The pandemic spread of Covid-19 will slow and end, yet the aftermath — financially, politically, socially — will linger for years. Among the many new realities the world will face afterwards is a more assertive China, itself seeking new ruling legitimacies in the face of slowed growth and its more strained relationship with western nations. In that and other respects, the virus really does change everything. So it is difficult not to read a newly-released China book (most of them completed before the pandemic hit) in the light of our changed circumstances. That’s why our top pick this month is an account of the beginning of the outbreak, rushed to translation and digital publication, that puts bigger questions in the human contexts we are all living, in isolation. Yet the rest of them — whether prognosticating China’s future or narrating its past — can also be read through the lens of our swift-changing times. The One to Read Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarant