Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Cast of characters -- Notes on the spelling of Chinese words -- Introduction -- Part 1. The Bolshevik. 1. Born in the Year of the Dragon -- 2. From Paris to Moscow: the lessons of Bolshevism -- 3. From Xian to Shanghai -- 4. The Guangxi experiment -- Part 2. The Maoist. 5. "The spirit of five fearlessness" -- 6. Master of the Taihang Mountains -- 7. At the forefront of the new democratic revolution -- 8. Chief of the Southwest Region -- 9. The Beijing Hippodrome -- 10. "Critique of the cult of personality" and its consequences -- 11. "A great growing force" -- 12. Being and consciousness -- 13. "Yellow cat, black cat" -- 14. "No. 2 capitalist roader" -- 15. Arrest and exile -- Part 3. The pragmatist -- 16. "Soft as cotton, sharp as a needle" -- 17. New trials -- 18. Practice as the criterion of truth -- 19. The cardinal principles -- 20. "Let some families get rich first" -- 21. One country, two systems -- 22. Reforms and democracy -- 23. The Tiananmen tragedy -- 24. A retired patriarch -- Epilogue -- Appendix 1. Deng Xiaoping's chronology -- Appendix 2. Deng Xiaoping's genealogy -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Illustration credits -- Index.