"A decade ago, Bruce Cumings opened a new chapter in Korean War studies by arguing that this horrible conflict was above all a civil war. The Roaring of the Cataract is on a grander scale and narrated in a freer, more indignant voice than the first volume....there is no better camera obscura for those daring to revisit the bloodbaths that convulsed Korea at mid-century."
--- Far Eastern Economic Review

"This is a remendously important book on a remarkably complex and engaging subject. As in the first volume, Cumings brings to the project passion and intellect, prodigious research, and personal involvement. Determined to go beneath surface apprearances, he vividly portrays the ways in which the North and South Korean regimes established and wielded power from 1947 to 1950. His investigation shatters numerous myths about the 'democratic South' and 'Societized' North."
--- Michael Schaller, author of "Douglas MacArthur : The Far Eastern General"