*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 go
