In Rana Mitter's tense, moving and hugely important book, the war between China and Japan - one of the most important struggles of the Second World War - at last gets the masterly history it deservesDifferent countries give different opening dates for the period of the Second World War, but perhaps the most compelling is 1937, when the 'Marco Polo Bridge Incident' plunged China and Japan into a conflict of extraordinary duration and ferocity - a war which would result in many millions of deaths and completely reshape East Asia in ways which we continue to confront today. With great vividness and narrative drive Rana Mitter's new book draws on a huge range of new sources to recreate this terrible conflict. He writes both about the major leaders (Chiang Kaishek, Mao Zedong and Wang Jingwei) and about the ordinary people swept up by terrible times. Mitter puts at the heart of our understanding of the Second World War that it was Japan's failure to defeat China which was the key dynamic for what happened in Asia.Praise for The Bitter Revolution: 'Mitter paints wonderful pen-portraits ... raises such big questions and does so in such strikingly good prose' Sunday Times'A bold and brilliant book on a big and baffling subject ... wonderfully relaxed and elegant style ... a probing, analytical work of scholarship which is at the same time exhilaratingly accessible and instructive for the general reader' Judges of The British Academy Book Prize 2005'A hugely ambitious book that is not afraid to tackle big questions ... original, penetrating, and compelling' English Historical ReviewAbout the author:Rana Mitter is Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Cross College. He is the author of A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World. He is a regular presenter of Night Waves on Radio 3.

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