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Book Cover for: China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, Nicholas D. Kristof

China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power

Nicholas D. Kristof

"When China wakes, it will shake the world, " Napoleon Bonaparte once remarked. That moment is now at hand. And in this book Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the Pulitzer Prize winning Beijing correspondents of The New York Times, bring to life the people, the politics, and the paradoxes of China as never before. China Wakes combines groundbreaking reportage with the authors' personal account of how they came to discover the human stories within the world's most populous nation. Attracted by China's potential for greatness and repelled by its propensity for cruelty, Kristof and WuDunn struggle to reconcile their optimism about China's future with the brutality that always seems to break their hearts. In the pages of China Wakes, the story of China's economic takeoff unfolds before us like passages from a great novel. Kristof and WuDunn, the first married couple ever to win a Pulitzer for journalism, take us with them to meet their friends (and enemies) and share their concerns - especially WuDunn's ambivalence about how, as a Chinese-American, she must come to terms with the legacy of her ancestral homeland. WuDunn takes us along as she slips into a China usually hidden from foreigners, a China of cabinet ministers making unwanted advances on local women and of peasants who cannot afford pants for their children. We also accompany Kristof as he witnesses Chinese troops massacring protesters at Tiananmen Square and later comes face to face with the man who betrayed the leaders of the democracy movement to the police. With the Chinese economy (the world's third largest) on a trajectory to overtake Japan and the United States in the coming decades, Kristof and WuDunn describe aspectacular economic boom that has enabled a twenty-three-year old to start his own airline or a manual laborer to become a millionaire furniture manufacturer. But they also reveal the chilling paradox lurking beneath these rags-to-riches stories: despite the stock markets and the cell

Book Details

  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • Publish Date: Aug 1st, 1995
  • Pages: 528
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.02in - 5.22in - 1.07in - 1.05lb
  • EAN: 9780679763932
  • Categories: Asia - ChinaAnthropology - Cultural & SocialWorld - Asian

About the Author

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF and SHERYL WuDUNN, the first husband and wife to share a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, have coauthored four previous books: A Path Appears, Half the Sky, Thunder from the East, and China Wakes. They were awarded a Pulitzer in 1990 for their coverage of China, as well as the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Now an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, Kristof was previously bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. He won his second Pulitzer in 2006 for his columns on Darfur. WuDunn worked at the Times as a business editor and foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Beijing, and now works in finance and consulting. They live in Oregon.

Praise for this book

"Nick Kristof's and Sheryl WuDunn's work as correspondents in China was beyond compare, and now they have written a book every bit as astonishing. China Wakes is filled with anecdote, detail, and analysis of the highest order...This book demands reading, and yet it is a pleasure as well as an education." --David Remnick

"Every page of China Wakes is trenchant, and I cannot think of a reportorial book on China so zealous in investigation and so painstaking in probing issues from every angle." --Ross Terrill, Foreign Affairs

"Thought-provoking and absorbing.... Few books on China have done so much to further our understanding. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn share with the readers their wealth of information, keen observation and intelligent interpretation." --Nien Cheng, author of Life and Death in Shanghai