THE MAN ON MAO'S RIGHT From Harvard Yard to Tiananmen Square, My Life Inside China's Foreign Ministry

The very American Norman Dietz would not have been my first choice to read a book about someone who lived through the birth and rise of modern communist China. The book is clearly a personal reminiscence and not a straight history. But soon listeners are accustomed to the Chinese names, and Dietz's lack of an accent no longer matters—the content of the book does. That's one of the beauties of audio literature. The fact that the writer spent his youth in America and writes in American English also helps. The book offers an interesting and personal view of the Communist Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, the Nixon summit, and Tiananmen Square. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: DECEMBER 2008]