Imperial Warlord: A Biography of Cao Cao 155-220 Ad: 99 (Sinica Leidensia, 99) - Hardcover

Winner of the Stanislas Julien prize for 2011.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2011
This impressive volume is the culmination of a lifetime's work on Cao Cao, the Later Han chancellor, Three
Kingdoms warlord, and, posthumously, Wei emperor. De Crespigny's study is the definitive work on this critical
figure in any language. The image of Cao Cao and several of his defeated opponents has been shaped in the popular
mind by subsequent fictionalizations, most recently in a major film, that are now core mythologies in Chinese culture.
De Crespigny (Australian National Univ.) deals sensitively with the complex historical and literary issues involved in
explaining Cao Cao, working through a thicket of frequently hostile sources with erudition and fairness. In addition
to providing a painstaking narrative of the political and military events of Cao Cao's life, the author also devotes
considerable attention to explaining the historiographical and literary issues involved in studying Cao Cao, summing
up with the aptly titled section "Why Cao Cao?" The only regret one has in reading this book is that there isn't more
scholarship like it available. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.
-- P. Lorge, Vanderbilt University, CHOICE June 2011

'Rafe de Crespigny's meticulous biography of Cao Cao provides a full, detailed, carefully sourced and dispassionate account of the most powerful and controversial Chinese statesman (...)'
PETER HARRIS, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 14, 1 (June 2012)

Though denigrated by later generations, Cao Cao was a military and political hero of China, restoring a measure of order from the ruins of Later Han. From historical records and his own writings, this book reinterprets his life and achievements.