Brian James DeMare

Brian DeMare teaches modern Chinese history at Tulane University. A cultural historian, he is primarily interested in exploring how Chinese citizens navigated everyday life under Communist Party rule. His latest book is Tiger, Tyrant, Bandit, Businessman. Made up of four gripping true-life tales of counterrevolution at the dawn of New China, this book introduces readers to life at the grassroots during the first days and months of Communist Party rule. Critically, this book brings the voices of accused rural "counterrevolutionaries" to the historical record for the first time.

This is Brian DeMare's third book on rural revolution. In Land Wars (2019), he deftly blended archival and narrative sources to investigate the most critical moment of Maoist rural revolution. The first and only English-language book on the land reform campaigns of 1946-1952, Land Wars is a must read for understanding the People's Republic of China. His first book, Mao's Cultural Army (2015), brings to life the world of rural drama troupes, revealing the Communists' revolution to be a profoundly theatrical event.

After growing up in Kailua, then a sleepy town on the island of Oahu, Brian DeMare studied at Occidental College, Pasadena City College, and Columbia University. He then obtained a PhD in history at UCLA, where he wrote his dissertation on land reform political culture. Along the way the spent five years living in Beijing, including three happy years in a hutong in the shadow of Tian'anmen Square. These days, when he is not teaching and researching Chinese history, he is attempting to maintain a very old house in the historic Milan neighborhood of New Orleans. In his free time you can find him laughing with his son Miles.