Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow (1937) — Snow's account of the Communist base areas in the 1930s provides essential context for understanding the wartime period in Chongqing and the political tensions of the United Front. It was written partly from Yan'an but the dynamics he describes played out in Chongqing.
Forgotten Ally by Rae Yang (2013) — An account of China's role in the Second World War, examining the wartime capital years and the enormous costs China bore fighting Japan largely without Allied support. Essential reading for visiting the city's many wartime sites.
River Town by Peter Hessler (2001) — Hessler's memoir of teaching English in Fuling, a small Yangtze River city downstream from Chongqing, captures the river culture and social change of the 1990s in the region. The Yangtze towns he describes were later flooded by the Three Gorges Dam.
Three Gorges Dam — For an understanding of the dam project and its human consequences, Leslie T. Chang's Factory Girls (2008) addresses adjacent themes of internal migration and displacement, while the Three Gorges Museum in Chongqing provides the most direct account.