John Rabe: The Good Man of Nanking. 2000 (Vintage)

The German businessman John Rabe was an eye witness of what happened at Nanking.

Kenneth Lieberthal: Governing China: From Revolution Through Reform. 2nd Ed. 2003 (W. W. Norton)

Scholarly.

Nien Cheng: Life and Death in Shanghai. 1988 (Penguin)

Personal account of suffering under Cultural Revolution

Barbara W. Tuchman: Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45. 2001 (Grove Press)

Argues that the US should have supported Mao.

Deirdre Chetham: Before the Deluge: The Vanishing World of the Yangtze's Three Gorges. 2004 (Palgrave Macmillan)

Describes an ancient world that had been lost.

Ross Terrill: Madam Mao. (Rev. Ed.) 2000 (Stanford University Press)

Impressive biography. Back-stabbing in power circles during later Mao era.

Maurice Meisner: The Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978-94. 1996 (Hill & Wang)

Highlights achievements and failures of the Deng era.

Roderick MacFarquhar (Ed.): The Politics of China: The Eras of Mao and Deng. 1997 (Cambridge Univ. Press)

Scholarly.

David L. Shambaugh: Power Shift: China and Asia's New Dynamics. 2006 (Cambridge Univ. Press)

Analyzes the changing political balance in Asia.

Scott Kennedy: China Cross Talk: The American Debate Over China Policy ... 2003 (Rowman & Littlefield)

Broad spectrum of opinions.