This extensively researched and elegantly written study offers a fine-grained analysis of the origins of the Chinese communist revolution in the countryside. Building on decades of research in newly available sources and multiple trips to Jiangxi, Stephen Averill provides a definitive local perspective on the rise of a revolution that reshaped China and the world. A rich work of social history, it goes beyond conventional Mao-centered narrative to explore the social cleavages that enabled the revolution to grow and dramatically influenced the structure of conflict within the party itself. Posthumously published with an introduction by Joseph W. Esherick and Elizabeth J. Perry, this book will stand as a memorial to the remarkable scholarship of a pioneer researcher on the social history of the Chinese revolution. Students and scholars interested in modern China and in the social origins of revolution will find it essential reading.