RaveForeign AffairsRich in context and detail, the book provides a riveting account ... The careful objectivity of its author makes this compulsively readable, intimate story of fear, conformity, starvation, and flight all the more moving.
James Griffiths
PositiveForeign AffairsControlling the Internet was supposed to be as hopeless as nailing Jell-O to the wall, as U.S. President Bill Clinton said, but in this vividly reported narrative, Griffiths tells exactly when and how China achieved it. Chinese dissidents, the U.S. government, and Internet giants went up against the Chinese state—and lost ... Griffiths condemns the \'moral failing\' of Silicon Valley firms and despairs that the censors are on the advance.\'
Daniel Kurtz-Phelan
MixedForeign AffairsThe book is at once a character study of the charismatic and dedicated Marshall; a narrative account of the mission’s miraculous early successes and prolonged, painful collapse; and a meditation on the impossibility of reconciling parties that are determined to remain enemies. In Kurtz-Phelan’s telling, most of the blame for the peace effort’s failure falls on the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek ... But a deeper obstacle was Washington’s inability to uphold the mediator’s core requirement of neutrality ... Marshall’s true purpose was to get the Communists to accept continued Nationalist rule so that China would remain aligned with the United States. This might have been a reasonable goal if one believed the Communists could not win the civil war.
