ybooks Read

Readers

Jeffrey Wasserstrom

American historian of modern China; Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and author of China in the 21st Century, Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (2020) and The Milk Tea Alliance.

14 books on the record · 3 Jun 2014 – 30 Dec 2025

The bar next to each date shows how long ago it was said: 7d is days, 4yr is years.

recommends it

Breakneck by Dan Wang

I also tried to steer clear of books that were as much about the United States as about China (I partly violated the two last rules with Breakneck, but it is really about Chinese phenomena much more than American ones).

on fivebooks.com · 30 Dec 2025 · Report

recommends it

Forever Hong Kong by Ching Kwan Lee

Forever Hong Kong is a deep dive into one particular place where this intolerance for variation has been strikingly clear.

on fivebooks.com · 30 Dec 2025 · Report

recommends it

Let Only Red Flowers Bloom by Emily Feng

Let Only Red Flowers Bloom is about how this period of rule by the Chinese Communist Party is one that is increasingly intolerant of diversity of cultural forms and of language uses.

on fivebooks.com · 30 Dec 2025 · Report

recommends it

Agents of Subversion by John Delury

Like Fragile Cargo, I think Agents of Subversion is a book that you can easily imagine being filmed, being turned into a television series or being discussed with gusto by members of a book club made up of history lovers.

on fivebooks.com · 9 Dec 2022 · Report

recommends it

Fragile Cargo by Adam Brookes

Like Fragile Cargo, I think Agents of Subversion is a book that you can easily imagine being filmed, being turned into a television series or being discussed with gusto by members of a book club made up of history lovers.

on fivebooks.com · 9 Dec 2022 · Report

recommends it

Indelible City by Louisa Lim

It was a daringly researched, wonderfully done book, and I feel Indelible City can be described with those same terms.

on fivebooks.com · 9 Dec 2022 · Report

recommends it

In the Camps by Darren Byler

What’s important about In the Camps is that there hasn’t been a short, deeply informed book about Xinjiang that you could point somebody to who says, ‘I don’t have a lot of time to devote to this subject, but I want to go deeper than I can even through a long-form journalism piece’.

on fivebooks.com · 16 Dec 2021 · Report

recommends it

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

I think it’s better known in the United States because of the splash he made with a book called American Born Chinese.

on fivebooks.com · 10 Dec 2020 · Report

recommends it

Champions Day by Jim Carter

Champions Day is a wonderful foray into this kind of historical recreation and does it via a single day at the Shanghai races when the Japanese are about to shut down horse racing.

on fivebooks.com · 10 Dec 2020 · Report

recommends it

Eurasian Crossroads by James Millward

Yes, it’s called Eurasian Crossroads and it’s by James Millward who is, I think, the preeminent American scholar of Xinjiang, certainly among historians.

on fivebooks.com · 10 Dec 2020 · Report

recommends it

Forbidden Memory by Susan Chen (translator) & Tsering Woeser

Forbidden Memory is about the Cultural Revolution era, and the Mao years in general.

on fivebooks.com · 10 Dec 2020 · Report

recommends it

New Ghosts, Old Dreams by Geremie Barme & Linda Jaivin

New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices is a series of collections of speeches and writings of the time, pulled together by Geremie Barmé and Linda Jaivin.

on fivebooks.com · 3 Jun 2014 · Report

Everything Jeffrey Wasserstrom recommends — not just books — on rcmnd →

That little bar

It says how long ago something was said, so you can tell last month from 2014 without doing the arithmetic. Full and green is recent; it drains and cools as the date gets older, and empties completely at about 6 years.

A striped bar means the date itself is an estimate — the source did not carry an exact one. An entry with no date at all gets no bar.