Wang Mang: References & Edit History

Rudi Thomsen, Ambition and Confucianism: A Biography of Wang Mang (1988), is a thorough treatment of the man. A good account of the Wang Mang era is The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, The Ch’in and Han Empires, 221 bc–ad 220, ed. by Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe (1986, reprinted 1995), especially chapter 3, “Wang Mang, the Restoration of the Han Dynasty, and Later Han.” Older but still useful accounts are Homer H. Dubs, The History of the Former Han Dynasty, vol. 3 (1955), which sums up the traditional and rather uncritical attitude toward Wang Mang; and Hans Bielenstein, “The Restoration of the Han Dynasty,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 26:1–209 (1954), concerned mainly with Wang Mang’s fall.