Wish there was bit more coverage of earlier history of China as 1/2 the book covers 20th century China. I enjoyed his coverage of Mao and PRC politics, read like a novel to me.He tried to throw some economics in his review of China which was good but his economics is very weak. Apparently he believes that there needs to a special form of economics different from the balance of humanity to explain China. There is something very unique and strange about China that makes macro economics and microeconomics useless in China. For some reason low cost labor is a problem and not an asset to China in his eyes. And of course we says we can not compare economic development in Taiwan with that of the PRC because they are different.I do get a feeling he is one of those progressives that grew up in the 1930s hates classical liberals and really believed that Communism would work if it only could be tweaked a little and has only failed because of bad men such as Mao and Stalin.