Age of Ambition

The rise of China is the biggest story of the past twenty-five years. Evan Osnos captures the country in all its striving, thunderous diversity, through a narrative that moves, provokes and makes us laugh. Age of Ambition is a marvel of great reporting, careful thinking, and powerful writing. – Dexter FilkinsIf you have time to read only one book about China today, read this one. Woven from vignettes of Chinese life at many different levels, it provides unerring insights into what makes the Chinese the people they are while wearing its learning so lightly that the narrative never flags. It should be in every tourist’s baggage and every diplomat’s library. – Philip Short, author of Mao: A LifeEvan Osnos is one of the most astute observers of contemporary China, and in this book he gives us a powerful and moving portrait of that country as it moves into the next decade. Using crisp and brilliant prose, Osnos uses some of the figures at the cutting edge of a changing China - artists, bloggers, religious leaders, and workers - to show us the strengths and weaknesses of this fast-changing and deeply important nation. This is a must-read book for those who want to understand China today - and where it is going. * Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China, University of Oxford *The best book on China I’ve ever read. Witty, indispensable, and often moving. I look forward to stealing Evan Osnos’s wisdom and passing it off as my own for years to come. – Gary ShteyngartFor most of a decade, Evan Osnos has been one of the most energetic, skilled, and thoughtful observers of China. Whether he’s accompanying Chinese tourists to the Best Western in Luxembourg or watching Ai Weiwei blur the lines between performance and protest, Osnos is always engaging. This is a wonderful book. – Peter Hessler, author of River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze and Country Driving: A Chinese Road TripThe very hardest thing to convey about modern China is the combination of hope and despair, idealism and crassness, coordinated mass action and chaotic individual scheming, you encounter each day. Evan Osnos has captured all parts of this disorienting ‘reality’, but he has done so much more. Beautifully written, humane but critical-minded, funny on every page, Age of Ambition offers a better understanding of China’s process of ‘becoming’ than most people could ever gain by living there. China veterans and amateurs alike will find it an illuminating and delightful read. – James FallowsHow often have travelers asked: ‘What is the one book about China that I should read before I depart?’ Alas, for years I have had no good answer to this question. But now, Evan Osnos has provided a stellar candidate. Wonderfully engaging, readable and informative, this vivid tableau of actors from all walks of Chinese life goes a long way to helping us make sense out of the often confusing complexity that is today’s China. – Orville Schell, co-author of Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first CenturyCompelling and accessible – Louisa Lim * Washington Post Sunday *Osnos beautifully portrays the nation in all its craziness, providing a ringside seat for the greatest show on earth * Economist *[Osnos] provides a fluent, cohesive view of the country that goes to the heart of the conflict between Party control and the rise of the individual – Jonathan Fenby * Financial Times *

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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