*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.