Desmond

Deng Xiaoping joined the Chinese Communist movement as a youth and rose in its ranks to become an important lieutenant of Mao's from the 1930s onward. Two years after Mao's death in 1976, Deng became the de facto leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the prime architect of China's post-Mao reforms. Abandoning the Maoist socioeconomic policies he had long fervently supported, he set in motion changes that would dramatically transform China's economy, society, and position in the world. Three decades later we are living with the results.

With an updated foreword by Peter Mayle, Acquired Tastes, originally published in 1993, is a celebration of life's extravagances. It explores an aspect of human nature that, although lying dormant in hard economic times, is capable of erupting with the hint of good fortune and the drop of a credit card.