Table of Contents

One: Thinking; 1: Curtain Raiser; 2: Tall Man from Lu; 3: Little Jesus, Big Marx; 4: The Straw Dogs; 5: Government by Goodness; 6: The Day of the Kissingers; 7: The Mixmasters; 8: Machiavellissimo; Two: Fighting; 9: The Gentle Art of War; 10: The Downhill Struggle; 11: The Knight and the Nobody; 12: Armies for Two; 13: Empire for One; 14: Prologue to Chaos; 15: Talk of Ts’ao Ts’ao; 16: The Keys of the Kingdoms; 17: Chinese Cutthroat; 18: Third-Party Risk; 19: The Drama in Modern Dress; Three: Ruling; 20: The Case for Murder; 21: The Golden Rule of the Assassin; 22: The Soft Touch; 23: Absolute Scholarship Corrupts Absolutely; 24: The Hero Worshippers; 25: The Living Dead; 26: The Tongue and the Teeth; 27: All Chinese Are Brothers; 28: Barbarians in Perspective; 29: Democrazy; Four: Analyzing; 30: Past for Consumption; 31: Western Approaches; 32: From the Top

About the Author

Dennis Bloodworth

Reviews

-The authors' goal is 'to switch on the past to illuminate the present'. To this end, the narratives of the lives of the various characters representing all of Chinese history are interspersed with observations on the similarities between their strategies for acquiring and maintaining political power and the political behavior of the PRC leadership of the 1970s... It appeals to the general reader for its fast-paced and entertaining prose. Its general overview ofChinese political history effectively plots the main characters in the historical imagination of the PRC leadership.---Hilde de Weerdt, History, University of Tennesse, Knoxville, USA

"The authors' goal is 'to switch on the past to illuminate the present'. To this end, the narratives of the lives of the various characters representing all of Chinese history are interspersed with observations on the similarities between their strategies for acquiring and maintaining political power and the political behavior of the PRC leadership of the 1970s... It appeals to the general reader for its fast-paced and entertaining prose. Its general overview ofChinese political history effectively plots the main characters in the historical imagination of the PRC leadership."--Hilde de Weerdt, History, University of Tennesse, Knoxville, USA