It is essential for the reader to remember that this is a memoir; in other words, a record of events based on the author's experiences and feelings. Because of the secrecy restrictions at the time these events occurred, and in some cases for many years thereafter, the author kept no diary, notes, or record and wrote no letters describing his work. Furthermore, almost without exception, all the people with whom and for whom he worked are now dead. Consequently, in writing this book, the author has been entirely dependent on his memory. At the age of ninety-one, this memory may have at times...

In 1908 at the age of two, Henry Pu Yi ascended to become the last emperor of the centuries-old Manchu dynasty. After revolutionaries forced Pu Yi to abdicate in 1911, the young emperor lived for thirteen years in Peking's Forbidden City, but with none of the power his birth afforded him. The remainder of Pu Yi's life was lived out in a topsy-turvy fashion: fleeing from a Chinese warlord, becoming head of a Japanese puppet state, being confined to a Russian prison in Siberia, and enduring taxing labor. The Last Manchu is a unique, enthralling record of China's most turbulent, dramatic...