Despite the considerable scholarly output in the field of Song studies since the 1980s, a survey of the history of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) in English has, until now, been lacking. In addition to the first of two long-awaited volumes on Song history in the Cambridge History of China series, the Song volume in the more recent series of Chinese dynastic histories published by Harvard University Press appeared in 2009. Like the grander Cambridge volume, Dieter Kuhn's survey of Song history is subdivided into two parts: a chronological survey of court political history followed by topical chapters addressing developments in the intellectual, socio-economic, and cultural history of Chinese society (and some of the neighbouring non-Chinese polities) between roughly 960 and 1279. This work is at once a digest of some of the more significant achievements in European-language scholarship on the Song, Liao and Jin Dynasties, and an equivalent to the many single-volume histories of the period in Chinese and Japanese.

In the first four chapters the author reviews the political history of the ninth-century pre-Song past (ch. 1), emphasizes the achievements of the first three Song emperors (ch. 2), narrates the reform policies of successive eleventh-century governments and the collapse of the Song regime in the north (ch. 3), and highlights the major moments in the rise and fall of the Song court in the southern half of its former territories between 1127 and 1279 (ch. 4). In about 100 pages the author thus takes the reader on an exploration of the major transformations in the political and geopolitical landscape and in interstate power relations during four centuries of Chinese history. This account of Song political history is well-informed and presented in a lively and engaging style, but suffers from some of the analytical problems characteristic of the larger field of Song political history.

Perhaps as a legacy of James Liu's work on Northern Song factionalism, and in line with earlier Chinese historiography on Song political history, the narrative tends to oppose strong and weak actors, “career-minded bureaucrats” and “idealistic high-achievers” (pp. 49–50), “highly talented” (p. 51) politicians like Fan Zhongyan versus “the hypocritical” like Wang Qinruo (p. 47), enlightened founding rulers versus extravagant and/or mentally ill emperors responsible for the decline of their empires. While not necessarily unfounded, such selective judgements on personality tend to obscure underlying trends in political networking, power relations, and differences in policy preferences. More critically, the emphasis on personality extremes is in the historiography of imperial Chinese political history often combined with a periodization that more or less determines which personality traits merit attention during specific time periods. For example, martial valour and leadership qualities are of interest in founding periods, hypocrisy during times of geopolitical threat, foolhardiness during reform periods, and mental illness during times of decline. In Kuhn's account of Song political history, the Southern Song period does not therefore seem to have produced any notable politicians (excepting the two founding emperors of the southern court) and appears to have been inexorably headed for the end during the last century of its existence.

The main strength of this survey history is the vivid account of everyday life (chapters 7 and 12), production, commerce and taxation (chapters 10 and 11), and technology and urban history (chapters 8 and 9). Based on a wide range of secondary scholarship on textual and material sources, the text moves from the description of more common themes like popular entertainment in the Song capitals, to subject matter regularly overlooked in survey histories such as marriage practices, clothing, furniture, transportation or health care. In two other chapters the author discusses the education and intellectual and religious lives of Song men and, to a lesser extent, women (chapters 4 and 5).

Apart from occasional inaccuracies and anachronisms (e.g. the Four Books had not yet been separated out as sources for examination essays in the eleventh century, p. 129), Song historians will take issue with some of the larger interpretive claims. The author portrays the Song period as an era in which humaneness, rationality and secularization triumphed; the flipside of this humanist focus was a loss of military prowess and power. Generalizations regarding the political enlightenment, philosophical rationalism, and military weakness of the Song era are not new, but here as elsewhere they appear to be taken for granted rather than based on convincing argumentation, compelling comparisons, and engagement with different perspectives. How could “Neo-Confucian rationality” (p. 279) become the basis for the exploration of the natural and material world (p. 102)? Is sinicization still a satisfactory model when evidence of Jurchen resistance is taken into account (pp. 80–83, 139, 204)? How do the religious practices (richly documented in secondary scholarship on Song local religion and literati attitudes towards Buddhism) and the sentimental literature of Song scholars and officials (hinted at in the revealing translations of Song ci lyrics) fit with the hyperbolic claim of Confucian rationality and secularism?

In sum, The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China offers a highly readable history of Song politics and society, rich in descriptive detail, illustrated with apt quotations from various genres of primary sources, and supplemented with useful maps, tables of measures and heads of state, and two dozen images. There are several pinyin transliteration errors (e.g. Xin Qiji (p. 167) and Mei Yaochen (p. 260)); readers may also wonder why (in an otherwise well-documented book) references are not given for a good number of quotations. Nevertheless, Chinese and world historians will benefit tremendously from finally having access to an expert and enjoyable survey history of Chinese society between the tenth and thirteenth centuries in the English language.