Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China
Jun 2014 · Random House
4.8star
8 reviewsreport
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416
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About this ebook
*WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2014*
A young army captain who risked execution to swim from free-market Taiwan to Communist China.
A barber who made $150 million in the gambling dens of Macau.
The richest woman in China, a recycling tycoon known as the ‘Wastepaper Queen’.
Age of Ambition describes some of the billion individual lives that make up China’s story – one that unfolds on remote farms, in glittering mansions, and in the halls of power of the world’s largest authoritarian regime. Together they describe the defining clash taking place today: between the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control.
Here is a China infused with a sense of boundless possibility and teeming romance. Yet it is also riven by contradictions. It is the world’s largest buyer of Rolls Royces and Ferraris yet the word ‘luxury’ is banned from billboards. It has more Christians than members of the Communist Party. And why does a government that has lifted more people from poverty than any other so strictly restrain freedom of expression?
Based on years of research, Age of Ambition is a stunning narrative that reveals China as we have never understood it before.
A young army captain who risked execution to swim from free-market Taiwan to Communist China.
A barber who made $150 million in the gambling dens of Macau.
The richest woman in China, a recycling tycoon known as the ‘Wastepaper Queen’.
Age of Ambition describes some of the billion individual lives that make up China’s story – one that unfolds on remote farms, in glittering mansions, and in the halls of power of the world’s largest authoritarian regime. Together they describe the defining clash taking place today: between the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control.
Here is a China infused with a sense of boundless possibility and teeming romance. Yet it is also riven by contradictions. It is the world’s largest buyer of Rolls Royces and Ferraris yet the word ‘luxury’ is banned from billboards. It has more Christians than members of the Communist Party. And why does a government that has lifted more people from poverty than any other so strictly restrain freedom of expression?
Based on years of research, Age of Ambition is a stunning narrative that reveals China as we have never understood it before.
Ratings and reviews
4.8
8 reviews
Kaiomurz Motawara
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April 15, 2017
This is a book on China written from a deeply human perspective. Osnos delves into the myriad contradictions of the complex being that is China by introducing us to a raft of characters, some famous. He describes, often in their words, how they grapple with personal ambition, how they view the country they live in, how they struggle against or support the one-party system and how they view the world. This is an outstanding book, written with warmth and humanity, and I highly recommend it.
1 person found this review helpful
About the author
Evan Osnos joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008. He was the magazine’s correspondent in China, where he lived in a restored house in Beijing north of the Forbidden City, from 2005 until 2013 when he moved to Washington, D.C.
He has received many prizes, including the Asia Society’s Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia and the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. Osnos previously worked as the Beijing Bureau Chief of the Chicago Tribune, where he contributed to a series that won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.
Age of Ambition is the winner of the 2014 National Book Award for non-fiction.
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