GOD'S CHINESE SON: The Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. By Jonathan D.Spence. Norton. 400 pp. $27.50

Spence's many admirers will be delighted with his newest work, a history of the Taiping Rebellion that, characteristically, reveals a whole new way of seeing a familiar story. Spence, a professor of history at Yale University, has always displayed a knack for lively detail. Minutiae and epic scope are brilliantly blended in this tragic portrait of Hong Xiuqua (1814-64), the religious visionary whose popular rebellion almost toppled the Qing dynasty in the mid-19th century.

The rich ground of China's greatest revolt has been worked before, but Spence brings both new material and a new approach. The material consists of two texts published in the 1860s by the Taipings themselves, recently rediscovered in the British Museum. The approach is to get inside the Taiping movement, not just analyzing the social, political, and economic causes but evoking its religious and psychological dimensions.

The immediacy of Spence's writing, including his bold use of the present tense, may seem a bit shocking at first. But it enlivens the story without sacrificing scholarly precision. The "you are there" quality adds vividness to the book's account of the lives of Western missionaries living in China, its sketch of Chinese religious traditions, and its recreation of the cosmological conflicts faced by Hong Xiuquan and his compatriots.

Spence concentrates on Hong, the man who believed himself to be "God's Chinese son." We follow him as he assiduously studies the Confucian classics for the all-important examinations. We learn how his repeated failures almost destroy him and how a fever dream carries him up to heaven to meet his father and elder brother. With time, that dream becomes a revelation: Hong believes that his father is the Christian God, and his elder brother Jesus. Convinced of his own divinity, and of his mission to save the world from "demondevils," he builds the fierce, puritanical movement that will shake traditional China to its foundations.

Using Hong Xiuquan's life to explore the Taiping Rebellion, Spence draws implicit parallels to more recent events. The record of infighting and Hong's assumption of imperial prerogatives (including sexual ones, denied on religious grounds to his followers) are reminiscent of Mao Zedong. Spence's insights into Hong's theology also conjure up thoughts of David Koresh and Shoko Asahara. Yet it is a measure of Spence's accomplishment that his account of this frightening, fascinating crusade is fresher than last week's headlines.

--Benjamin L. Self