The belief that through free trade, economic growth and increased foreign interaction China would evolve into a liberal democratic society was based on a deeply flawed understanding of Chinese culture, according to Habi Zhang. In Law and Liberty, he discusses China and the West’s incompatible understandings of human beings – and how Western elites got it so wrong.

Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.


