This acclaimed account of the Boxer Rebellion, by an Oxford-trained historian, is “an outstanding popular history that also passes muster as first-rate historical research" (Booklist).

In the last years of the nineteenth century, the Western powers were bickering over how to slice up the pie of China, while the presence they had already established there was undermining the Chinese people’s traditional ways. Then a new movement—mystical, militaristic, and virulently anti-Christian—began to spread like wildfire among the Chinese peasants. The contemptuous foreigners nicknamed them “the Boxers”—a snickering reference to their martial-arts routines—never imagining that the group, with the backing of China’s Empress Dowager, would soon terrorize the world....


“With meticulous research and passionate style, Diana Preston re-creates the tragedy that consumed China a century ago.” —Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking