"Today, millions of Chinese revere Sun Yat-sen as 'father of the nation'. Although he spent the better part of his life outside of China, much of it as as peripatetic wanderer, no one was more single-mindedly devoted to the cause of a free and modern China than this missionary-educated son of Chinese peasants. Despite repeated failures and disappointment, Sun refused to abandon his vision of a Chinese revolution. Of all modern China's leaders, none is more of an enigma than Sun Yat-sen. In these pages he emerges as a sometimes tragic but most often courageous and many-sided figure. Knowing him, one knows more of modern-day China with all its conflicts, paradoxes and visions of a stable future.