While all the eyes in business and academia alike have their eyes on China and India, such poignant personal experiences and testimony of their relationship such as Pallavi Aiyar has assembled remain hard to come by. An Indian who came to China to teach English, Aiyar has been praised by countless reviewers for her unbiased, and in fact equally scathing, treatment of both India's and China's cultures'Aiyar sees both peoples in ways which they themselves are unable to, and then goes one step further, to explain why and how it is that their common people have grown so accustomed to their respective positions. Smoke and Mirrors focuses on personal accounts and interviews with personal acquaintances of Ms. Aiyar, including expert opinion and statements for contrast at times. She discusses and compares that which she thinks is most significant, and is so often overlooked: the labor efficiency that leads China to practically throw together a hospital while a 20-meter underpass in Delhi takes 3 years; the simple and innocent unawareness that Chinese students seem to have about the laws they live under and all the things they're not allowed to do; the low standard of education in India that she sees as crippling to its competitiveness; and, of course, the irreconcilable tension surrounding Tibet.