Great Expectations: A Review of John Pomfret, “The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China 1776 to the Present”

John Pomfret’s highly anticipated new book, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China 1776 to the Present, opens with the voyage of the Empress and concludes as the effects of China’s 2015 stock-market stumble ripple through the New York Stock Exchange. It is a sweeping and ambitious book, one which, Pomfret has admitted in interviews, “cost me one very good job and two equally good job opportunities.”

Originally published in The World of Chinese, May/June, 2017