If we were to come up with the most accurate title for Henry Kissinger’s new book, we might call it something wonky like On the Perception of the International System Among the Elite Chinese Leadership. Granted, On China has a more commercial ring to it. And when we pick up a volume by Kissinger, the living ghost of America’s post-WWII foreign policy establishment—with the coke-bottle glasses to prove it—we can’t be expecting the People’s History of the People’s Republic.

Nonetheless, with a title as sweeping as this, we’d expect Kissinger to make an effort to represent “China” as more than a monolithic entity. It’s a mistake commonly made in the foreign media; as if a nation of 1.3 billion were a single actor with a single purpose and worldview. Readers interested in Chinese views of diplomacy should pick up this hefty work, but those hoping for a gripping memoir should look elsewhere.

The book, Kissinger says, is “an effort … to explain the conceptual way the Chinese think about problems of peace and war and national order.” But despite a review of historical Chinese attitudes to outsiders, he’s mostly talking about a very select group of senior Communist Party officials with whom he’s brokered important diplomatic agreements over the last 40 years.

That’s okay—a sweeping view of China in all its complexity is not what we want from Henry Kissinger. His personal involvement in U.S.-China relations is what makes this book potentially important: few statesmen have been handed such decisive opportunities to shape international diplomacy as Kissinger when he first went to China in 1971 on a secret visit. The most exciting promise of this book is an up-close look at the events leading up to those historic first meetings in Beijing, and an insider’s account of what occurred there.

But Kissinger the historian dominates Kissinger the memoirist. After the preface, we wade through 212 pages of background and analysis on the historical factors shaping Chinese diplomacy before Kissinger finally speaks in the first person. This is where it could get exciting, but Kissinger, even as he describes his early visits with Mao and Zhou Enlai, still often sounds more like a scholar than someone who was actually there.

An exception is when he describes his poignant final visit with Zhou Enlai, who had been sidelined by illness and politics: “Our dialogue never reached an exchange of personal comments,” says Kissinger, but to the extent that others have called the two friends, “I consider it an honor.” Kissinger compares Chinese diplomacy to the game of wei qi, known in the West as Go. For example: “Chess produces single-mindedness, wei qi generates strategic flexibility.” The choice of metaphor is telling. For Kissinger, the line between strategic games and real-life war and peace has always been thin—his favorite board game is actually called Diplomacy—and his attempts to implement strategy on the ground have often been disastrous and, arguably, in violation of international law. With On China, though, he reinforces his worthiest achievement for posterity—we can only hope that lasting peace between the U.S. and China continues to speak for his efforts.

Henry Kissinger, On China, Penguin Press, US$36.00