Modernization and Revolution in China: From the Opium Wars to the Olympics

June Grasso, Jay Corrin & Michael Kort

Spanning China's humiliating defeat in the Opium Wars in the nineteenth century to its triumphant hosting of the 2008 summer Olympic games, this popular text conveys the drama of China's struggle to modernize against the backdrop of a proud and difficult history. The book traces the major developments of that journey: the breakdown of imperial China in the face of Western and Japanese encroachments; the founding of the Chinese republic; the early struggles between the ideologies and armies of Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong; China's bitter and costly war with Japan; the final shootout that sent Chiang to Taiwan and Mao to Beijing; the turbulent first decades of the People's Republic, and the post-revolutionary generations of leaders who steered the country's dramatic shift to a globalizing economic strategy. Current issues and the most recent historical scholarship have been incorporated into this updated fourth edition.

June Grasso, Jay Corrin & Michael Kort June Grasso is associate professor of social science at Boston University’s College of General Studies. She is the author of Truman’s Two-China Policy (1987). She holds a Ph.D. in modern Chinese history from Tufts University.
Jay P. Corrin is professor and chairman, division of social science at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He is author of G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc: The Battle against Modernity (1981), and Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy (2002) and conducts research and writes on Catholic social and political ideas in Great Britain and the United States.
Michael Kort is professor of social science at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He is author of The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath (6th ed., 2006), The Columbia Guide to the Cold War (1998), The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb (2007), A Brief History of Russia (2008), and many books for high school students.