An Easy One-Sitting Read: The Three Kingdoms is a full-length popular history told in a straightforward, humorous, conversational style. It focuses on characters and emotion, not academic theory. The story spans from the Yellow Turban Rebellion at the end of the Eastern Han dynasty to the Jin dynasty’s reunification of the Three Kingdoms. The characters are nuanced, neither glorified nor vilified: Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang, Sima Yi, and the rest are all portrayed as human beings. The pacing is exciting, with battles, political maneuvering, twists, tearjerkers, and laughs. The clear logic makes the complicated factions of the Three Kingdoms easy to understand at a glance. It’s full of feeling: passion, regret, tragedy, and wistfulness.
