Odd Arne Westad is a historian of modern international history who is currently the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University. His latest book The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform, written with Chen Jian, recounts the dramatic political struggles that took place in China from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, the outcome of which — the book argues — fundamentally shaped the country’s development until the present day. In this lightly