A rather typical Frank Dikotter book: with strong narrative voice and anecdotes, he illustrates a chapter of Chinese history deftly. Few complaints about such a text: a great introduction to the period that is engaging to read.

The broad strokes he takes in painting pictures means that one would be served better by more specialized texts if looking at specific, say, interactions between key figures or the economy. I don't think his book pretends to be anything other than 'A People's History', though, so this isn't a particular criticism.

I liked this one better than Mao's Great Famine, if only because it really got me fascinated about this time period in China's history. I think Frank Dikötter's style just isn't quite for me though. Again he really focuses in on certain details without contextualizing them as part of a broader national / global narrative, and this again includes some chapters basically focused on crop yield statistics, this time during the Cultural Revolution. So if, like me, you haven't heard of these characters and events before (luckily I at least recognized some of the returning players from Mao's Great Famine, like Zhou Enlai and Liu Shaoqi), you'll probably have to cross-reference some outside sources to get the most out of this book. In fact, I wouldn't really recommend starting with this book at all; Laszlo Montgomery's "China History Podcast" features an 8-episode series on the Cultural Revolution that I found much easier to follow.

Better than 'Mao's Great Famine' although still not quite as good as 'Tragedy of Liberation', a very Anti-CCP opinion which although does give an ounce of credit to their achievements in China, re healthcare, language, etc Dikötter positions himself starkly on the side of the Western perspective, which is of course valid too when traversing this trilogy its easy to see how the cult of Maoism horrified Western nations and is still horrifying to read about today, the 'People's Party' who couldn't seem to care less about 'The People'.

After a recent reading slump, I started reading this and found it so enthralling, I shot through it in a few days. I am now looking forward to reading the other two volumes in the trilogy (having made the strange decision to read the second of three!). At 400 pages it was a succinct retelling of the events of the Cultural Revolution, a tumultuous and disorienting period in modern Chinese history.

Frank Dikötter writes in a measured, lucid manner to describe events so bizarre, I had to remind myself they actually happened and weren't figments of Dikötter's imagination. As J.G Ballard once said, the C R is the greatest of example of an entire society suffering brain death. Living in these times must have been utterly disorienting, but Frank Dikötter manages to maintain a strong thread running through his narrative of events, helping the reader through a head-spinning array of factions and officials.

Whether you have any knowledge of the CR or not, I would greatly recommend this as a succinct overview of one of the strangest, most brutal periods in modern human history. It leaves you wondering upon the nature of humanity itself and its capacity to plunge terrifying depths of depravity and collective pathology.

I'm not sure how to rate this. I think Dikotter's biases were more obvious here than in his boo on the Great Leap Forward, which I read a few years ago, but I'm not sure if it matters. I don't know if there is a way to tell the story of the Cultural Revolution without condemning the people who planned it. Because friends, it was some bad news. Fortunately I have a whole collection of unread books on Chinese history and maybe one day I'll be able to judge this book a little better.