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Yes! "Well-rounded" is a great way to put it. A leader who had a favorable ("favorable" is subjective, I know) balance between certain traits. Balance is key here.. Take a trait like ruthlessness for example:

Genghis Khan killed 40 million people in his campaigns across Eurasia, right? Massacring, torturing, executing, and enslaving the whole way.

Was all that necessary? I'm actually willing to admit the possibility that it was, as a matter of strategy. Chapter 15 (Law 15) of Robert Greene's book The 48 Laws of Power is called "Crush Your Enemies Totally" and discusses just this sort of thing. So I would not necessarily begrudge a leader taking a violent approach to securing their empire.

Now take, on the other hand, a leader like Timur aka. "Tamerlane", who was sort of Genghis' successor in a way. Tamerlane's death toll was only about half that of Genghis', but ~19 million deaths is still nothing to sneeze at. Timur's conquests were also run in the same sort of ruthless fashion as Genghis' (executing 100,000 captives in the 1398 Capture of Delhi, beheading 70,000 after the Isfahan revolt, etc).

Does this make Genghis Khan twice as ruthless as Timur? And if they happened to have racked up the same death toll, would that make them equally ruthless?

I believe the thing to consider is what else each leader brought to the table for their people and the world AND if, or to what degree those merits offset their ruthlessness. Again, this gets pretty subjective and philosophical (but I am asking for opinions, after all :-)).

So, for example:

One of Genghis Khan's main motivations for his campaigns (and I do think motivations behind actions are important) was to open up trade routes for the good of his people. In fact Genghis Khan is credited with bringing the Silk Road under one cohesive political environment, and this kind of environments may have had a positive impact on other civilizations as well who collaborated in trade using the same routes. Khan also replaced cronyism with meritocracy, which was a plus.

This was decidedly not the case for Tamerlane, who seems to have had much less noble motivations. By certain accounts "Unlike Genghis Khan, however, Timur conquered not to open trade routes and protect his flanks, but to loot and pillage." Besides being a military genius, positive light in Tamerlane's corner seems to be rather sparse.

Obviously this is a comparison between two historic leaders that I don't know if anyone would have as candidates for the very best leaders of all time but my point here is that there are certainly some solid metrics by which leaders can be praised or denigrated. Was there a boom in the economy when a leader rose to power? Was that a coincidence or because of some economic reform they enacted? Was there a dramatic fall in crime? Did their rise to power result in a fertile environment of innovation and literary/artistic/philosophical/scientific achievements? and so on. We can use historical data in context along with the same metrics that we could use to judge leaders today.

Thank you for the input.

If you are interested in military history, I strongly recommend Arthur Waldron's The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth. http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Wall-China-original/dp/052142707X

The Ming were the dynasty that built the Great Wall. Waldron explains at great length what drove them to do so - why they decided to build walls to face the nomad threat instead of follow other common strategies (trade networks, Heqin-type alliance, all out war).

Edward Dryer has a neat book about Zheng He, the Ming minister whose fleet sailed across the Indian ocean and to Africa http://www.amazon.com/Zheng-He-Dynasty-1405-1433-Biography/dp/0321084438/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381479732&sr=1-2&keywords=zheng+he

And if you like social history, then Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in the Ming is the go-to book. http://www.amazon.com/Confusions-Pleasure-Commerce-Culture-China/dp/0520221540/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381479790&sr=1-1&keywords=confusions+of+pleasure

I have not read this last one, but others in th eknow tell me it is the best place to start.

Well, the Cambridge History of China is a great resource, but I don't know if you can find that in eBook form or not. Those tomes cover just about everything you'd need.

If you're interested in modern Chinese history, The Search for Modern China is an excellent book.

For the Song dynasty: The Age of Confucian Rule, and Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion. Just remember that the books can't cover everything, so occasionally they oversimply - particularly Kuhn's book and its overemphasis on Confucianism.

Oh, and one more recommendation for now: the Shi Ji (Records of the Grand Historian).

There's a good audio course called Yao to Mao. I like this because it was easy to listen to while travelling around China.

My favourite comprehensive history book is The search for modern china

This is not biographical, but for anyone interested in the period, The Search For Modern China is worth mentioning.

John Keay is pretty awesome

I don't know that much about Mao. Pick up a biography of Deng Xiaoping if you want to know politics after Mao.

http://www.amazon.com/This-Is-China-First-ebook/dp/B00408A69S

http://www.amazon.com/This-Is-China-First-ebook/dp/B00408A69S

that's the shortest overview of all of Chinese history I've seen. It's simple and brief and covers all the main topics beginning with Chinese mythology in 3000 BC up to now

The Sextants of Beijing by Joanna Waley-Cohen.

I've looked at this one

Do you have any others I could look at?