During the summer of 1972, a few short months after Nixon’s legendary visit to China, master 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 even-handed portrayals of Chinese culture that Americans had ever read.
Tuchman’s 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 Mao’s techniques for reasserting the Revolution.
