more than half of the contents, even though some of them written thousands of years before my time (especially Shiji). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-Four_Histories The Twenty-Four Histories ( Chinese : 二十四史; pinyin : Èrshísì Shǐ; Wade-Giles : Erhshihszu Shih) is a collection of Chinese historical books covering a period of history from 3000 BC