India, April 30 -- Your book humanizes Taiwan instead of just treating it as a pawn. What do you hope your readers will gain from it?

Ideally, I would hope that readers' main takeaway would be that we should all welcome the 23.4 million Taiwanese people and their free, democratic society into the international community, rather than erase them. They don't deserve special treatment, but they also certainly don't deserve the treatment they've received: being shut out of the international community and treated as radioactive because of fears of upsetting China. Hopefully, understanding the stories of the people who helped transform Taiwan from a colonial military dictatorship to Asia's freest country will inspire people to appreciate and sp...