New Book of Tang

"New Book of Tang" is a biographical history book that records the history of the Tang Dynasty and is one of the "Twenty-Four Histories" co-authored by Song Qi, Ouyang Xiu, Fan Zhen, Lu Xiaqing and others during the Northern Song Dynasty. The book has a total of 225 volumes, including 10 volumes of chronicles, 50 volumes of chronicles, 15 volumes of tables, and 150 volumes of biographies. The "New Book of Tang" took 17 years to compile and was completed in the fifth year of Emperor Renzong's Jiayou reign (AD 1060). After the "New Book of Tang" was completed, its editor-in-chief Zeng Gongliang once told the emperor that "the stories are more advanced than the previous ones, and the writing is less old." He believed that this is what makes this book better than the "Old Book of Tang". "New Book of Tang" is the first to write "Military Chronicles" and "Election Chronicles" in terms of style, systematically discussing the Tang Dynasty's military systems such as the imperial army and the imperial examination system.