China After Mao

Dikoetter's highly-readable primer provides a valuable corrective ... Helps puncture the image of China's inexorable economic rise * New Statesman * A revolutionary book ... Breaking with the bland orthodoxy peddled in some of our finest universities, Dikoetter says that China today is a Leviathan where a party, fascist in all but name, controls society ... Dikoetter marshals a daunting array of statistics and documents ... Historians such as Dikoetter are there to warn -- Michael Sheridan * Sunday Times * PRAISE FOR THE PEOPLE'S TRILOGY: 'A brilliant and powerful account ...This excellent book is horrific but essential reading for all who want to understand the darkness that lies at the heart of one of the world's most important revolutions * Guardian * Powerful ... Bold and startling ... Dikoetter must be admired for the manner in which he puts a human scale on the enormous barbarities of the communist takeover of China. We cannot begin to understand modern China without being aware of the blood-drenched tale Dikoetter so ably relates -- Kwasi Kwarteng * Evening Standard * A mesmerizing account of the communist revolution in China, and the subsequent transformation of hundreds of millions of lives through violence, coercion and broken promises. The Chinese themselves suppress this history, but for anyone who wants to understand the current Beijing regime, this is essential background reading -- Anne Applebaum Dikoetter performs here a tremendous service by making legible the hugely controversial origins of the present Chinese political order -- Tim Snyder A remarkable work of archival research. Dikoetter rarely, if ever, allows the story of central government to dominate by merely reporting a top-down directive. Instead, he tracks down the grassroots impact of Communist policies ... In so doing, he uncovers astonishing stories of party-led inhumanity and also popular resistance ... Dikoetter sustains a strong human dimension to the story by skillfully weaving individual voices through the length of the book * Financial Times * This groundbreaking book examines the bloodstained reality behind the word and reveals how it brought tragedy to millions ... Dikoetter's achievement in this book is remarkable. He has mastered a mass of original source material, and has done so by mining local archives in China, which have yielded up a host of treasures. * Sunday Times * Startling ... Dikoetter's work has aimed to demolish almost every claim to truth or virtue the Chinese Communist party ever made. He combines a vivid eye for detail with a historian's diligence in the archives. Powerful ... Dikoetter is unsparing in his account of the effects of the communist rule * Observer * Harrowing and brilliant ... This is the book that changes your life -- Ben Macintyre * The Times * Magnificent ... This brilliant book leaves no doubt that Mao almost ruined China and left a legacy of paranoia that still grips its modern dictatorship under the latest autocrat, Xi Jinping -- Michael Sheridan * Sunday Times * Together, these three books, which Dikoetter calls the 'People's Trilogy', constitute a major contribution to scholarship on modern China, one that is unequalled, certainly in the English language ... His patience and endurance must be considerable and his Chinese-language skills formidable ... Revealing and rewarding reading - for specialists and non-specialists alike * Literary Review *