University instructors are constantly seeking new readings to supplement existing courses. Seldom does a set of books present itself as an ideal core to build a course around. These three inspire me to do so. Specifically, I envision an undergraduate seminar on the meanings and legacy of China's Cultural Revolution as viewed through diverse lenses. My hidden agenda would be to contrast three very different approaches to political history: Richard Kraus's brilliant and nuanced précis; James Palmer's adroit rehash of conventional wisdom; and Yu Hua's candid, lyrical memoir linking dreams and delusions of the past with affluence and avarice of the present.

The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, part of an Oxford series that now runs to more than 300 titles on a vast range of topics, takes on a daunting challenge – how to provide an introduction, let alone a short one, to a convulsive decade that defies comprehension? Kraus, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Oregon and known for his innovative and discerning work on Chinese cultural politics, has risen to the task. The book addresses the period with great seriousness, but also with humility leavened by good humour. The results are accessible, cogent, and deeply informed, making this little vest-pocket volume surprisingly weighty.

This book has its own not so hidden agenda – to counter simplistic renditions of the Cultural Revolution that permeate both academic and popular accounts, perpetuate ignorance and smugness, and continue to shape beliefs about China. This is clear from the start, when – without neglecting Mao's pivotal role – Kraus dispenses with the explanation “Mao was evil” (p. 21). It is clear at the end, when Kraus criticizes what he calls a “victim narrative” that ignores China's huge range of experience while flattering Westerners' “sense of superiority” (p. 117). The material between is generally discreet and balanced about what Kraus sees as the three major schools of interpretation of the period: explanations stressing intra-elite conflict, those hinging on social tensions, and those emphasizing international pressures. Underneath, however, runs a restrained impatience for crude renderings that this reviewer finds refreshing. The author loses his cool in prose only once, but certainly with sufficient provocation, when he says that blanket condemnation of “the revolutionaries who [during Mao's time] dragged their nation into the modern world, ended illiteracy, combated chronic disease, and laid the infrastructure for industrialization is perverse” (p. 98).

In design, the book resembles a tent, accommodating complexities and crosscurrents by tethering the content to overarching themes, examining these themes through subtopics of politics, culture, economy, and international affairs, and bringing them together in a concluding chapter. The writing by necessity is concise, but still packs in many specific examples and illustrations. Kraus does not minimize the tremendous human damage, physical wreckage, and cultural deprivation associated with the Cultural Revolution; but in his view, total repudiation only forestalls coming to terms with this history, while naïve nostalgia for Maoism doesn't help either.

Kraus makes the important distinction between the Red Guard period of 1966–68 and the remainder of the decade, up to Mao's death and the arrest of the “gang of four” in 1976. He argues that “post-Mao” economic reforms actually began midway through the Cultural Revolution, and Deng Xiaoping sloughed off the entire decade for political reasons. He also debunks the common notion that the Cultural Revolution was a total loss for China's economy; rather, development emphasizing self-reliance under conditions of international isolation produced many accomplishments – including improved health, high literacy, high-yield crops, and irrigation and transit projects – that laid the basis for the rapid economic growth of the post-Mao period.

James Palmer's Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes [British edition: The Death of Mao] has the merit of bringing broader attention to the Tangshan earthquake and some of the stories associated with a disaster largely hidden from the rest of China and the world at the time, and largely forgotten outside China since. But it should not be read in a knowledge vacuum, nor unaccompanied by remedial works.

Palmer's account epitomizes much that Kraus rebukes, with the additional problem of voluminous unattributed content – some clearly drawing on solid scholarly works listed in the long bibliography, some seemingly predicated on more dubious works without acknowledging controversies and questions about their reliability. The introduction explains that unreferenced quotations come “from interviews conducted in Tangshan or Beijing during 2009–11” (p. 4), but these account for only a small portion of the unattributed material. (I have to question the sourcing further when a book I helped see to fruition, Gao Yuan's Born Red, published by Stanford University Press in 1987, is given a publication date of 1997 in both bibliography and footnotes.) The acknowledgments thank a great many people for helping the author gather what sounds like a wealth of independent original information, but the chronicle itself is largely derivative.

With its persuasive verisimilitude, this book has won plaudits from reviewers in the US and UK. A lengthy retrospective of the Cultural Revolution period, with a focus on high-level politics, precedes the events of the quake itself; and for the uninitiated, it all makes for a good read. The tale is cast as an epic drama, in which the devastation of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake becomes a simulacrum of the state of the country as a whole, while the fanatic Mao lies dying and members of an inner circle that rose to power on Mao's coattails scheme to lord it over the realm after the old man's demise. In other words, the book incorporates heartrending tragedy, malicious folly, overweening ambition, and other irresistible dramatic elements, and skewers the usual suspects in predictable ways. And it is distressing precisely because it is aimed at general readers, who likely lack the means to assess the soundness of the information or the wisdom of the interpretation.

Amazon.com identifies Palmer as an “acclaimed historian,” and his publishers' sites say he is fluent in both Russian and Mandarin and has “worked with Daoist and Buddhist groups in Mongolia and China on environmental issues.” He has published one prior book. A current web search places him as a copy editor at the Beijing-based Global Times, the English-language version of a People's Daily's commercial spinoff, for which he also writes commentaries in the mildly snarky tone that this particular mixed Chinese–foreigner newsroom seems to find acceptable. Unfortunately, this book is less an insightful chronicle than a skilful compilation of histrionics.

The Chinese writer Yu Hua – the indisputably acclaimed author of the novels To Live and Brothers – delivers something else entirely in China in Ten Words. A series of linked essays inspired by two-character words (and in one case, a name, that of writer Lu Xun) that are entrenched in China's revolutionary heritage or post-Mao vernacular or both, this book is direct in ways that would deter mainland publishers. Thus, the Chinese edition was published on Taiwan, and the book appeared in French prior to this English translation.

Starting with terms of Maoist resonance – “people” (renmin) and “leader” (lingdao), and finishing with expressions of the post-Mao age – “copycat” (shanzhai) and “bamboozle” (huyou), Yu interweaves personal reminiscences, dreams and illusions, political venom and revolutionary fervour from the past with tales of chicanery and absurdity, prosperity and predicament arising from the dazzling, rapacious present. His writing is at once fierce and matter-of-fact, ardent yet unsentimental, absolutely free of cant and self-pity, as he moves back and forth across time, from his childhood home and elementary school classroom to the literary revival of the 1980s, from the days of rationing to the zest for entrepreneurship, from the collective sensibilities of the 1989 protests to today's juxtapositions of luxury and deprivation.

So there's my syllabus – three books in counterpoint. Kraus's short history also would fit well into any introductory course on contemporary Chinese history, culture or politics; while Yu Hua's harsh yet loving critique can enchant and inform readers of all levels of sophistication, from uninformed students to experienced scholars.