Lin Yuan, a restoration expert at the Palace Museum, discovers a mysterious diary beneath the floor tiles of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Its owner is John Adams, an Englishman who served as Director of the Ming Imperial Astronomical Bureau. On a secret mission, he traveled across nations for five hundred years, recording the truths that official histories dared not tell: Columbus's voyage was really just seven years of business negotiations; beneath the splendor of Versailles, everything stank; and a tsar's son died at the hands of a monkey. History can be told another way. Open this book, and everything you thought you knew about the world will be turned upside down.
