Between August 1937 and December 1941, the Chinese sectors of Shanghai were occupied by the Japanese, who surrounded the foreign concessions.

As refugees crowded into the "solitary island" where the British and Americans continued to rule over the International Settlement until the attack on Pearl Harbor, terrorist wars broke out between Nationalist secret agents and the motley crew of puppet gangsters who supported the Japanese in exchange for the protection of their gambling casinos, brothels, and opium dens. The most intensely disputed area was the western suburb known as the Badlands, but warfare was not restricted to that zone of the city. A spate of daytime assassinations, bombings, and machine gun raids took place under the very noses of the authorities in the foreign concessions.

Thanks to the release of secret Chinese police files long held by the Central Intelligence Agency, Professor Wakeman is able to expose the inner workings of these urban terrorist groups and their links to the notorious Green Gang.

He also explores the social history of Shanghai's underworld, the impact of these terrorist wars on the worsening relations between the United States and Japan on the eve of World War II, and the murderous rivalry between Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and the puppet president Wang Jingwei during China's great War of Resistance.