From Rebel to Ruler

I will start by saying that as a primer history to the CPC (and to the PRC, actually) it's a 5/5. If someone asked me for a single book to get a sense of the history of either of them this would definitely be my choice. It's short and not difficult to read (as in, it does not really assume any prerequisite knowledge, not written having specialists in mind).

On the other hand, for me it would be a 4/5 because I found it to be lacking on details. The chapters on the earliest history of the CPC (pre-Long March) and the latest (post Jiang Zemin) were very enlightening, as I knew almost nothing about that period. But it taught me nothing new for the periods I knew something about.

I was not expecting extra insights on periods where I read the nowadays considered the “core” (e.g. “Mao's Last Revolution” for elite politics the Cultural Revolution), taking into account that this book has to be more limited in scope for each specific topic. But even for affairs where I knew nothing about (e.g. Gao Gan's affair) this book was not particularly helpful in throwing more light into it.

To sum up, read it if you know nothing about the CPC, the PRC or nothing about a specific period of those. If for a certain period you have engaged with the existing literature and you are not looking for a good summary, then you could safely skip the related chapter in this book.