This deeply informed and clearly written text provides a comprehensive history of China from prehistory to the present. Now updated to include recent political events and scientific research, the book focuses on the interaction of humans and their environment, tracing changes in the physical and cultural world that is home to a fifth of humankind.

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List of Illustrations Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Introduction: Problems and Perspectives Chapter 2: China's Natural Environment and Early Human Settlement to 1000 BCE Chapter 3: States, Wars, and Farms: Environmental Change in Ancient and Early Imperial China, 1000 BCE-300 CE Chapter 4: Deforesting the North and Colonizing the South in the Middle Imperial Period, 300-1300 CE Chapter 5: Empire and Environment: China's Borderlands, Islands, and Inner Peripheries in the Late Imperial Period, 1300-1800 CE Chapter 6: Environmental Degradation in Modern China, 1800-1949 Chapter 7: "Controlling" Nature in the People's Republic of China, 1949-Present Chapter 8: Conclusion: China and Its Environment in World Historical Perspective Select Bibliography Index