Many people helped to bring this long overdue book to completion. I want to thank Craig Calhoun for his mentorship and support from the very beginning. Without his vision, guidance, and inspiration, this book would not have been written. And thank you to Pam DeLargy for your kindness and care for me and my family.

Judith Blau, Judith Farquhar, Jeff Goodwin, Guang Guo, Doug Guthrie, Hyun Ok Park, Steven Pfaff, and Gang Yue helped from early on. Over the years I have benefited from the works on the Chinese Cultural Revolution by many scholars, including Joel Andreas, Michel Bonnin, Anita Chan, Arif Dirlik, Roderick MacFarquhar, Barbara Mittler, Elizabeth Perry, Stanley Rosen, Michael Schoenhals, Tang Shaojie, Jonathan Unger, Andrew Walder, Shaoguang Wang, Lynn White III, Xu Youyu, and Yin Hongbiao.

Many others are vital sources of support and inspiration through their work or friendship. They are Xiaomei Chen, Deborah Davis, Presenjit Duara, Tom Gold, Michael Hechter, Jiang Hong (Beijing), Ching Kwan Lee, Lianjiang Li, Daniel Little, Xinmin Liu, Michael McQuarrie, Kelly Moore, Kevin O’Brien, Ban Wang, Gungwu Wang, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Lanjun Xu, Enhua Zhang, Zhang Kangkang, and Gilda Zwerman.

Some of the ideas in chapter 1 of the book were first explored in a paper written for a conference organized by Alexander Cook at the University of California–Berkeley and later published in Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which Alex edited. I thank Alex and Cambridge University Press for permission to use this material. Chapter 2 was presented at a conference organized by Chris Berry, Sun Peidong, and Patricia Thornton for the China Quarterly and then at the University of New South Wales in Australia at the invitation of Professors Wanning Sun and Haiqing Yu. My 2015 trip to Australia was also greatly facilitated by Gerry Groot, who made me the keynote speaker at the fourteenth convention of the Chinese Studies Association of Australia. Of course, my dear friends Nick Jose and Claire Roberts made that trip more than about conferences and research. Chapter 3 was presented in a talk I gave at the International Center for Studies of Chinese Civilization in Fudan University. Chapter 5 was presented at the University Seminar on Modern China at Columbia University and later at the Department of Sociology of the New School in New York. I thank the organizers of all these events for their invitations and the participants for sharing their responses and insights. Some of the material in chapter 7 first appears in my article, “China’s Zhiqing Generation: Nostalgia, Identity, and Cultural Resistance in the 1990s,” published in Modern China 29, no. 3 (July 2003): 267-96. I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to the journal and its editor Kathryn Bernhardt.

I have been fortunate enough to have had the support of wonderful colleagues in multiple institutions while I worked on parts of this book. At the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I want to especially thank Kiyoshi Ikeda, David Johnson, Hagen Koo, Fred Lau, Patricia Steinhoff, Eldon Wegner, and Ming-bao Yue. At Barnard College and Columbia University, I was most deeply indebted to Rachel McDermott and to Myron Cohen, Eyal Gil, Carol Gluck, Robert Hymes, Dorothy Ko, Eugenia Lean, Lydia Liu, Xiaobo Lü, Debra Minkoff, Andrew Nathan, David Weiman, and Madeline Zelin. The students in my seminars on the Chinese Cultural Revolution were a great inspiration. One of them, Rime Shuangyun Sun, kindly gave me permission to use her long interview with her parents.

At the University of Pennsylvania, I would like to mention especially the support from Charles Bosk, Michael delli Carpini, Randall Collins, Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, David Grazian, Emily Hannum, Grace Kao, Marwan Kraidy, Klaus Krippendorff, Annette Lareau, Carolyn Marvin, Emilio Parrado, Monroe Price, Barbie Zelizer, and Tukufu Zuberi. Special thanks are due to the many talented doctoral students at Penn, but especially to Rosemary Clark, Jasmine Erdener, Elisabetta Ferrari, Leslie Jones, and Bo Mai for offering comments on parts of this book, assisting with the formatting of notes and bibliography, or simply sharing their passion and energy.

Numerous individuals in China helped me with my research by accepting my interviews or providing crucial contacts or research resources. My research in Beijing was greatly facilitated by sociologists Shen Yuan and Dai Jianzhong and former sent-down youth Wang Dawen, Wang Si, and Yan Yushuang. My research in Chongqing would not have been possible without He Shu’s help, about whom I will have more to say in chapter 7. In Shanghai I was fortunate to find support from such superb Cultural Revolution scholars as Jin Dalu in the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and Jin Guangyao and Sun Peidong at Fudan University.

I am deeply indebted to scholars and librarians in the archives, libraries, and museums around the world. Yongyi Song not only makes available numerous volumes of Red Guard newspapers to researchers through his editorial work but is always responsive to my queries about sources. Sincere thanks are due to Chengzhi Wang at the C. V. Starr East Asian Library of Columbia University, Nancy Hearst at the H. C. Fung Library of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Gao Qi at the University Services Center of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Sharon Black and Min Zhong at the library of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Chen Chen and Susan Millard at the University of Melbourne kindly opened their special collection of Cultural Revolution diaries to me, even when their reading room was closed for renovation. Claire Roberts made special arrangements with Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation in Sydney for me to study the diaries in the stunning “China Bible” exhibition she curated.

Anne Routon, my editor at Columbia University Press, deserves my profound thanks for regularly, but always ever so gently, nudging me to finish the book. I cannot say how grateful I am to Anne for her faith in this project. And to Susan Pensak, my manuscript and production editor at the press, I am indebted for her superb editing work and for keeping the production on schedule.

My parents and siblings gave me unfailing long-distance moral support, as well as practical help when I did my field research in China. When he was in college, Jeff once wandered into the middle of my Cultural Revolution seminar to my pleasant surprise. I hope he will find in this book something to surprise him as well. Despite my routine absent-mindedness over the many years in writing this book, Lan has been my strongest champion and supporter. This book is dedicated to Jeff and Lan.