A welcome study that sheds new light on recent Chinese history.
A well-done life of the legendary but now little-studied Chinese leader.
Fenby (France on the Brink, 1999), a former editor at the South China Post, writes of Chiang Kai-shek with admiration and revulsion at turns—reactions that were common in Chiang’s day, at home and abroad. An indifferent cadet who, in the words of one military instructor, “did not reveal innate ability,” Chiang slowly gathered power on the fringes of Sun Yat-sen’s Kuomintang movement, which overthrew the last ruler of the Ming dynasty; by outmaneuvering his rivals, he was able to consolidate his hold even while the movement veered from left to right, at points allying with China’s Communist Party, at others suppressing any signs of opposition. Fenby opens his account with the so-called Xi’an Incident, when, in 1936, junior officers arrested Chiang and demanded that he make common cause with the Communists against Japan; a united front, Fenby reasons, “would water down Chiang’s authority” while ending a bloody civil war. Alas, it was not to be, and though FDR once held out the hope that a China led by Chiang would be “a pillar of the new world order,” Chiang lost whatever store of good will he had among the people and was eventually driven offshore to rule as “generalissimo” of Taiwan for a quarter-century. Fenby brings some intriguing news to his account: Chiang’s offer, for one, to invade the Chinese mainland in the wake of Mao Zedong’s disastrous, brutal Great Leap Forward campaign; the machinations of American advisor Joseph Stilwell and other China hands to keep Chiang from gaining control over the anti-Japanese coalition, and Chiang’s crafty resistance. Had the Xi’an Incident not taken place, Chiang might well have crushed the Communists; but, Fenby concludes, “rather than the inescapability of Communist victory, it was the weakness of the Nationalists, Chiang’s failure as a military leader, and economic disintegration that sent the one-time man of destiny fleeing to Taiwan.”
A welcome study that sheds new light on recent Chinese history.Pub Date: March 16, 2004
ISBN: 0-7867-1318-6
Page Count: 592
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
