20. China

“One of my favourite lockdown reads in the first lockdown was a book called The Story of China, a Portrait of Civilisation and Its People by one of my all-time heroes, Michael Wood.”

“One of the most famous novels in China, it begins with a line which roughly says, it is a truth universally acknowledged that every empire that falls apart will come together again.”

“The ideas that underwrote the Qin Empire were legalist ideas by this political philosopher called Lord Shang, who wrote this book of Lord Shang.”

“The discussion references Kenneth Pomerantz's famous book 'The Great Divergence', which argues about the material facts that led to different technological advancements between the East and West.”