The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.82 (883 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1439148945 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 816 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-10-08 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Good Story, Mediocre History Madame Chiang Kai-shek was, as journalists like to say, a good story. It is a story of wartime travails, of high-stakes political gambling, of an epic fight-to-the-finish between authoritarian Nationalists and radical Communists. It's also a story of a tempestuous partnership between an ascetic military man and his glamorous, winsome, shrewd and luxury-loving wife.. Four Stars Colleen Seegers so full of information! Hope to finish for my Sept book club meeting.. Five Stars Stephan Guerin Exhaustive and well written. She was the brain. Not her husband.
Hannah Pakula is the author of The Last Empress, which was a New York Times notable book, The Last Romantic, which was called by Graham Greene the best biography and one of the three best books of the year, and An Uncommon Woman, which was a Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist. . She
Marrying Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, the strong-minded and hot-tempered, shrewd and ruthless May-ling quickly became a partner in his efforts as Chinese leader until the Japanese invaded, and then in 1945 when Mao's Communists drove him to Formosa (modern-day Taiwan), which he ruled until his death in 1975. 16 pages of b&w photos; maps. (Nov. From the 1930s to 1950s, Americans idolized Madame Chiang as a symbol of Chinese resistance to the brutal Japanese and as an anticommunist stalwart. But critics of her and Chiang's ineffective, authoritarian, corrupt leadership soon became the majority. All rights reserved. . Pakula draws a vivid if often unflattering portrait of a charismatic Chinese patriot, her husband and family, in tumultuous and tragic time
With a beautiful, powerful, and sexy Madame Chiang Kai-Shek at the center of one of the great dramas of the twentieth century, this is the story of the founding of modern China.With the beautiful, powerful, and sexy Madame Chiang Kai-Shek at the center of one of the great dramas of the twentieth century, this is the story of the founding of modern China, starting with a revolution that swept away more than 2,000 years of monarchy, followed by World War II, and ending in eventual loss to the Communists and exile in Taipei. Praised by China scholar Jonathan Spence for “an impressive amount of telling material, drawn from a wide array of sources,” Pakula presents an epic historical tapestry, a wonderfully wrought narrative that brings to life what Americans should know about China—the superpower we are inextricably linked with.