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Title: An excellent contribution
Review: For those with an interest in early imperial China, this is an exceptional resource. It's quite readable and detailed enough to provide a solid background for narrower studies or to provide Tang-specific information to a Chinese history generalist. For those with more academic needs, I would still recommend it, but would note that Benn has chosen readability over extreme granularity of detail -- e.g., we read about "a son of the emperor," rather than learning the prince's name in Chinese characters and in English.
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