Chiang Kai Shek
China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
With a narrative as briskly paced and vividly detailed as an international thriller, this definitive biography of Chiang Kai-shek masterfully maps the tumultuous political career of Nationalist China's generalissimo as it reevaluates his brave but unfulfilled life. Chiang Kai-shek was one of the most influential world figures of the twentieth century. The leader of the Kuomintang, the Nationalist movement in China, by 1928 he had established himself as head of the government in Nanking. But while he managed to survive the political storms of the 1930s, Chiang's power was continually being undermined by the Japanese on one side and the Chinese Communists on the other. Drawing extensively on original Chinese sources and accounts by contemporaneous journalists, acclaimed author Jonathan Fenby explores little-known international connections in Chiang's story as he unfolds a story as fascinating in its conspiratorial intrigues as it is remarkable for its psychological insights. This is the definitive biography of the man who, despite his best intentions, helped create modern-day China.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chiang Kai-shek's life (1887 1975) coincided with some of the most violent and chaotic decades of Chinese history, and as this son of a salt merchant from the lower Yangtze came into his own, his destiny became increasingly entwined with the agonizing destiny of China. Many of Chiang's actions, including his 1949 flight to Taiwan, directly shaped that destiny. In this chronicle of his life, Fenby, former editor of the Observer and the South China Morning Post, recounts the generalissimo's rise amid the gruesome power struggles of warlords; the political machinations that enabled his gradual assumption of political power during the Kuomintang regime; his tortuous attempts to fend off Japanese imperial expansion while also trying to exterminate the fledgling Communist movement; and his eventual defeat at the hands of Mao's Red Army. Fenby's account of Chiang's early life is the most detailed part of the book and relies heavily on excerpts from a memoir by Chiang's second wife (whom he cast aside to forge a political marriage and strategic alliance with the youngest daughter of the powerful Soong family) and on journalistic tidbits from Western observers and participants; these accounts are always colorful and engaging if sometimes less than analytical. Whatever one might think of the man depicted here as explosive-tempered, superhumanly ambitious, profoundly conservative and authoritarian, and not above forging alliances with underworld gang leaders one cannot read this biography without marveling at the sheer magnitude of his arc of power and the scope and unifying impact of his life on a once-decentralized nation. B&w photos, maps.
