Recommendations from our site
“He was the first foreign journalist to risk this trek to the forbidden Communist state in China’s West in the second half of the 1930s, when it was under heavy blockade by the Nationalist government. Snow invested a lot of time and energy in bringing an untold story out into the world…There is also much that is troubling about the book, especially Snow’s unquestioning, even adulatory, response to Mao’s story about the Communist past and present.” Read more...
Julia Lovell, Historian
“This arguably is the most important book by an American foreign correspondent in the 20th century. At the time it was written in the mid-1930s nobody knew who the communists were. Many thought they were mere bandits. Snow went to the north-west of China to find them. When his book came out the whole equation changed; thereafter communism was understood to be a viable political movement.” Read more...
The best books on American Foreign Reporting
John M Hamilton, Journalist
“in some ways it seems the most dated of the books I’ve chosen, because it presents a totally rosy portrait of the Communist revolution. But I think for understanding modern China it’s extremely important. And that’s because it does, in rather sympathetic but comprehensive detail, point out both the importance of the land revolution, and the nationalistic revolution, as key elements in Mao Zedong’s revolution.” Read more...
The best books on Popular Protest in China
Elizabeth Perry, Political Scientist
