Sheena Chestnut Greitens is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Missouri. She is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for East Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and an associate in research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, Massachusetts. Her doctoral dissertation, on which this book is based, won APSA's Walter Dean Burnham Award for the best dissertation in politics and history, as well as Harvard's Richard J. Herrnstein Prize. Greitens' research focuses on East Asia, security studies, and the politics of authoritarian states. Her work has been published widely in the United States and Asia in academic, policy, and media outlets.