"Craig Clunas’s exemplary but also extraordinary account reveals the texture of the daily encounters and observations [of Ming dynasty emperors], embedded in a period and culture of which we know still far too little."

Jessica Rawson, University of Oxford

"This innovative, beautifully illustrated book narrates the history of the Ming dynasty in an emperor-by-emperor format that interweaves personal, familial, and dynastic history. Rigorously researched, it uncovers how individual emperors shaped politics (and vice versa), thereby revealing the palace events and machinations of the Ming in Anglophone prose."

Jennifer Purtle, University of Toronto

"In this lavishly illustrated book, the author offers us a fresh view of the Ming as a dynastic enterprise. We emerge from it with a new sense of how the political arena was shaped by the workings of the sprawling clan at its heart, continuously sprouting new branches of imperial princes, calculating advantageous marriages, and frequently afflicted by brutal violence. It gives due weight to the importance of women as well as men, and of the dead as well as the living. Sons of Heaven is distinguished by its sense of the strangeness of the past, its eye for discrete but telling deployment of inter-disciplinary insights, and its engagement with the broader vistas of global history."

Alan Strathern, University of Oxford