) appointing a toddler as a leader of a big country is a big mistake, and (3) monarchism should be avoided.

But also because it was people, or his royal family, that had created ‘him’ at beginning. Not only had that he, in fact, dropped from the highest rank of people as a king became a peasant. He was just a spoiled rich kid that was given a power to rule the country. I had resentment to this man at first half. We could see how the emperor from his top of supremacy had experienced decrease of his power little by little, including his control of his own wealth. The author might think that explaining those political parties are not important in this last emperor personal story, or might had assumed that the readers already had them as their background knowledge. I knew a little bit about Japanese’s part but nothing on Russian’s. But for one without knowledge of China’s history, I lost between china’s communism and republic. The story was quite interesting, continuous day by day (or years?) seamlessly. The book presents the story of the China’s Last Emperor, started when he was a toddler king and ended by his days as a common people. So I couldn’t criticize the story parts in it. I need to keep remind myself that it is a real story of a man who was the last emperor of China. I have a little trouble writing this review. OL1673714W Page-progression lr Page_number_confidence 91.57 Pages 358 Ppi 514 Related-external-id urn:isbn:0553173219 Urn:lcp:lastemperor00behr:epub:a55a0c77-7419-4e8c-ac78-4663a044e217 Extramarc Duke University Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier lastemperor00behr Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t4zg7hz8p Isbn 0553344749 Lccn 87047590 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary_edition

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The Last Emperor by Edward Samuel Behr