Peter Zarrow is a professor in the Department of History, University of Connecticut, where he focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of modern China, and an adjunct research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. His 2012 work, After Empire: The Conceptual Transformation of the Chinese State, 1885–1924, won the First Scholarly Monograph Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica. He has been a visiting scholar at the British Academy, L'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, and served as Hu Shi Memorial Chair Professor, Academia Sinica in 2013.

'What textbooks say today generates heated debate from Tokyo to Texas. Zarrow's landmark study of textbooks in late imperial and early Republican China shows how and why they mattered a century ago for reimagining the people, the culture, the past and the future of China - an indispensable book for educators and historians of modern China.' John Fitzgerald, Swinburne University of Technology

• Introduction; 1. The construction of the state school system; 2. Reading modern China; 3. Textbook morality, self-cultivation, and civics; 4. Good citizens; 5. The national subject in time; 6. A usable past; 7. The importance of space; Conclusion; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.

Peter Zarrow is a professor in the Department of History, University of Connecticut, where he focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of modern China, and an adjunct research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. His 2012 work, After Empire: The Conceptual Transformation of the Chinese State, 1885–1924, won the First Scholarly Monograph Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica. He has been a visiting scholar at the British Academy, L'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, and served as Hu Shi Memorial Chair Professor, Academia Sinica in 2013.

'What textbooks say today generates heated debate from Tokyo to Texas. Zarrow's landmark study of textbooks in late imperial and early Republican China shows how and why they mattered a century ago for reimagining the people, the culture, the past and the future of China - an indispensable book for educators and historians of modern China.' John Fitzgerald, Swinburne University of Technology

• Introduction; 1. The construction of the state school system; 2. Reading modern China; 3. Textbook morality, self-cultivation, and civics; 4. Good citizens; 5. The national subject in time; 6. A usable past; 7. The importance of space; Conclusion; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.