Empress Dowager Cixi: China’s Last Dynasty Paperback – 3 Dec. 2003

XL Woo was a university professor in China and published several educational books and poetry there. He went to the US as a visiting professor at Rutgers and later became an American citizen. So he's got form.What Woo has given us is a fascinating insight into one of the most powerful women in history and he writes with charm and verve presenting the reader with a very readable account, both with historical facts and 'apocryphal' anecdotes of the Empress Dowager's extraordinary life and reign. Her extraordinary rise to power, from relatively humble (albeit Manchu) origins, and her subsequent maintenance of the power 'behind' the double dragon throne for the best part of half a century.That such a woman, in such a male-dominated culture, managed not only to rule for so long but to survive in the face of both internal plots and a series of foreign invasions needs very little by way of foreign or court propaganda - so prevalent surrounding this fascinating character - and Woo provides us with a fascinating scholarly, but creatively readable, account of the Cixi's life.It's unputdownable.