Thunder Out of China

Rating:
Summary: A great book with a WWII contemporary viewpoint
Review: I first encountered Thunder Out of China in the late 1960s after Lin Yutang caused me to have a yearning to know more about the China of the early 20th Century. Theodore White was one of my early reads. Because of the rabid anti-communism of the times I found myself wondering how White managed to keep himself out of the clutches of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, writing such things. This book was responsible for the historical amoeba of WWII gradually spreading through my life for several years.

Read it. This is a side of WWII, Mao, Chang, Vinegar Joe Stillwell from personal acquaintance and observation, you won't get anywhere else.

Rating:
Summary: A great book with a WWII contemporary viewpoint
Review: I first encountered Thunder Out of China in the late 1960s after Lin Yutang caused me to have a yearning to know more about the China of the early 20th Century. Theodore White was one of my early reads. Because of the rabid anti-communism of the times I found myself wondering how White managed to keep himself out of the clutches of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, writing such things. This book was responsible for the historical amoeba of WWII gradually spreading through my life for several years.

Read it. This is a side of WWII, Mao, Chang, Vinegar Joe Stillwell from personal acquaintance and observation, you won't get anywhere else.

Rating:
Summary: China in the years immediately prior to Communism
Review: I read this book for my Chinese history seminar and there's no denying that it provides valuable insight into turmoil in which China became embroiled during the Second World War. But there were several occassions when White's writing briefly degenerated into that of a hoaky hack-journalist, which marred what was essentially a very interesting book.

Rating:
Summary: China in the years immediately prior to Communism
Review: I read this book for my Chinese history seminar and there's no denying that it provides valuable insight into turmoil in which China became embroiled during the Second World War. But there were several occassions when White's writing briefly degenerated into that of a hoaky hack-journalist, which marred what was essentially a very interesting book.

Rating:
Summary: Good writing, bad history
Review: Make no mistake, Teddy White was an excellent writer. His writings communicates vividly and sympathetically. He makes you see what he sees and what he feels. He also gives you a feeling of what that age was like from the eye of an American reporter. However, White was no more than a man of his profession and his times. He did not have the hindsight of history and what would come out of the triumph of Chinese communism. Therefore this work is a good source material for historical research but should not be regarded as a good book of history. The work is remarkable for what it covers, but also remarkable for what it did not cover. For example, he would use two sentence to describe the heroic defense of Hengyang, but he would spend two pages describing how pathetic the Chinese soldiers were. He even gave us the wrong name for the general who defended Hengyang. He would discuss about the corruption that took away big portions of American aid. He did not discuss how Treasury Secretary Morgenthau withheld vital aid from China, after he agreed to provide the aid. A lot of these facts he probably did not know at the time. I would suggest reading Lin Yutang's book Vigil of a Nation along with this book. It will give you a more balanced view of the complexity of the situation. I am still waiting for a good book that will provide the definitive history of this very important era.

Rating:
Summary: The Real China
Review: This book, along with "Wild Swans", is a must read for anyone who would understand the history of China and why things are the way they are. It is well written and fast paced. The corruption of Chiang Kai-shek before Mao took over was enlightening. The media gives such a biased (pro-American) and simplistic (black and white) view of events in China. This book will take you behind the scenes.

Rating:
Summary: Journalists Report from China in WW2
Review: This is investigative journalism at its best, starting in 1939 with a report of the then Kuomintang capital and ending with the renewed civil war well under way in 1946, the years this book was published in the present, unchanged form. All important historical event in this time bracket are treated as they were realized by the authors based on their investigations and understanding of China - but to many questions of personal motives or details answers then couldn't be presented. The hero of the story is the Chinese peasant and the more efficient way to help him to progress into the modern world is seen with the communists. But it is not the complete history of China between 1937 and 1949 I hoped to find ....

Rating:
Summary: An accurate, balanced exploration of wartime China
Review: White and Jacoby, both correspondants for Time Magazine during WW2 and its aftermath, provide an insider's portrayal of China's convoluted mechanisms of governence. While other contemporary accounts are mostly small in their scope, and unapologetically biased towards either the Communists or the Nationalists, Thunder Out of China is brutally fair, sympathetic to the Nationalists while exposing their corruption, and detailing the incompentence of the American intervention which resulted in a resumption of the disasterous civil war 1945-1949. The book covers such disasters as the Hunan famine, the farce of Chinese "resistance" to the Japanese invaders, the recalcitrant corruption and conservatism of the Nationalist leaders, and the sacking of Stillwell.

Snow's Red Star Over China may be more readable, but it's chatty, personal, pro-Red, and semi-fictionalized account is much less revealing historically than Thunder Out of China. Time was unapologetically, even fanatically, supportive of the Chiang Kai-shek regime, and the magazine's propaganda in the US explains much of America's distastrous intervention (read China Hands for more on this). White and Jacoby used this book to expose much of what their employer wouldn't let them say, and it remains one of the best accounts written of wartime China.