Amazon.com description: Product Description: For the first time in history, an inglorious bondage is transformed into inspiring freedom. With these words, Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen spoke to the hopes of the Chinese people, who just the year before, in the uprising of 1911, had thrown off more than two hundred years of oppressive rule under the Manchus (Qing dynasty). Yet in the aftermath of the nationalist revolution, the nation was thrown into decades of turmoil. Years of struggle among China's warlords as well as war against expansionist Japan, the rising power of the Chinese communist party, and the eventual outbreak of World War II in 1939 led to civil war. Out of this historic struggle emerged the People's Republic of China, led by Mao Zedong. Follow the dramatic story of a great nation's struggle for freedom, the emergence of Chinese communism, and the epic suffering of its people through years of war.