Book excerpt: This powerful book presents documents spanning the war between the Communists and Chinese Nationalists in the mid-1940s up to 1983, shortly before the "modernization" promoted after Mao's death. These are memoirs of those who have experienced in their own flesh how far violence of a power blinded by ideology can go, a power that, after winning its battle against armed forces, decided to exterminate its "enemies without guns", as Mao called intellectuals, believers, and political opponents.