*WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2014* A young army captain who risked execution to swim from free-market Taiwan to Communist China. A barber who made $150 million in the gambling dens of Macau. The richest woman in China, a recycling tycoon known as the Wastepaper Queen. Age of Ambitiondescribes some of the billion individual lives that make up Chinas story one that unfolds on remote farms, in glittering mansions, and in the halls of power of the worlds largest authoritarian regime. Together they describe the defining clash taking place today: between the individual and the Communist Partys struggle to retain control.

Here is a China infused with a sense of boundless possibility and teeming romance. Yet it is also riven by contradictions. It is the worlds largest buyer of Rolls Royces and Ferraris yet the word luxury is banned from billboards. It has more Christians than members of the Communist Party. And why does a government that has lifted more people from poverty than any other so strictly restrain freedom of expression?

Based on years of research,Age of Ambitionis a stunning narrative that reveals China as we have never understood it before.

Evan Osnos joinedThe New Yorkeras a staff writer in 2008. He was the magazines correspondent in China, where he lived in a restored house in Beijing north of the Forbidden City, from 2005 until 2013 when he moved to Washington, D.C.

He has received many prizes, including the Asia Societys Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia and the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. Osnos previously worked as the Beijing Bureau Chief of theChicago Tribune, where he contributed to a series that won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Age of Ambitionis the winner of the 2014 National Book Award for non-fiction.

*WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2014*

A stunning narrative that reveals China as we have never understood it before.