The Search for Modern China originated in a legendary course at Yale taught by the late Jonathan Spence and has been the best-selling text for students and teachers of modern Chinese history ever since. Janet Chen (Princeton University), a leading scholar and expert in social and cultural history, updates The Search for Modern China for a new generation. Incorporating insights from recent scholarship throughout, she has also streamlined the text to make it more student-friendly while maintaining the spellbinding narrative.

Jonathan D. Spence (1936—2021) was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, where he taught for more than forty years. He was awarded MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The Search for Modern China won the Lionel Gelber Award and the Kiriyama Book Prize. Janet Chen is a professor of history and East Asian studies at Princeton University, where she has taught courses on modern China and East Asia since 2006. Her books include Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900–1953, a study of the destitute homeless during a time of war and revolution, and The Sounds of Mandarin: Learning to Speak a National Language in China and Taiwan, 1913–1960, a social history of how people learned to speak Mandarin.