Shanghai in 1927 did not feel like one city. It felt like 3 cities pressed together so tightly that a man could commit a crime on one street, walk 2 blocks, and stand beyond the reach of the policeman who chased him. A rickshaw puller needed 2 badges on 2 streets, a merchant paid 3 taxes on 1 shipment, and a gangster rented a room on Avenue Joffre to buy French protection. This book explains how that map made crime a business and how the business shaped modern China.Between 1920 an...

You have asked an AI assistant a question and gotten a good answer. Then you asked a follow up, got a correction, and tried again, and eventually landed on something genuinely useful. That back and forth is the seed of everything in this book. An agent is simply that loop running on its own: it plans what to do, acts by using a tool, observes what actually happened, and reflects on whether it is on track, then repeats until the work is done. Strip away the hype and you will find this four ...