Joseph W. Esherick is an emeritus professor of modern Chinese history at University of California, San Diego. He is the holder of the Hwei-chih and Julia Hsiu Chair in Chinese Studies.
Very interesting and informative book with a good bibliography and that uses oral interviews that the author made during his visits to the area. Some of the contents are repeated many times (in my case, it helps as I have bad memory, but I guess for other people it may be a bit annoying). A bit humbled by the book as I would have needed more background to fully grasp all the text.
The author tries to make a point on the accidental character of the revolution. I was not very interested in that.
Magistral and Masterful, this book should be the must-read for specialists, non-specialists and graduate students in years to come. It is simply superb.