World History and Cultural Events Book Group

All are welcome to join the World History and Cultural Events Book Group.  This month the group will discuss Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China by Desmond Shum who grew up impoverished in China.  He vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity he earned an American college degree and returned to his native country to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly intelligent and equally ambitious Whitney Duan who was determined to make her mark within China’s male-dominated society. Whitney and Desmond formed an effective team and, aided by relationships they formed with top members of China’s Communist Party, the so-called red aristocracy, he vaulted into China’s billionaire class. But in 2017, their fates diverged irrevocably when Desmond, while residing overseas with his son, learned that his now ex-wife Whitney had vanished along with three coworkers.

REGISTER HERE

Selected as a Best Book of the Year by The Economist and Financial Times

This “powerful and disturbing” (Bill Browder, author of Red Notice) New York Times best seller is narrated by a man who, with his wife, Whitney Duan, rose to the top levels of power and wealth – and then fell out of favor. Whitney had been disappeared four years before, but this book led to her dramatic reemergence.