A journalistic tour de force, this wide-ranging collection by the author of the Pulitzer Prizeโwinning biography Stilwell and the American Experience in China is a classic in its own right.
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During the summer of 1972โa few short months after Nixonโs legendary visit to Chinaโmaster historian Barbara W. Tuchman made her own trip to that country, spending six weeks in eleven cities and a variety of rural settlements. The resulting reportage was one of the first evenhanded portrayals of Chinese culture that Americans had ever read.
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Tuchmanโs observations capture the people as they lived, from workers in the city and provincial party bosses to farmers, scientists, and educators. She demonstrates the breadth and scope of her expertise in discussing the alleviation of famine, misery, and exploitation; the distortion of cultural and historical inheritances into ubiquitous slogans; news media, schools, housing, and transportation; and Chairman Maoโs techniques for reasserting the Revolution. This edition also includes Tuchmanโs โfascinatingโ (The New York Review of Books) essay, โIf Mao Had Come to Washington in 1945โโa tantalizing piece of speculation on a proposed meeting between Mao and Roosevelt that would have changed the course of postwar history.
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โShrewdly observed . . . Tuchman enters another plea for coolness, intelligence and rationality in American Asian policies. One can hardly disagree.โโThe New York Times Book Review