Red China's Green Revolution is a great book. It develops an innovative and contrarian interpretation of China's rural communes, describing a technological revolution that occurred in China's countryside in the 1970s. What makes this book truly outstanding is that Eisenman provides new perspectives on the importance of commune organization and incentive structures, as well as a reassessment of what Maoism meant in the lives of ordinary rural people. One after another, he drags into the sunshine topics that have been overshadowed in recent years by over-simplification and myth-making. The book concludes with a compelling new narrative of elite politics in the late 1970s that explains why the commune was ultimately abolished.–Barry Naughton, Sokwanlok Chair of Chinese International Affairs, University of California, San Diego