The date chosen for Macau's handover to Chinese administration, 20 December 1999, was so close to the onset of Y2K hoopla that it virtually guaranteed Macau would vanish from the world's consciousness once the ceremonies were over. Thankfully, in this volume Herbert Yee pierces this obscurity with a carefully researched, insightful study of the social and political dimensions of Macau's transition from “Chinese territory under Portuguese administration” (the status defined for it after the 1974 Portuguese revolution) to Chinese Special Administrative Region.