R. Keith Schoppa is Professor Emeritus at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. From 1998 to 2014, he served as the Doehler Chair in Asian History. His research focused on the political, social, and cultural history of the first half of the twentieth century. His major research works include Chinese Elites and Political Change (1982); Xiang Lake—Nine Centuries of Chinese Life (1989); Blood Road (1995), for which he won the Association for Asian Studies Levenson Award; and In a Sea of Bitterness (2011).

For courses on Modern Chinese History, Politics, Society, and Culture; a supplement for courses on East Asian civilization, World History and Civilization. Unlike other texts on modern Chinese history--which tend to be either encyclopedic or too pedantic--Revolution and Its Past is usably comprehensive, focused on "cutting-edge" interpretations, and written in a style that engages students from beginning to end. The Second Edition uses the theme of identities--of the nation itself and of the Chinese people--to probe the vast changes that have swept over China from late imperial times to the beginning of the twenty-first century. In so doing, it explores the range of identities China has chosen over time and those that outsiders have bestowed upon China and its people--showing how, as China rapidly modernizes, the issue of Chinese identity in the modern world looms large.