The 24 Year Old Who Burned Every Book in China

He was 13 when he became king of Qin. Thirty-eight when he conquered the rest of China. Forty-nine when he died drinking mercury to live forever. Between those numbers, he burned every book he didn't write, buried 460 scholars alive, and built a wall that took a million lives. But how did one man go from political-hostage child to inventor of the title 'emperor' — and why did the dynasty he built to last ten thousand generations collapse four years after he died? The same paranoia that built imperial China killed the man who built it.