史記
Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji)
Sima Qian 司馬遷 · c. 145 – c. 86 BCE
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Begun by his father and finished after his own mutilation, Sima Qian's history runs from the Yellow Emperor to his own emperor in 130 chapters of annals, tables, treatises, hereditary houses and biographies. That form governed Chinese official history for two thousand years. Inside it are assassins, merchants, jesters and failed generals written with sympathy and nerve. Few histories anywhere are at once so large in design and so alive in detail.