Shots fired in the dawning hours of July 7, 1937, on the outskirts of Peking touched off eight years of war between Japan and China, a war which ended with revolution in China and near-Armageddon in Japan. In this carefully researched and colorfully written study, Gerald Bunker unravels the tangled story of Wang Ching-wei, disciple of Sun Yat-sen, colleague and rival of Chiang Kai-shek, who sacrificed his life and reputation in a vain attempt to stop the war. Based on primary sources and interviews with participants, it explores in depth and detail the motivations of Wang and his colleagues – reflecting thus the nature of politics in Kuomintang China – and the equally complex motivations of their Japanese fellow-conspirators.