A few of us at work plan to discuss this book by Jung Chang. It's the history of the author's family in China from the early 1900s through the 1970s. The book, reports, naturally, in particular how it was for women during this amazingly tumultuous time in China's history. As the book opens, it is still the era of foot-binding, which is described in some detail. The author makes Chinese culture sound quite a bit more patriarchal than Western culture, which we hear more about in terms of its patriarchy. Having been a teenager in the 1960s, I thought I had witnessed some cultural upheaval, but this was extremely insignificant compared to what happened in China. The book is packed with events from the lives of the author's mother and grandmother, events that are well reconstructed by Chang. It's always interesting, if sometimes horrifying.