Before reading this book, I knew nothing about this company except that they made phones. Or that they released a smartphone that made a big splash when I was a teenager maybe...? In other words, only the haziest idea of what I was getting into—my favorite way to enter a history book.

What I learned was fascinating. I was on an entire journey through time learning so many things I didn't know I didn't know. Dou presented the information in such a straightforward manner that someone (like myself) with no frame of reference for the history of telecommunications and only a small frame of reference for the history of China could understand enough of the pertinent context to understand the story's details. The book is meticulously, almost obsessively, researched. Barely any detail could go by without a note. (If you are like me and went looking for what the superscript numbers were referencing but could find no end- or footnotes, you're not crazy, they aren't in the book; you have to get them off the author's Twitter/X or website. I wish the publisher had included something clearly directing you to that resource.) I feel like I have a decent conversational knowledge of this topic and its implications; not anything to match an actual expert, but I feel at least knowledgeable.

At the same time, the book's rhetoric couldn't decide what it wanted to be. For most of the first half of the book, the narrative was entirely facts-based. Dou's experience as a journalist is obvious in reporting the straight facts. For some, this almost recitation of information might be boring, but I found the subtleties of this presentation style engaging. All of the little ways I kept catching myself imposing American arrogance and assumptions on people with zero of the same philosophical, moral, historical, or cultural touchpoints as myself or almost anyone I know; all the moments Dou would slip into the chronology to remind us that much of the first few decades of this history is hazy and based on self-reports from people with a vested interest in telling a very specific story—all of these slips gave what could be a dry presentation of information a bit of life and kept the reader's 21st-century context present if de-centered. But as the book's timeline and the reader's present draw closer, this nuance slips away to center on the trial of Meng Wanzhou.

I had no idea who Meng Wanzhou was until I read this book, and the implication is that the reader is "waiting" to get to this point. I understand the trial's significance now, but I think Dou (or her editor, publisher, etc.) might've misread her audience. The target audience of this seems to be someone who does not have much or any background information on Huawei or the major players in its history and is looking to learn more. Someone who has been following telecommunications history probably would already know quite a bit of this information. Perhaps that audience is primarily drawn from having learned about the company via the trial, but that was not the case for me, and the end of the book left me feeling like an outsider to the book.

In short, the book was informative but if you're looking for something that's action-packed or adds emotional stakes to the story, this won't give you that. If you're more interested in delving into a complex and rich piece of modern history, I would definitely recommend checking it out, just be forewarned the ending goes a little sideways rhetorically speaking.