Reviews and endorsements for
Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century 

“[An] engaging narrative of the intellectual and cultural origins of China’s modern rise.”— Joe Kahn, The New York Times

“The portraits are beautifully written and bring to life not only their subjects but also the mood and intellectual debates of the times in which they lived.”—Foreign Affairs

“Schell and Delury describe a series of eleven thinkers, activists, and leaders in their stylishly written, provocative book. They say the idea for it came from a simple but important question: ‘How did China’s modern history of relentless humiliation and backwardness…suddenly morph into such a story of triumph?’ The answer is an ‘abiding quest’ for wealth and power. Through these figures—writers, revolutionaries, and even a dowager empress—we see that Xi’s dream is firmly in the tradition of those who went before.” -Ian Johnson, The New York Review of Books

“In Wealth and Power, their crisp and comprehensive introduction to the history of modern China, historians Orville Schell and John Delury present us with the historical background we need to understand the driving mechanism that lies at the center of China today. By no longer presenting China’s past two centuries as a record of recurrent failures and humiliations, they give us a portrait of a nation in the making, and of leaders with the skills and determination to redirect China’s energies on a global scale. The change of perspective is valuable and challenging.” – Jonathan Spence, Yale University

“Wealth and Power offers everything readers might expect from its two eminent authors. It is both sweeping and specific, authoritative and lively, sympathetic and critical, offering the perspective of both the hedgehog and the fox. The hardest challenge in writing about China, or finding things to read about it, is perceiving significant patterns while remaining aware of the chaos and contradictions. Orville Schell and John Delury meet that challenge in exemplary form. I only wish that they’d written the book years ago, so that (along with other readers) I could have been taking advantage of its insights all along.” – James Fallows, The Atlantic