Two things I can tell you right away:
1) This is a very good book
2) Unless you are off age this is not a book for you, I decided that after having read only 15 % of the book, and the rest confirmed this decision
Now don't get me wrong, this book is not difficult to read or anything, you can read it quickly and easily, the structure makes it easy and there is no problem with the language (of course as far as I know, currently it is only available in German, sadly). But the question is whether you would be able to.
You see while the title suggests that this book deals entirely with the happenings on the Tiananmen square on the 4th June 1989, it actually deals with people before, during and after it in the wider city of Beijing and the massacres happening there. And the author did not shy away from what happened then and afterwards, neither in the interviews nor in the supplement material, like the list of 202 confirmed victims of the shooting. He wrote what the people he interviewed told him and it includes a lot of serious topics. Albeit the people during the demonstrations in Eastern Germany of the same year only knew of the massacre on Tiananmen square, I can understand why they feared the "Chinese solution" since what the book tells you about that incident alone is chilling.
Plus for people who like to romanticize China and its history this would be a shock. Many ordinary citizens of Beijing were infected by the patriotism awoken by the student's and their demonstrations and so went to stop the armed forces, which for a time worked, but not for long. And not just them, we get reports of generals knowing what was going on and of soldiers who clearly had red eyes as if they had been crying. Sadly, that amount of resistance all amounted to nothing and you get told why. So trust me, this is not an easy book for everyone.
I think should anyone ever have the guts to make a TV series (a movie would not be able to cover it, it has to many stories, it does even tell us something about why the authorities acted the way they did) out of it, that person would have made a name for him/herself for lifetime. Remember, talking about this is pretty much taboo in mainland China and due to the Chinese government's actions (suppressing information and research on the incident [e.g. as far as I know the author's works are forbidden in mainland China, only available in Taiwan and Hong Kong]) the death toll estimations range from several hundred to several thousand.
This is a very informative, memorable and captivating book, but it is not something everyone would be able to read.
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