Jos Gamble sets himself a seemingly impossible task: to “take the city of Shanghai as a whole” as his “fieldwork site,” so that he can produce an “ethnography of a city,” as opposed to an “ethnography in a city.” To apply to any large urban centre interpretive strategies associated with studies of small-scale communities is a tall order. To apply them to Shanghai seems hubristic, given its sheer size and the dramatic changes it underwent between 1992 and 2000, the period during which Gamble made field work stays totalling over 20 months. The most striking thing about this book, then, is simply how quickly the author manages to convince the reader (this reader, anyway) that his project is not foolhardy. The “Introduction” did not dispel my doubts. I was pleased to see from its opening pages that Gamble had made a more serious effort than some of those writing about the city's recent past have done to read widely in and make use of the now vast scholarly literature on old Shanghai. But I came away from the “Structure of the book” section that concludes the “Introduction” convinced that I would end up feeling that his reach had exceeded his grasp. Midway through the next chapter, though, I got an inkling – that soon grew to a conviction – that I had in my hands the best English language work to date on Shanghai in the post-1978 era of reform.