Hardcover. NY, Hill & Wang, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 544 pages. A bold new history of the Deng years by a leading China scholar. Unlike the former Soviet Union and the once "socialist" countries of Eastern Europe, China's current economy is now the world's second largest and most rapidly growing. Remarkably, today's problems in China are spiritual in nature-"a crisis of faith"-stemming from the clash between capitalist realities and lingering socialist values and ideas. "The Deng Xiaoping Era "is the story of that crisis and of Deng Xiaoping's promise of socialist democracy that has degenerated into bureaucratic capitalism. Maurice Meisner shows how the social contract between the Chinese Communist Party and the people was grossly violated by the Deng regime, and why capitalism has emerged as the dynamic force in today's socioeconomic and cultural life. Now, after more than a decade of capitalist reforms, he argues that Chinese spiritual malaise is deepening with the brutal suppression of the 1989 Democracy Movement and its politically repressive aftermath. This is an indispensable study of contemporary Chinese history-from the Chinese Revolution and the founding of the Maoist state to the establishment of the Deng regime and the social consequences of Deng's reforms-as well as a formidable analysis of the failure of the world's greatest socialist experiment. Clean copy.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 3rd pr., 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wraps, 375 pages, maps. A decade after the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China established their formidable alliance in 1950, escalating public disagreements between them broke the international communist movement apart. In The Sino-Soviet Split, Lorenz Luthi tells the story of this rupture, which became one of the defining events of the Cold War. Identifying the primary role of disputes over Marxist-Leninist ideology, Luthi traces their devastating impact in sowing conflict between the two nations in the areas of economic development, party relations, and foreign policy. The source of this estrangement was Mao Zedong's ideological radicalization at a time when Soviet leaders, mainly Nikita Khrushchev, became committed to more pragmatic domestic and foreign policies. Using a wide array of archival and documentary sources from three continents, Luthi presents a richly detailed account of Sino-Soviet political relations in the 1950s and 1960s. He explores how Sino-Soviet relations were linked to Chinese domestic politics and to Mao's struggles with internal political rivals. Furthermore, Luthi argues, the Sino-Soviet split had far-reaching consequences for the socialist camp and its connections to the nonaligned movement, the global Cold War, and the Vietnam War. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 391 pages. How Maoism captured the imagination of French intellectuals during the 1960s. Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Phillipe Sollers, and Jean-Luc Godard. During the 1960s, a who's who of French thinkers, writers, and artists, spurred by China's Cultural Revolution, were seized with a fascination for Maoism. Combining a merciless expose of left-wing political folly and cross-cultural misunderstanding with a spirited defense of the 1960s, The Wind from the East tells the colorful story of this legendary period in France. Richard Wolin shows how French students and intellectuals, inspired by their perceptions of the Cultural Revolution, and motivated by utopian hopes, incited grassroots social movements and reinvigorated French civic and cultural life.