Lawrence Zhang joins Micah to discuss The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368-1911 (Columbia University Press, 1962). You can read some of Lawrence's research on the effects of purchasing offices on the Qing bureaucracy in his article "A Legacy of Success: Office Purchase and State-Elite Relations in Qing China," The Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 73:2 (2013).
Michael D. Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033: An Essay on Education and Equality (London: Thames and Hudson, 1958).
Robert P. Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi, in Northern and Southern Sung (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Ch'u, T'ung-tsu, Local Government in China under the Ch'ing (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962).
Chang, Chung-li, The Income of the Chinese Gentry, A sequel to "The Chinese Gentry: Studies on their Role in Nineteenth-century Chinese Society." Introduction by Franz Michael (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962).
何炳棣 《讀史閱世六十年》 (香港：中華書局, 2009). [Ping-ti Ho's autobiography.]
Iona Man Cheong, The Class of 1761: Examinations, State, and Elites in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
Miyazaki, Ichisada, China's Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China. Translated by Conrad Schirokauer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).