Suppression and thaw have marked the course of communism in China. Merle Goldman traces that shifting pattern over the last decades of Mao's regime, linking it to the unique role of the intellectual in government Her engrossing account of the relations between the intellectuals and the governing elites provides a map of understanding to some recent events in the turbulent history of the People's Republic.

Merle Goldman is Professor of History, Emerita, at Boston University and Associate of the John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University.

Read More by Merle Goldman:

• China: A New History, Enlarged Edition
• The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms
• China's Intellectuals and the State: In Search of a New Relationship
• Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era
• Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China: Political Reform in the Deng Xiaoping Era
• Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia
• Literary Dissent in Communist China
• Ideas Across Cultures: Essays on Chinese Thought in Honor of Benjamin I. Schwartz
• Science and Technology in Post-Mao China
• Changing Meanings of Citizenship in Modern China
• From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China
• China: A New History, Second Enlarged Edition
• Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China