Ian Johnson On Sparks, His New Book On China's Underground Historians

Determined and creative Chinese writers, filmmakers and artists persist in documenting their country's past and sharing what they've learned. In his new book Sparks, journalist and scholar Ian Johnson introduces us to these individuals and their struggles against crackdowns and censorship. He shows how they and their audiences challenge the government on its most hallowed ground: its control of history. Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a country engaged in one of humanity's great struggles of memory against forgetting—a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.