What do Pope Francis and Xi Jinping have in common? More than you think. Approaching the red Rubik's Cube from a new angle, Jeffrey Wasserstrom challenges conventional commentary on China through eight experimental analogies, finding fresh and surprising ways to look at the Asian superpower. 'Wasserstrom's Eight Juxtapositions offers more insight into China than many books five times its length. It's fun as well as illuminating, and it not only reports Wassertrom's thinking, it makes readers think.' Craig Calhoun, Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science 'In a series of provocative and playful essays, Jeffrey Wasserstrom's Eight Juxtapositions takes us on a light-hearted and clear-eyed tour of the Chinese landscape. With stops at Tiananmen Square and the Shanghai Expo, the Berlin Wall and the Sistine Chapel, Wasserstrom helps us to see China in a more complex, more realistic, and certainly more interesting way.' Leslie T. Chang, author of Factory Girls- From Village to City in a Changing China