The Tiananmen Square protests and their suppression marked a major turning point in China's recent history. By collecting powerful stories from protesters, Brown shows the nationwide scale of the democracy movement of the 1980s and the harsh opposition to it from the authorities. At critical moments in the spring of 1989, both demonstrators and those who made decisions to suppress rallies by force were tormented by difficult choices, imagining alternative scenarios for the development of events. Jeremy Brown draws on a wide range of previously unpublished sources to cast a new light on events that continue to reverberate in China to this day.