Orville Schell and John Delury trace China's pursuit of national strength through portraits of eleven reformers and revolutionaries who shaped the country from the humiliation of the Opium Wars to its current rise. The authors, both scholars of modern China, organize their history not around events but around individuals who articulated and attempted to implement visions of Chinese renewal: from Wei Yuan, who advocated learning Western military technology after China's 1842 defeat, through Sun Yat-sen, Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping, to Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel laureate imprisoned for his democratic advocacy. Each chapter situates its subject within the Chinese discourse of 'wealth and power' (fuqiang)--the paired concepts that have defined reform debates for nearly two centuries. Schell, former dean of UC Berkeley's journalism school, and Delury, a professor at Yonsei University, write with narrative fluency that makes intellectual history accessible. They trace how successive generations confronted the same fundamental question: how could China regain its historical greatness while selectively adopting foreign ideas? The book illuminates continuities beneath apparent ruptures--how Mao's revolutionary violence and Deng's market reforms both pursued strength through different means. This genealogy of Chinese reform thought provides essential context for understanding Xi Jinping's current assertion of national revival.