Finished reading Rebel Island

I enjoyed reading Rebel Island: The Incredible History of Taiwan, by Jonathan Clements. I realize it's a general history for people who don't know a lot about Taiwan, but I found myself learning from it even though I've read other histories of Taiwan. It's a good supplement and updating of books like Wan-yao Chou's A New Illustrated History of Taiwan and the Murray Rubinstein-edited Taiwan: A New History. 

It covers a lot of territory in its 250-odd pages, so there are some stories or aspects from Taiwan's history don't get much or any coverage (the 921 earthquake of 1999 is only mentioned in relation to Morris Chang's insistence on getting the power back on to his TSMC plants). But I think Clements makes a good point early on in the preface about the history (and prehistory) of Taiwan. I'm going to quote this paragraph in full. I don't know if it's completely technically accurate, but it sounds plausible:

If we imagine the whole history of the human habitation of Taiwan, up to the present day, as a single calendar year, then humans first arrive on 1 January--although those ancient people have left behind none of their DNA, only fire sticks and stone axes. The Neolithic period, which saw settlement of the island by the ancestors of today's Formosan indigenous communities, begins around 1 November. The rise on the mainland of the First Emperor, Qin Shihuang, his Terracotta Army, and the very concept of there being a China that Taiwan could become a part of, happens sometime on 3 December. Prolonged and enduring ties with the Chinese on the mainland are initiated around Christmas. The Ming-dynasty loyalist Koxinga and his men arrive in the small hours of 28 December, and their regime is toppled with a Qing-dynasty retaliation by lunchtime. The Japanese annex Taiwan as a colony around midday on 30 December, and are themselves ousted shortly before dawn on New Year's Eve, making way for the mass arrival of Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT), the Chinese Nationalist Party, in retreat from Mao's Communists on the mainland. Martial law stays in force until just after breakfast, and the entire modern history of a democratic Republic of China on Taiwan occupies the next 18 hours until midnight, when I am telling you this. (xiii)

In other words, there's a lot of Taiwan's history to cover, even if your focus is mainly on "November" to "New Year's Eve." I think that despite any faults (including a few mistakes here and there), Clements very ably covers that history.