Prisoner of the State is the story of Premier Zhao Ziyang, the man who brought liberal change to China and who was dethroned at the height of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 for trying to stop the massacre. Zhao spent the last years of his life under house arrest. An occasional detail about his life would slip out, but scholars and citizens lamented that Zhao never had his final say.

But Zhao did produce a memoir, secretly recording on audio tapes the real story of what happened during modern China's most critical moments. He provides intimate details about the Tiananmen...