PositiveThe Washington Independent Review of BooksAbly translated by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian, this book doesn’t manage the gut-wrenching impact of Tombstone, but that is a high bar. Rather, The World Turned Upside Down reveals the unexpected — but usually rational — twists of Mao’s war against his own party and compellingly demonstrates that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) set the stage for Deng Xiaoping’s China that emerged afterward ... The Cultural Revolution is an enormous topic, and Yang doesn’t shy away from it ... As is often the case, this book’s greatest weakness is also its strength. I randomly flipped to five pages and found an average of more than eight proper names per page. This is a clumsy measure but suggests the level of detail that an author conveys. Such detail can be daunting even for specialists, but it is not superfluous ... In Yang’s presentation, the Cultural Revolution is always understandable. While events were often out of control, and consequences frequently unanticipated, there were always rational decisions to be analyzed. Yang’s major contribution is his reevaluation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and its culpability in the GPCR ... Yang Jisheng has written an essential work for those wanting to understand China’s modern history. Not as provocative as Tombstone, The World Turns Upside Down nonetheless provides a compelling argument, damning evidence, and authoritative sources to tell the definitive history of the Cultural Revolution.
