In the spring of 1989, more than 100,000 students in Beijing initiated the largest student revolt in human history. Television screens across the world filled with searing images from Tiananmen Square of protesters thronging the streets, massive hunger strikes, tanks set ablaze, and survivors tending to the dead and wounded after a swift and brutal government crackdown. This book treats these historic events. Along with grassroots tales and interviews with the young men and women who launched the demonstrations, it carries out an analysis of the many parallel changes in China's state-society relations during the 1980s.