Maurice Meisner is the Harvey Goldberg Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Visiting Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. His writings, which have been translated into Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese, include Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism; Marxism, Maoism and Utopianism; and many other works on modern Chinese history.

Contents
Preface to the Third Edition
PART ONE: THE REVOLUTIONARY HERITAGE
1. Western Imperialism and the Weakness of Chinese Social Classes
2. The Defection of the Intellectuals
3. The Abortiveness of Bourgeois and Proletarian Revolution
4. The Maoist Revolution and the Yan'an Legacy
PART TWO: THE NEW ORDER, 1949-1955
5. The New State
6. The Cities: The Rise and Fall of National Capitalism
7. Land Reform: The Bourgeois Revolution in the Countryside
8. The Social and Political Consequences of Industrialization
9. Agricultural Collectivization, 1953-1957
PART THREE: UTOPIANISM, 1956-1960
10. The Hundred Flowers: Socialism, Bureaucracy, and Freedom
11. Permanent Revolution: The Ideological Origins of the Great Leap
12. Economics of the Great Leap Forward
13. The People's Communes and the "Transition to Communism": 1958-1960
PART FOUR: THE THERMIDORIAN REACTION, 1960-1965
14. The Bureaucratic Restoration
15. The New Economic Policy, 1961-1965
16. The Socialist Education Movement, 1962-1965
PART FIVE: THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION. AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1966-1976
17. The Concept of Cultural Revolution
18. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969
19. Social Results of the Cultural Revolution
20. The Aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and the Close of the Maoist Era, 1969-1976
PART SIX: DENG XIAOPING AND THE ORIGINS OF CHINESE CAPITALISM, 1976-1998
21. The Legacies of the Maoist Era
22. The Rise of Deng Xiaoping and the Critique of Maoism
23. Market Reforms and the Development of Capitalism
24. The Struggle for Democracy
25. The End of the Reign of Deng Xiaoping: China in the 1990s
Selected Bibliography
Index