The Second Long March is a memoir by Minnesota author Patti Isaacs about life in Xi’an, China—slow, egalitarian, and rural in character, even in a city of two million in 1981 when communist policies were still in effect—and again in 2005, when economic policies transformed the city into a fast-paced metropolis of nearly 8 million. Rather than a wonky examination of politics and economics, the book covers China’s profound economic and cultural shift through personal stories.
 
Patti Isaacs is a cartographer and writer from Minnesota who grew up in a family that loved to travel. Her husband Gauss, an Italian who majored in Chinese, was an ideal partner in travel and life; in 1981 they lived for a year in China. Ms. Isaacs’s maps have appeared in publications with national distribution including National Geographic Traveler magazine and many textbooks. Her writing has appeared in Adventure Cyclist magazine, the Minneapolis StarTribune, and Concrete, an anthology of essays about Chinese cities published by the Shanghai Literary Review.