Split into six parts, the book covers the Qing dynasty's final decades; Sun Yat-sen's establishment of the Republic of China and the Warlord Era; the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War; Mao Zedong's reign including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; Deng Xiaoping's reign including the policy of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre; and the last 20 years where China was ruled by collective leadership.

The historian Rana Mitter called that the book a "thoughtful, post-cold war interpretation" that demonstrated Fenby did not follow the conventional beliefs regarding the contemporary history of China.

According to Mitter, Fenby's book did not depict Chiang as nascent supporter of democracy and did not portray him as ruthless ruler unconcerned with the hardships the population faced.

[7] He includes a story about Soong Mei-ling, Chiang's wife, who visited Washington, D.C. to sway politicians and the rumour of her tryst with Wendell Willkie, the United States Republican Party presidential candidate.

He cited Fenby's story about a 17-year-old girl who was sent to a Manchuria labour camp for praising shoe polish produced in the United States after Mao Zedong decided to stop the Hundred Flowers Campaign.

[9] The Daily Telegraph book reviewer David Rennie said that Fenby employs "spare prose reminiscent of a war-crimes prosecutor" when discussing firsthand testimonies from survivors of the Nanjing Massacre.

Fenby writes that people were "used for bayonet practice, nailed to boards and run over by vehicles, mutilated and disembowelled, sprayed with acid, or hung up by their tongues".

Rennie said the book's tone is like that of an editorial, which is unsurprising owing to Fenby's background as a previous editor at The Observer and the South China Morning Post.

Another example Rennie cited was that during the Cultural Revolution, one group chose to save their ammunition by cutting off the ears of their adversaries instead of shooting them and let them die from the bleeding.

[8] Fenby profiles Mao Zedong, describing him as a magnetic and mighty ruler who the citizenry supported following 50 years of strife and poor governance.

The book covers the Great Leap Forward, a collective farming initiative between 1858 and 1962 that caused the starvation deaths of millions of peasants, and the Cultural Revolution.

[3] It grapples with Deng Xiaoping's principle of socialism with Chinese characteristics in which the country adopts market economics while the Communist Party sustains its firm grip on power.

[3] The Daily Telegraph book reviewer David Rennie found that a recurring theme is Fenby's revulsion towards the callousness numerous rulers felt to the loss of Chinese lives.

Fenby provides a number of examples: Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader, attempted to prevent the Japanese from proceeding by destroying the Yellow River's levees, causing the 1938 flood that affected millions of people.

In response to the Great Leap Forward's causing 30 million people to die from famine, a Communist Party Secretary retorts, "Which dynasty has not witnessed death by starvation?"

[10] Graham Hutchings, a historian, said that Fenby is clear-eyed when reflecting on the toll exacted on the Chinese people during the country's efforts to modernise in the past century and a half.

It further illustrates how Mao is revered for uniting China even though his policies took the lives of a larger number of people than those lost under the rule of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

[7] According to the scholar Rana Mitter, compared to other works, the book places greater emphasis on the favourable attributes of the governments that ruled China before 1949.

He cited that to ready themselves for the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Nationalist government instituted major changes through "fortifications ... constructing arsenals, development of the air force, and preparations for chemical warfare".

Mitter said that while Fenby was correct to find that Chiang Kai-shek performed poorly against the Japanese, numerous more powerful administrations would have fallen to Japan's intense, brutal force.

Another critique from Mitter was that the book is too severe in implying that prior to the 1911 Revolution, the Qing dynasty was not solely driven by cynicism when they held provincial elections.

[4] In the inaccuracies category, Hutchings said that Fenby wrote, "China is the last great colonial empire on earth, hanging on to ethnically separate Tibet and the vast Muslim lands of Xinjiang", a statement that seems to forget Russia.

Mao's 1959-initiated Great Leap Forward was "the worst manmade famine ever seen", leading 46 million people to die, while his 1966-initiated Cultural Revolution incited disarray and savagery to wipe out the foundation of their society.

She said that Fenby accords insufficient weight to those two topics but spends much more space discussing the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre which though "dramatic and terrible" were "nowhere near as significant as these two great traumas".

Another area that lacks coverage, Righter said, is the present-day "cultural revolution" where China people older than 40 face the largest economic inequality globally after the nation experienced imbalanced expansion.

"[4] The journalist George Walden lauded the book for being "a miracle of thoroughness, truthfulness and readability—the perfect primer for a time when China is about to enter all our lives".

She said the book's "main virtue is that its milling of subplots, boisterous details, impatient anecdotes, and intrusive but very helpful statistics are guided by a tempered, far-seeing, compassionate presence".

[3] Rosemary Righter of The Times pointed out flaws like errors in the book but praised it for being a "vivid account" of how China's past continues to shape the current situation.

[7] Peter Foster, a Daily Telegraph editor, called the book "an extremely valuable primer for the general British reader" and "an admirably readable synthesis of events".

[13] Edward Peters of the South China Morning Post wrote, "There is nothing startlingly new here, but Fenby compiles a concise and adept summary, moving the tale swiftly forward with occasional interpolations.