Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Michael Meyer author of The Road to Sleeping Dragon: Learning China From The Ground Up, published in October by Bloomsbury. The book is the third in a trilogy of works by Mr. Meyer. The first two being The Last Days of Old Beijing and the second, In Manchuria. Michael’s writing has also appeared in the NYT, Time, The Financial Times, The WSJ and many other periodicals and publications. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer to China. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and many other honors and awards.

The Road To Sleeping Dragon: Learning China From The Ground Up is a story of a young man who by sheer chance gets thrown into a country that is bigger than ours with more ethnicities and cultures and dialects than our county---by a lot. The book follows Michael’s journey, sometimes perilous, sometimes humorous but always gripping as he begins to assimilate the language and manners of his new country and he has continued to do so now for over 20 years. Most of the book was in reality “new” to me, and as Michael has said, you know you need to write a book when the book you want to read doesn’t exist. So with that welcome Michael and thanks for joining us today.