<Red Star Over China> -> for the Communism side of china, why china choose this path.

<River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze> -> one of my fav all the time. a forigner teach in this small chinese city, and he write what he observes.

for more ancient chinese history:

<1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline> -> one of the most popular china's history book for these years. highly recommnded.

i read a lot but i doubt many of them has a non-chinese version. the above ones are the ones i can think of now.

also <The Search for Modern China> is highly recommmend, but i foget if i have read it or not.

oh also another book on how chinese characters are made, 《China: Empire of Living Symbols》。 writen by a Sweden author Cecilia Lindqvist. i love it very much